This issue marks the one-year anniversary of The Postech Times in print. As with any such date, the occasion serves as an impetus to reflect upon our mission, and, like the Roman god Janus, to look back to the past at what we have done as well as to the future to what we hope to do.

Interestingly, at precisely the mid-point  of the existence of The Postech Times in print, six months ago, President Sunggi Baik announced POSTECH’s “Global Bilingual Campus” initiative. While the announcement created quite a stir both on campus and off, it was in fact the crystallization of a trend that had been in motion since the very founding of the University.  The mission of The Postech Times can perhaps be best understood by means of those three words: “Global Bilingual Campus.”

First, The Postech Times hopes to be help make “globalization” here at POSTECH more than just an empty buzzword. Now in my second decade here at POSTECH, I have seen the University rapidly globalize, with more, and more international faces seen among the students and staff. Ten years ago, if my memory serves me, I recall there being slightly more than one hundred international Postechians. Now, one country, India, boasts numbers greater than that.  The Postech Times aims to serve this growing global community by offering an outlet in which its concerns might be raised and by providing the University’s news in English.

This leads to the second point, that The Postech Times strives to assist the University’s promotion of bilingualism by provided informative and entertaining  material in the English language. In English Language Teaching, there is an idea known as “Schema Theory” which means that a learner’s background knowledge will assist the acquisition of the target language. Thus, when we read in English or indeed any other foreign language, if we are familiar with the topic, we can gain more from the linguistic features of the text rather than waste effort in constructing the meaning of unfamiliar concepts. Therefore, reading in English about familiar campus topics and events can be an excellent learning source for Postechians whose first language is other than English, something which is not only true of Koreans but of the vast majority of us here who come from abroad.

This brings us to the last word in the phrase “Global Bilingual Campus.” Countering the recent trends in globalization has been a movement which speaks of “localization.” There is, however, no reason why the two concepts cannot work in tandem. A campus is by definition a local community. A university is in a sense an intentional community, like those founded by various religious and social groups throughout the world, whose purpose is the cultivation of knowledge, with ours focusing on scientific knowledge. Science itself is an international effort, and our campus, our community, can be seen as a microcosm of that world. The Postech Times hopes to help bring together the members of our community from wherever they may come that they might share more than scientific knowledge but the social and cultural knowledge of which communities are made.

Let us now look back to the past year and reflect upon how The Postech Times has fulfilled these goals in its  first year. The first two pages of our five-page paper in each issue have been devoted to the University’s news. On these pages, we can learn of various research projects that have gained international recognition. Without these pages, it would be quite difficult for non-Korean speakers to get a general idea of what is happening in the University outside of their department. Also, campus and community events of a social and cultural nature are reported on in these pages, helping to develop a true community here.

Pages three, four, and five have been devoted to giving both domestic and international members  a medium by which to express their opinions on topics both on campus and off. Information has been shared and controversies have been addressed on these pages, by which a knowledge community is fostered and a better campus may be realized. On these pages we also offer insights into a broad range of cultural and social issues, and both Korean culture and the cultures of  the various countries from which international Postechians come.

Finally, looking to the future, we hope to do what we have been doing but to do it better. We hope to reach a wider audience, both with our print edition on campus and our online edition overseas.  To do this, we can only strive to generate more informative and entertaining content. More importantly, we hope to better serve the POSTECH community. To do so, we ask for your advice, concerns and contributions.  Let us together make The Postech Times a newspaper that serves as a community forum for our local global village.

English Editor
Joshua Snyder (HSS)