When I introduce myself as the Director of POSTECH Leadership Center, many people respond curiously. Some have peculiar expression of questioning “POSTECH Leadership Center?” “Engineering students and leadership?” Even members of POSTECH sometimes walk away with baffled expression, “how is leadership related to Postechians?” Our tenets, however, proclaims “POSTECH was established … to produce select young talents into the future global leaders…” Therefore we should not neglect leadership as something irrelevant to us, but should ponder upon the leadership referred in the tenets.Leadership has

Postechians almost always follow their undergraduate major to decide postgraduate and job options. For example, if they study chemistry in undergraduate days, they choose jobs developing fuel or medicines, which are related to chemistry. Although when people were high school students they dreamed their university life would provide various experiences to help them pinpoint their talent and find their future jobs, they are studying only with regulated curriculum now. However, people themselves make this trend of pursuing one major for a whole lifetime. In contrast, there are Postechians who mak

After amazing development of industries, the environmental problems have always been an issue among serious matters. This article introduces the reasons we have to consider the Earth. There are a lot of ways to protect the Earth, from big scale solutions like creating green technologies to small scale ones such as recycling garbage. At the moment when people in the world have the duty to protect the Earth, Postechians also actively participating. This article shows how Postechians have tried to preserve the environment through the examples of two prized works. I already knew about the POSTECH

In 2014, I wish that all the members of POSTECH, such as students, staffs, researchers, and professors, will be happy and can mature even more in their responsibilities. Regardless of Eastern and Western boundary, exchanging New Year’s greeting is wishing for a happy and prosperous year to each other. It is ceremonial for those who meet at the beginning of the year to give words of blessing, but I propose that people just stop and pause for a moment and try to think what I can do to make others happy. In my experience of traveling and living in several foreign countries, the Korean level of ha

The Six Sigma is the innovative corporate management strategy for renovating the quality of goods and enhancing the level of costumers’ satisfaction. The name come from the fact that a fraction defective is below 3.4 parts per million (PPM) or the number of a fault generations is below 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO) by achieving the level of quality by six sigma. Six Sigma is the innovative quality movement started from Motorola (an American multinational telecommunications company) in 1980. After that, it became a crucial strategy of the excellent companies, such as General Elec

The article “ISSS, To Be a Bilingual Campus” in the No. 61 of The Postech Times covered how POSTECH is making an effort to make POSTECH a better place to stay for the international students. The office responsible for this work is the International Scholar and Student Services office (ISSS). About 30 ? 40 foreign exchange students visit POSTECH every semester and the ISSS assists them by providing them with the information necessary to study at POSTECH and by inviting them to engage in activities to make them feel more at home at POSTECH.Specifically, before the foreign students arrive, the IS

Have you ever heard of “the Nudge Effect”? It is changing people’s behavior or choice by slightly prodding their side. It is not compulsion, but their free will. The effect is used in various fields like sociology, economics, environmental campaigns, etc. When politicians make a policy and a government wants to change people’s behavior at low cost, they consider the effect. In 1986 Congress enacted the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act. Companies and people have to report the amount of hazardous chemicals that they have and have released into the environment. Everyone can see

One of the founding philosophies of POSTECH (POSTECH Visions) is “training well-rounded future global leaders through outstanding education”. POSTECH has selected talented students every year, and all members of POSTECH have been doing their best to nurture them into global talents. Then, Postechians need to question themselves regarding what effort they are making to become global leaders.Until now, many offices of POSTECH, including POSTECH Leadership Center, conducted various research and investigations targeted at the graduates and enrolled students of POSTECH. There is a remarkable outcom

The article “Assortment of Participants & Media” provided fresh analysis about the 2nd POSTECH Cultural Content Contest in Science and Technology, which took place on Oct. 25. The writer focused on the hardship for international students to obtain useful information and participate in enjoyable campus events held in POSTECH. I believe the article well represents the point of view of international students in POSTECH. According to the article, international students who are not proficient in Korean and not familiar with POSTECH Vision Information System (POVIS) must have resistance toward openi

These days, when I sit on my chair in the office of The Postech Times (3rd floor of the Student Union Building), I can feel the enthusiasm of Postechians. On all the floors of the building, students sing, dance, and play in a band even after midnight. Those are usually practices for regular concerts of their clubs, or just for their own fun. However, the practices are really hard and long, so it makes people think that “Is it that fun?”.I participated in the training camp of KAISER (POSTECH soccer club) during the summer vacation. Whether to prepare for the POSTECH & KAIST Science War or just

