On the first anniversary of his presidency on July 14, President Suh Nam-pyo of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has completed KAIST's internal reform successfully.

Regarding his achievements during the past year, President Suh has been devoting his heart and soul to mapping out a five year KAIST development plan, according to concerned persons.

The goals President Suh set up, are in a word to become the highest science technology university in the world in the hope of becoming one of the ten best universities by 2011.

For that goal KAIST has established concrete tasks in each field including education, research, and management, according to Suh. The President was on hand during a press conference to commemorate his first anniversary leading KAIST.

These development plans gaining substantial results as the most part of them are started, Suh assessed in his press conference.

The five year KAIST development plan is as follows:

First, KAIST secures superior human resources, innovates its personnel and education systems, and constructs infrastructure to provide users with the highest level of global education.

Second, KAIST encourages basic technology innovation research and spearheads core fields selectively and intensively to actualize a research university which leads the future.

Third, KAIST constructs a departmentoriented system and secures financial security in the interests of managemental innovation of autonomy and responsibility.

Fourthly, KAIST decides to promote a reciprocal cooperation culture and to strengthen external collaboration for the sake of international openness and cooperation.

Indispensable professors and students

In order for a university to develop, excellent professors and students are indispensable, president Suh pointed out.

Suh further said: "In order for a professor to do brisk intellectual exchange with a student, the ratio of graduate school students to professors must be forged properly." President Suh is a distinguished scholar worldwide with his eminent research achievements in plastic manufacturing processes, metal manufacturing processes, MAMO theory, and design theory among production manufacturing technology fields. He said that KAIST aims to increase professor numbers from 429 to 700 in order to adjust the student-professor ratio from 9.8:1 to 6:1, an advanced country's typical level.

After KAIST made efforts to attract excellent professors over the past year a total of 40 new professors have been appointed, of which 9 are foreign professors which is 22% of the staff, according to Suh.

Besides improving the tenure system by appointing professors who have gained global recognition to the level of Distinguished Professor, president Suh said that he plans to give them more motives for achievement such as extending the retirement age.

To beef up international competitiveness and to forge an optimal education environment for foreign students, KAIST has begun to enforce 100% English lectures for new undergraduate students this year with a goal of lecturing all courses in English by 2010. KAIST is reshuffling its curriculum in order to lay the groundwork for English lectures and establish a new English clinic center. Furthermore, it provides students with expert analysis results by recording lectures to video, Suh said.

Because of a lack of personnel for undergraduate students, KAIST is going to increase the number of undergraduate staff from 700 to 1,000, which includes 200 foreign staff, by 2010. The school will also adjust the entire undergraduate student body to be 4,000 persons.

Suh assessed that such an enlargement of the undergraduate student body and staff was a positive thing by saying that it can boost national research and development competitiveness by corresponding to the matriculation demands of superior students from home and abroad and by selecting crack talent to go on to graduate school. In comparison, a total of 721 persons entered KAIST undergraduate school this year, of which 40 are foreigners.

Under the judgment that students are strong in analysis but weak in synthesis, KAIST is strengthening design and composition education to improve synthetic application power. Suh explained that such design and composition education is scheduled to be an elective course starting this fall semester and will be designated as a required subject in 2008.

During his press conference President Suh mentioned a dual degree system too, saying that KAIST is aggressively promoting this dual degree system to provide students with diverse education opportunities and to activate student exchange with prominent universities around the world.

This dual degree system allows a student to be able to receive degrees from both collaborating universities when he satisfies the necessary conditions for graduation while studying in both schools which hold respective curricula.

According to persons concerned, KAIST concluded its agreement to exchange 5 students with another university yearly, agreeing on a dual degree system with TU Berlin on March of this year. Only a signature remains with the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US and an agreement will be finalized soon with the University of California, Santa Barbara in the US as well.

Beyond this, Suh said that KAIST is putting together a dual degree system between departments with French universities Ecole Polytechnique and INSA; and the University of Karlsruhe in Germany which has already signed an MOU with KAIST.

What's more, KAIST is setting up a dual degree system with the Politecnico di Milano Technical University in Italy, Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet in Denmark, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Dual degrees everywhere

Making reference to the selection of core research fields Suh underscored that KAIST encourages basic field and technology innovation field research which has a big influence on other fields.

As part of such support plans, KAIST has established KAIST Institute in the hopes of enhancing KAIST's global awareness by producing worldwide research. Besides this, KAIST has installed a total of 7 laboratories for BioCentury, Information Technology, Complex System Design, NanoCentury, Entertainment Engineering, Eco- Energy, and Urban Space and Systems.

In order for KAIST to develop as a worldwide university, Suh stressed that KAIST needs to forge a 1 trillion won (US$1.09 billion) university development fund over the next 7 years. In addition, the university is planning to borrow 100 billion won (US$ 109 million) for indispensable infrastructure construction.

Touching upon his new department-centered autonomous responsibility operation system, President Suh said that he is facilitating department autonomy and responsibility management by entrusting authority to each department chief professor which has historically been concentrated with the President. Accordingly, ordinary personnel affairs and budgets have been entrusted to each department chief professor. On top of that, Suh has allowed construction development direction advice and personnel infrastructure for fund formation by entrusting the field's best experts at home and abroad with the External Advisory Committee.

Moreover, Suh has created the President's Advisory Council, which includes experts who stand at the summit of the educational industrial laboratory field at home and abroad. These advisory committee members present KAIST's development direction and carry out substantial and diverse roles such as policy advice and fund collection support.

Last but not least, President Suh has been devoting much effort during the past year to constructing an open-model digital system, which allows the general public to be able to easily see KAIST professor papers via the Internet.

All research papers which are produced on campus are collected, stored and distributed through this open-model digital system in the hopes of contributing to mankind's development by sharing excellent academic information with the general public.

To optimize university resource utilization and to upgrade university management through affairs standardization and integration, KAIST has introduced an Oracle ERP solution, according to Suh.