On Tuesday Jun. 24, at 4:30 P.M., Chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh, Mark Nordenberg, visited POSTECH and gave a special lecture titled “The Role of Research Universities in the 21st Century America”. He was invited by President Yongmin Kim, who is trying to revitalize Pohang’s local economy. The President arranged this event, to learn about which things are needed to revitalize local economy. This event was open to POSTECH community and the public. It was held in the POSCO International Center and English and Korean simultaneous interpretation service was provided.
Chancellor Nordenberg started to serve as the 17th chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh in 1996. He not only did a great job as a chancellor of his university, but also led the city of Pittsburgh to its renaissance.
Pittsburgh had lived in affluence thanks to its steel industry. However, in the first few years of the 1980s, Pittsburgh’s economy started to fall since newly growing steel companies like POSCO started to catch up with the existing ones. Furthermore, from 1983, citizens began to leave, saying that they had no hope in their own city. Nonetheless, the city of Pittsburgh overcame this crisis by implementing the appropriate strategy. It focused on research labs of the University of Pittsburgh that are researching new technologies. As a result, new industries such as software and biotechnology became prosperous. Nowadays, they are the main source of economic profits of the city of Pittsburgh. The city? industries have totally changed.
Chancellor Nordenberg gave a lecture about how he got through all these hard times and emphasized that cooperation between city and university is critical to the prosperity of the city and citizen’s wealth. He also mentioned how Pohang, which is the city of steel going through hard times similar to Pittsburg’s past, can overcome its crisis, by following the successful case of Pittsburgh.