Ewha preparing for a growth spurt
Published: 27 Aug. 2009, 21:02
Lee Bae-yong
A. We celebrated our 120th anniversary when we signed a memorandum of understanding with the Paju city government in 2006. Since the main campus was built in Sinchon in 1935, Ewha has grown into a leading university.
But the campus has reached the saturation point, as it accommodates more than 80 buildings. The limited space was restricting scientific research and collaboration work, and we needed more space for additional dormitories and cultural and welfare facilities.
Paju has long epitomized education and culture, and I reckon as a historian that the city will become an ideal place for Ewha to grow.
We are planning to buy the site in the second half of the year and have already submitted our master plan to the city government. Given that it is the closest city to the inter-Korean border, Paju will also deliver the message of peace on the Korean Peninsula.
You mentioned the importance of establishing the “school of Ewha” before. Could you provide more details about that concept?
Although Ewha has contributed to fostering experts and leaders in society, it has yet to obtain wide recognition for being an incubator of leading scholars. It is high time that we try to help our students win the Nobel Prize and become top academics. So we established the Ewha Academy for Advanced Studies in 2006, under the catchphrase “Initiative Ewha.”
Since then, the academy has invited globally recognized scholars to conduct research into humanities such as the history of intellect and East Asian history - the fields we have shown strength in.
The foreign scholars include George Smoot, a cosmologist and Nobel physics laureate, who started teaching at Ewha in the spring semester; Jane Goodall, an English messenger of peace and a conservationist; Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and managing director of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh; and Francis Fukuyama, a professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins University.
For the first time as a women’s university, we have also created a special academic course in the natural science department that enables students to obtain their bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees within eight years. The program has been devised in consideration of the reality that female scholars tend to lag behind their male counterparts due to childbirth.
Among the 13 Ewha presidents so far, you are considered the one who has focused the most on globalization.
I would say the very start of Ewha originates from the early stage of globalization since its founder was a foreigner.
Probably because of that, I think our students have the DNA to have good proficiency in foreign languages. Through various programs with overseas universities, I want to help students get as diverse an experience as possible, paving the way for their growth after graduation. In the fall semester of last year, 1,340 Ewha students were sent to 54 universities in 14 countries. Students can also sign up for summer programs.
With the progress of Korean society, some people argue that women-only universities are anachronistic. What is your view?
In life, a choice can change everything. In retrospect, I chose Ewha with the belief that a women’s university can be more supportive of female students because it only has girls.
That belief hasn’t changed so far. [Although “Ewha Women’s University” would be grammatically correct, the university claims “Womans” represents its foundation with a single student and further symbolizes its respect for individual students.]
While giving a lecture to students of Ewha on her February visit to Seoul, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a similar view as mine. She said she thinks the world needs women’s colleges like Ewha and Wellesley “to provide an alternative for young women and to provide that supportive environment that I certainly found when I went to Wellesley and that I think many of you find here to help prepare you for the future.” [Wellesley College, Clinton’s alma mater, is a sister college of Ewha.]
We have been running programs designed to foster female leaders and experts much longer than coed schools. Now that the portion of female students has been increasing rapidly at coed universities, those schools have started to pay attention to women students only recently. For example, Peking University has asked us to share our know-how in that regard. When you want to develop your potential, you need to have trust in yourself.
Korean universities are increasingly recruiting students through the admissions officer system. As chief of the Korea Council for University Education, what do you think are the essential prerequisites for the successful execution of the new system?
The admissions officer system is not a goal but a means of normalizing public education and easing the private education burden. The system not only considers students’ exam scores but also their potential, human nature, creativity and willingness to overcome challenges.
But what is important is that universities won’t have uniform factors of consideration and criteria in the screening process.
Many people in the academic field say that the humanities are being disregarded as society becomes more focused on moneymaking businesses.
The recent financial crisis erupted not because we didn’t have sufficient knowledge of economic theories but because people started neglecting their responsibility and self-examination.
The same is true of the arson fire last year that heavily damaged Korea’s National Treasure No. 1. I think such a tragedy could have been prevented if people cared more about the humanities, which make them understand the spirit and devotion of those who built the valuable heritage.
With this in mind, we launched the “Ewha Renaissance” project last year, offering guided tours of cultural heritage sites across the country and other humanities lectures to students.
By Seo Ji-eun [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.
Standards Board Policy (0/250자)