Generally, people think science is difficult and boring. Most people do not know about scientific principles that dominate our lives or even have any interest in them; however, science is inseparable from us. That is why Korea Foundation for the Advancement of Science & Creativity (KOFAC) holds events like the Korea Science Creativity Festival periodically. Science and technology is not the exclusive property of a minority specialist group, but the field that the public can experience and enjoy altogether. Currently, KOFAC is playing a role as a good medium of connection between specialized an

The article “Enlarging the Advertisement Scale” in the last The Postech Times talked about how the Science War between POSTECH and KAIST is not appealing enough to be advertised more broadly, according to External Relations and Communications. The writer appeals to us to be the true masters of our own festival.First, please ask yourself a question, “Do you want to go to see the festival?” Most answer might be “Of course, I’d like to go because I’m a member of POSTECH. While it’s kind of boring, because the competitions are not so exciting, and the performance is similar, and …”From the answer,

Do you have your own mentor in your life? Everyone might have a different definition of mentor but, in this column, I want to give you my own definition on who a mentor is and how to find a great mentor in one’s life and to be a great mentee. Today, many people use the term ‘mentor’ in a number of situations, most of which indicate those teachers who have known them for a considerably long period in their lives or have given lessons outside the textbook.In order to know what a mentor and mentoring is, let’s first see where this word ‘mentor’ was originated. This story goes back to the Trojan W

We just called the 21st century the era of information a few years ago, but now the world is stepping into the creative economy age. Reflecting this trend, the National Economic Council of the US government announced “A Strategy for American Innovation: Securing our Economic Growth” in 2011 and insisted that investment in creativity and imagination will ensure future jobs and industries. Early this year, the newly established Korean Government also suggested ‘realization of creative economy’ as a goal of its administration to keep up with global trends. The Korean government and public institu

As a freshman student, I still do not know many things about the school, and I always try to find some useful information in The Postech Times. However, frankly speaking, it was my first time to peruse the English version. I found many differences from the Korean version. I recognized some possibilities, but on the other hand, I couldn’t overlook some limitations.Firstly, I would like to applaud the ambition of The Postech Times. POSTECH claims to be a bilingual campus, but the school doesn’t seem too focused on improving the lives of foreign students. In this situation, the role of The Postec

Although we assume that our impulsive behaviors are unpredictable, the novel, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions written by Dan Ariely, claims that there are patterns to our irrational behaviors. For example, how many times have we impulsively bought items off our shopping list? In the website of a magazine, the Economist, there are three choices for subscriptions. The one year online subscription costs US $59.00, the print subscription costs US $125.00, and the print and online subscription together costs US $125.00. Which one would you go for? Among 100 studen

You have probably heard of the “Mozart effect.” The Mozart effect is an idea that if babies listen to music composed by Mozart they will become intelligent. This idea drew big attention from media in 1993, and thousands of parents in the world bought CDs of Mozart’s music for their young children. However, if you look at the original paper published in Nature, you will find that Mozart’s effect was inflated by advertisement. The original paper only asserts participants who listened to Mozart’s sonata did better at spatial tasks than the participants who listened to silence or relaxation music.

During my year and a half at POSTECH, I have seen several big incidents and related arguments on the POVIS bulletin board. I noticed the stances of each opposite side and wished for an amicable settlement. However, some anonymous posts with rude expressions or nonsensical contents disappointed me. Not just me, but most other Postechians have been felt uncomfortable by lots of aggressive and disrespectful posts. Thus, this anonymity has been quite a big problem of POSTECH society.The Postech Times well pointed this problem out. The article explained recent three main happenings and anonymity pr

How is the globalization in universities? There have been heated discussions on the globalization issue in Korean universities. Universities cannot avoid making efforts to become international because the degree of internationalization is one of the important criteria in university rankings. Therefore, world-class universities must focus on internationalization. As you know, POSTECH also announced the “Bilingual Campus” in 2010, which emphasized “two equivalent official languages on campus.” Three and half years have passed, but it seems that POSTECH’s globalization is not a complete success.

It was a unique experience for me to have given a lecture opin World Literature to POSTECH students in the Interuniversity Summer School last July. They were not really men of letters but showed literary curiosity and sensibility through which they in fact absorbed many and diverse literary writers’ imaginations and inspirations. I was happy with them, particularly because I was able to get insightful ideas from the conversation with them; that is, my way of answering their questions led me to rethink many problems I have hither to maintained in my mind. The universality of a literary text is