CCCU Listening Tour....: Thursday, February 26, 2009 - Handong University in Pohang Korea

As I sit in the oddball Guest House in a skyscraper near Seoul Incheon airport, I’m struck by the health AND diversity of Christian higher education in Korea. Their facilities are amazing,

their faculty credentials are impressive, their passion and vision is remarkable, and their enrollments are exploding. My day at Handong only confirmed this.

They are perhaps the most enthusiastic about their institution of any I’ve seen. Their energetic president Kim rallies them to great passion…even posing for pictures with the phrase “NEEEEW BUILDING” instead of “CHEESE.” His recent appointment as chair of the national Korean Science and Technology Commission testifies to his reputation. His having been jailed as part of the launch of Handong in 1995 is part of the legend. The buildings at Handong are magnificent

…including the massive (I mean HUGE)

new Law School/International Building due for completion in August.
Handong is clearly the most like a traditional US liberal arts college of any I have seen in Korea….

and perhaps of any I’ve seen elsewhere so far. Even LCC in Kaipeda while emphasizing liberal arts, has more commuters. Virtually all of Handong’s 3600 students are in residence. 30% of the faculty are expats, and a significant number of courses are taught in English…perhaps 40%. Among the distinctives is the EDISON Academy….

of which George Kim is perhaps the most passionately outspoken. He says it’s the “Officer Candidate School of Handong.”
My day began with breakfast with Abraham, George, Kyu, and Youn-Sik. In fact Abraham did much of the cooking when Mom’s Place needed some help to get ready for us. Good conversation about liberal arts and integration. They really do seem interested in this….

especially Youn-Sik who has just been appointed Dean of the EDISON Academy. Their upcoming (June) 4th conference with Calvin and even a few Taylor people shows they care about integration of faith and learning enough to promote it.

But of course as George Kim points out this means there is a tension in faculty minds between commitment to the liberal arts and to their disciplines. I said this tension is true in the US too! It’s good that Youn-Sik and George (both in the sciences/engineering) would be the ones with such passion. They believe that other Korean Christian schools are following Handong’s lead

on the English international school concept or at least following the residential wholistic (“liberal arts”) idea. They would like to see a CCCU base in Asia on their campus.
Their three entire majors in English are: Law, Business, and I.T…

.each with sub-departments. There are 45 majors in Korean…and ALL students are REQUIRED to do DOUBLE majors!

ALL departments have 30-70% of their courses in English. All students to graduate must test in UNIX, or C++, or Visual Basic, AND Chinese characters, AND English. They have become so selective that they are now taking only the top 6% of SAT takers nationally.
In my brief chat with Provost and AVP Younsup Kim, he said getting English speaking faculty and students were his top ideas for CCCU partnerships.

A couple of new ideas emerged in a late morning talk in the main admin building with George, Abraham, Youn-Sik, and Kyu. One is to improve PERSONAL networking…..perhaps using existing web tools like Facebook for this. Also, George would like to see a fund created for investment in entrepreneurship projects that would let students SEE how their education works. Abraham believes there is a need for course sharing…on the airline “code sharing model.” When I said I thought that would require a big capital outlay, he mentioned two existing web based operations that already manage these kinds of things. It is certainly worth exploring these…perhaps as one of the assignments for staff hired with grant money. Mi Ja Wi could do this….:-)
I had an impressive walking tour…again I say their buildings are magnificent,

and the fact they are in the countryside, with large open quadrangles, makes them feel like a large traditional US residential campus. Their chapel with large tower cross looks like a mega-church. Having students around for their orientation gave some real life to campus…especially near the large covered space/dining commons

with TV trucks

and organized groups running around.
Visiting the law school also was impressive….

ran into a new faculty member David just arrived from D.C. leaving a decade of practice there in product liability to bring his whole family here….And Patrick, another US attorney (Regent grad) who brought his family and is teaching.

The university provides beautiful free housing in units adjacent to campus with beautiful views of the valley

and a great English speaking school for the children. I was even more impressed with the caliber of teaching staff as I thought about these two attorneys and walked the halls looking at the number of Ph.D.s indicated on faculty doors.
I appreciated the huge amount of his time Abraham gave me….and the help his assistant Yohan Park

gave me in rearranging my ticket.

We swapped my Daegu to Incheon air flight for tomorrow for a Pohang to Gimpo flight tonight. It worked smoothly…… In fact Yohan managed to order 100 business cards for me at 2pm and we picked them up enroute to the airport….

amazing how they did that….logo and all. The drive was 30 minutes…

this is a BIG city! I caught the flight with 5 minutes to spare…from a beautiful airport.

Arrived in Seoul 45 minutes later at Gimpo. The AREX train is cheap and easy…and probably the cleanest newest nicest subway/train I have ever seen.

I am amazed at how efficient transportation seems to be in Korea. Once at Seoul Incheon I couldn’t help think this may be one of the most MAGNIFICENT airports I’ve seen.

Even Madrid’s fancy new one where I stopped last spring may not compare in size….. The info booth girl called the Guest House and politely asked me to be seated with 15-20 others watching TV and she would call me when the driver arrived. Sure enough, only 10 minutes later, the driver approached me, and within 5 minutes we were at an odd skyscraper where on the 9th floor there was a single open door with a man and woman who took my credit card, gave me a key and a towel and pointed me to the 12th floor.