President’s Blog
My Trip to Korea
November 30, 2007
As I mentioned in my last blog, I’ve recently returned from Korea, where Dr. Younghee Kim and I spent a week meeting with university administrators and staff (and a few students) and exploring international partnerships.
The trip was made possible by our long-time partner, Dankook University, as they were celebrating their 60th anniversary. They invited me and ten other presidents from around the world to participate. It was a wonderful experience.
As we had planned to arrive in Korea a couple of days before the Dankook celebration, Dr. Kim and I met with folks at KEDI, the Korean Educational Development Institute, which has a strong relationship with our School of Education. As a research institute, they don’t have faculty and students, but they are very interested in collaborative research projects.
Dr. Hyung Yeel Koh, president of KEDI, is actually a faculty member at Chonnam National University in Gwanju, three hours south of Seoul. He arranged for us to meet with the president, Dr. Jung–Chaee Kang, and others at Chonnam. With 35,000 students and a location in a relatively small city, the university offers many opportunities for faculty and student exchanges. They even have a focus on Shakespeare Studies and were extremely interested to learn about SOU and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
For most of the week, we celebrated with Dankook University, met with their staff and faculty, and toured their beautiful campus. It is a brand new facility; they just moved in this September. Their president, Dr. Ki–Hong Kwan, is very interested in renewing the strong collaboration that our two institutions have had in the past. (Many Dankook staff and faculty remember SOU’s President Sours with great affection.)
Each of these Korean universities seeks ways to send students to us and would welcome our students and faculty. Both institutions offer opportunities for Korean language and culture immersion programs as well as traditional academic exchanges.
While Dr. Kim and I were in Korea, Dr. Steve Thorpe and others were in China, forging great relationships there. Collaborative work is being done, of course, with Guanajuato and with other institutions around the globe. I am hopeful that SOU’s international stars are aligning. With some work and creative thinking, I believe we can strengthen these partnerships and help our campus embrace a wide array of international opportunities.
Mary Cullinan
