Seoul Lights Up for the Holiday Season - Korea.net

COVER
The Korea Herald
U.S. Engineer Starts
New Life at KAIST
BY KIM SO-HYUN
KOREA HERALD STAFF WRITER
Expats learn how to play
Janggu, traditional Korean
drum
Expats make kimchi for the needy
project for the families of foreign residents,
which is divided into four major stages.
The four stages are: preparation ahead of
arrival; starting a family; settling and raising
children; and helping those families develop
useful skills.
Before foreigners arrive, they will be able
to obtain information about life in Korea
through consultations with international marriage
or immigration management officials in
the Philippines and Vietnam, according to the
ministry.
Cultural classes — regarding understanding
the differences in cultures, conjugal relations,
The Korea Herald
the roles of parents and communication methods
— for the Korean spouses are also held at
the 80 branches of the Transnational Marriage
and Family Support Center located nationwide,
its officials said. Private visits are also made by
Korean language instructors for foreign brides
and they will be encouraged to form their own
groups to help keep their identity.
To provide a wider range of information
for foreigners, a quarterly magazine that contains
essential living information for foreign
residents is being published in different languages
— with the goal of translating it into
five different languages — and an interpretation
and translation hotline is expected to be
launched by next year, the ministry said.
Policies to Attract More
International Brains
Through the “World-Class University” (WCU)
project, Korea seeks to nurture promising new
fields in basic sciences and develop interdisciplinary
studies by attracting more academic
from abroad.
Children from various countries show their national
flag-shaped cakes
The Ministry of Education, Science and
Technology set aside a budget of 200 billion
won (about $13.2 million) for the WCU project
to be invested between 2008 and 2012.
The applications for WCU grants are categorized
into three types. Type 1 is to set up new
academic departments or specialized majors
with at least 30 percent of the faculty from
abroad. Type 2 is to hire researchers from overseas
universities, think tanks and companies as
full-time teaching staff for existing departments.
Type 3 invites renowned academics,
such as Nobel laureates, who will be required to
stay in Korea for at least two months a year.
As the result of the type 3 evaluation, the
Education Ministry announced in November
that a total of 81 academics have been appointed
by 30 universities. Starting next year,
they will teach students and take part in 79
projects with their Korean fellows.
They include nine Nobel laureates, 18
members of the U.S. National Academy of
Engineering, 12 members of the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences and three members of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. ■
As part of efforts to boost international
competitiveness, the Korea
Advanced Institute of Science and
Technology (KAIST) offers more than
half of its courses in English.
Seventeen percent of full-time
teaching staff at the state-funded
university are non-Koreans, most of
whom are engineering experts or
scientists.
James Morrison, a former advisory
engineer at IBM in Vermont and assistant
professor at Central Michigan
University, joined KAIST early this
year as an assistant professor of industrial
and systems engineering.
“KAIST offers a competitive startup
package, salary and benefits
comparable to large state schools in
the United States. The start of a
tenure system is also similar to that
of the United States,” Morrison said
in an email interview.
“As one of my areas of interest is
semiconductor manufacturing automation
or high-tech manufacturing,
the fact that Samsung is based
in Korea is also appealing.”
Morrison chose KAIST also because
he knew the students would
be excellent. He described his students
as “driven to succeed, wellprepared
and smart.”
“As my Korean is very poor, I am
fortunate that most students and virtually
all faculty have a command of
English to such a degree that communication
is always possible,” said
the American, who has a Korean wife.
“I feel that KAIST has welcomed
me. In some ways, I think that because
I am a foreign faculty member,
others make special efforts to
help me.”
Morrison was happy to hear that
the Korean government is planning
to provide large grants for universities
to hire academics from abroad.
He was involved in his department’s
proposal for the “World-
Class University” state funding to
create a research group focusing on
the design of next-generation semiconductor
wafer/LCD fabrication
plants.
“We identified several internationally
famous world-class scholars in
the United States who expressed a
willingness to participate,” he said.
“In addition, I played a minor role
in reviewing another WCU proposal
to create a new department at KAIST
— the Department of Intelligent
Service Engineering. I am concurrently
appointed to that department.”
The professor has clear goals for
himself — to design and evaluate solutions
for problems of substantial
importance, publish the results, obtain
grant money to support his work
and serve his academic community.
“In particular, as electronics is a
cornerstone industry in Korea, solving
problems in semiconductor
manufacturing automation can have
significant value — increasing market
share and improving efficiency,”
he said.
Morrison is a part of the KAIST
Mobile Floating Port project which
seeks to develop next-generation
port service concepts with an eye toward
extending Korea’s strengths in
this area. ■
12 KOREA DECEMBER 2008
DECEMBER 2008 KOREA 13