President Baik stated, “In order to be named as a global campus, it should be prepared as a place where foreign professors or students can come and experience little discomfort.” He will declare POSTECH as a Bilingual Campus at the beginning of March. The President will address an opening speech at the 2010 Matriculation Ceremony on Mar. 2.
The plan to operate in English covers nine areas related to education, research and administration: lectures, thesis papers, seminars, meetings, on-campus notices, administrative documents, online homepage, interactive services with foreigners and university policies. Only one student dormitory out of 24 has an English-speaking policy at POSTECH and this will be extensively applied to all dormitories. The execution will be done in several stages by 2012.
The university envisions embracing English as the major language used on campus while using Korean in combination for school notices, paper forms and administrative documents. This is to break the language barrier before welcoming distinguished professors and talented students from overseas.
The President claimed firmly that going bilingual is an inevitable choice to play on the international stage. “The rapid success behind the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, which came in 4th in 2009 QS Asian University Rankings, lies in its medium of interaction in English. For Korean universities to step-up, they need to solve problems arising from language,” he said.
POSTECH is the first university in Korea to propose a bilingual campus and to implement all academic administration in English. The impact of the university’s decision towards bilingualism will affect all members of the campus.
