“Incubator of Academic Study, Convergence, and Cutting-edge Technology”

[President Jung-ho Sonu"s  Contribution to Electronic Newspaper]

 

There is a Korean saying "smaller peppers are spicie," which can be translated into "Do not to underestimate little man." A case in point is the California Institute of Technology(Caltech.) Although the number of students graduating from Caltech is small, it is one of the best schools of the world.

Korean people will know MIT better than Caltech as one of the best colleges of technology and engineering. In fact, Caltech is second to none when it comes to fruitfulness and productivity. With its professors of less than 300, Caltech has won the Nobel Prize 32 times. Given that MIT with more than 1000professors won the prize only 9 times, we can see how impressive Caltech"s performance has been.

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While it is important to achieve convergence across different disciplines within science and technology, it has now become critical to realize convergence science with liberal arts and social science. Steve Jobs, who had been a great driving force behind telecommunication revolution with his smart phone is a good example of convergence between liberal art and science technology.

In this vein, it is more important for university like GIST to strengthen education on liberal art and social science. There is nothing better than liberal art in helping people think out of the box and be creative. Ironically however, our request to recruit professors of liberal arts and social study is frequently met by negative government responses, asking why science technology university needs such professors. This is the reality in Korea.

President of GIST Jung-ho Sonu