[Indepth interview]Global vision for a local university

Suh Nam-pyo

At the age of 71, Suh Nam-pyo, the still-vigorous president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Kaist), continues to set out important goals.
As head of the country’s premier school for science and engineering, which also has a top-notch MBA program, Suh has made it his goal to propel the Daejeon-based school into a top educational institution in the world within the next 10 years.
While keeping pace with globalization, the veteran mechanical engineering professor on leave from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wants to make Kaist Korea’s equivalent of MIT and a leading global institution.
“My ultimate goal is to make Kaist one of the world’s top 10 universities through various reforms,” he said in a recent interview.
Since his arrival in July 2006, Suh has quickly taken steps to realize his vision for Kaist to help shape tomorrow’s world. One of the first tasks he undertook was to strengthen the competitiveness of Kaist students and faculty. One measure he introduced is to make tuition dependent on student performance: Kaist students, who study on full scholarships, must maintain high grades. Those receiving a grade lower than B (3.0) have to pay tuition the following semester. “It’s not to make money. Its purpose is to help students have a strong sense of responsibility and a competitive spirit,” Suh said. “Their tuition payments will be used to establish a general hospital that gives free treatment.”
Early in his term as president, Suh cracked the whip on faculty performance. Last year, 35 professors applied for tenure but only 20 were approved. Suddenly, lifetime tenure could no longer to be taken for granted by Kaist professors.
Suh plans, during his third year in Kaist, to focus on increasing diversity on campus.
Last year Kaist accepted 50 international students from various countries and 17 transfer students from other Korean universities. While a large part of diversity is attracting international students, he also seeks to ensure a mix of students from various fields of study.
Suh believes that diversity enables students to view matters from different standpoints through the interchange of varied perspectives. He said that cultural exchanges between current students and newcomers with a variety of backgrounds will lead them to broaden their knowledge and increase creativity.
“Kaist students are very smart, but they need to enhance their leadership and humanity to become world leaders,” Suh said. “To do that, they are required to understand international students, who have different cultures, as well as other Korean students who study in other fields. We need a post-Einstein as well as a post-Bill Gates.”
With his blueprint to bring a bright future to the school, Suh is also determined to develop joint programs that would integrate different fields of academic study.
He said he does not want students to be totally preoccupied with only one major. When students study various majors, Suh explains, they are able to come up with new ideas that they have never thought of before.
He plans to establish eight research centers which offer dual programs as varied as entertainment and engineering, design and technology, among others, as part of his joint program project. “We need the ability to develop technology. Also, we need to have the skills to promote the technology,” he said.
This year Suh also introduced classes taught entirely in English for current freshmen and sophomores. The president promises to have all classes taught in English for about 3,500 undergraduate students, from freshmen to seniors, soon.
Even though some students complain they can’t understand fully what English-speaking professors say in class, Suh asserts that students can usually understand about 80 percent, regardless of who is teaching. They have to make efforts to understand the other 20 percent of the class by themselves, he said.
Suh plans to recruit more foreign professors to make up 20 percent of the total number of professors in the near future. Currently, Kaist has about 450 professors. Among them, only 10 are foreigners while 60 are ethnic Koreans from abroad. “I didn’t choose the teaching of all classes in English because I like English. We are supposed to be equipped with better English skills to be able to engage in international exchanges in a globalized world,” he said. “Recruiting more prominent faculty members from overseas is also done for the same reason.”
One distraction for Suh has been the burden of having replaced the previous president, Robert B. Laughlin, who had to resign before the end of his term. Students’ resistance to Laughlin’s policies and administration led to his early resignation. “I think if Laughlin overcame the opposition and completed his four-year term, it would have been better for the school’s future,” he said. “But as a foreigner he can’t speak Korean very well, so that was an important handicap that forced him to tender his resignation.”
Suh did not miss the opportunity to ask the new government to contribute to the success of Kaist. “The Korean government has to invest big money in the development of Kaist to promote a world-class school,” Suh said. “Kaist will continue to develop world-class scientific technology.”
Born in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang in 1936, Suh immigrated to the United States in 1954. He graduated from MIT and earned a doctoral degree at Carnegie Mellon University. Outside academia, Suh was vice president of the National Science Foundation from 1984 to 1988. Before Kaist, he was the MIT Ralph E. Cross Professor of the Mechanical Engineering and was chairman of mechanical engineering department at MIT from 1991 through 2001. Suh’s term at Kaist will run through July 2010. Kaist was founded in 1971 in Daejeon, 160 kilometers (99 miles) south of Seoul. Kaist has 3,300 undergraduate and 4,600 graduate students.

By Lee Kyu-youn JoongAng Sunday [enational@joongang.co.kr]