University / Daegu University Institution embraces technological advancement Daegu University has been making a strong push for a campus network project to create a U(ubiquitous)- campus before the end of October this year, Lee Yong-doo, president of the university, said. "In fact, our university was a leader in informatization among universities in the country. Since the middle of the 1990s, our university has led the informatization drive. If the campus network project we are now propelling is finished at the end of October this year, our university will keep the top position in informatization among all universities in the country for at least three years to come," said Lee. Under the ambitious campus network project, Daegu University will establish an Internet backbone with a speed of 10-gigabits per second. It also plans to build infrastructure to allow professors and students to use a wireless LAN freely in all areas of the school. Concrete examples of Daegu University's next-generation network include construction of a 10 gigabit Ethernet backbone and Power over Ethernet (PoE) which can provide power over a copper Ethernet cable to an endpoint in the access layer, supporting 1 gigabit speeds (1000Mbps) to the end user; a full redundancy topology which can provide nonstop campus network service; construction of a campus-wide wireless LAN with location tracking; construction of a QoS system for traffic management efficiency; and construction of an integrated control center using an enterprise management system as well as Cisco's CS-MARS solution to name just a few. "For the first time among universities in the country, we will establish IPT telephones," the president said in an interview with the Korea IT Times. Noting that there are many attacks against information communication networks and integrated security control facilities networks the president said, "To prevent such attacks, we will build a control shield to prevent hacking and strengthen relevant facilities." Global exchange of students is brisk The exchange of students between Daegu University and its sister universities in foreign countries is very brisk. In Suzhou University in China, for instance, there is an alumni association of Daegu University. At present, Daegu University maintains an exchange relation with 52 institutions in 13 countries. A total of 468 foreign students are now studying in the school. Daegu University has dormitory facilities housing 2,500 students. However, the university plans to expand the facilities further within two or three years to house an additional 2,300 students. Noting that Daegu University has now 12 colleges, Lee said, "We plan to foster the 13th college as a global university. After establishing four or five curricula, we will allow foreign students to attend lectures. As an example, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan has a 50:50 ratio of Japanese and foreign students."

The following are excerpts from the interview with Lee Yong-doo, president of Daegu University. _ ED. Q: Daegu University celebrates the 50th anniversary of its foundation this year. Would you introduce the university briefly A: Daegu University was established by Reverend Lee Young-shik in 1956. Daegu University started as one of the first institutions of higher learning in Korea to commit itself to the education of the disabled. Although Daegu University's mission originally focused on rehabilitation and social welfare, it has long since grown to include the liberal arts, science, and other major professional fields. At present, it ranks 14th or 15th in the number of students among 200 domestic universities. It has 12 colleges and a faculty consisting of about 440 professors. Including its graduate school, the number of its students reaches around 20,000 and there are 108 majors. In particular, the sectors strongly advocated by the university are social welfare, information and communication, industry and visual design fields. Daegu University ranks second among universities in the country in the ratio of appointment for schoolteachers. In terms of the campus usable size, it secures the top position among domestic 200 universities. Q: Would you introduce Daegu Cyber University A: Daegu Cyber University exists together with Daegu University in a single fence. As the two universities use the same buildings and are included in the same corporation, they are as good as sister universities. For instance, there are active exchanges of academic credits and professors between Daegu University and Daegu Cyber University. There are about 2,000 students at Daegu Cyber University. It has been developing smoothly. Q: Would you comment on your education and management philosophy A: I think practical education is needed for a number of university students in Korea. I place the top priority of management on developing Daegu University into the nation's top-class educationoriented university. Most of the 200 domestic universities imitate Seoul University in creating educational systems or organizing the faculty. While serving as an educator, however, I realized that we should make more efforts to seek really good education away from the composition of education. It means that we should aim first for the education of students. In fact, I think there are just two universities that focus on education in the country - Handong Global University and Daegu University. I plan to foster Daegu University as Korea's best education-oriented university and as a general university. To this end, I plan to benchmark educational systems of world-famous top universities, including the University of Waterloo in Canada. Before I took office as the president, I had sought ways to make Daegu University a top-class institution while touring 57 universities in the United States. I will exert all-out efforts to foster Daegu University as a healthy global IT university.

Language departments embrace foreign exchange, growth It is true that language and literature departments are facing difficulties. In many cases graduates from German, French and Russian departments are facing difficulties in landing a job or pursuing their goals, so many universities tend to reduce the number of students in the departments or abolish the departments entirely. "However, we will rather actively make investment in such departments. For instance, Daegu University concluded an exchange agreement with Mainz University and University Jena in Germany. Under the pact, students at the German department of Daegu University will attend lectures at the German universities for about seven semesters. Along with this, our university is pushing for a similar exchange project with Russian universities," President Lee said. Although there were many exchanges between Germany and South Korea 15 years ago, there are few exchanges at present. Recently, a reporter from an influential newspaper in Germany visited Daegu University to cover the exchange agreement. Meanwhile, professional manpower that has a good command of German is insufficient at the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Seoul. "Accordingly, we need to strengthen the international competitiveness of such departments with weak competitive power. These days, a number of Korean students are reluctant to study in the IT and nature fields," noted Lee. Commenting that Russia is an advanced country in terms of basic science, the president included, "Daegu University plans to attract talented students from Russia." In a related development, the University of Alabama in the United States said it would receive as many Daegu University students as the university desires. E-sports festival becoming international The E-sports festival is a game contest. It is a kind of sport related to the whole of the game industry covering planning, manufacture, distribution and presentation. There is a bloc in Daegu that actively fosters the game software industry. A number of Daegu University graduates are working there. The E-sports festival, in which several tens of thousands of people participate, is designed to actively foster the nation's game industry. The information, communication and multimedia engineering department of Daegu University is taking part in the IT and game industrial sectors of the event by producing games or video game designs. Daegu University also operates the multimedia engineering and video animation departments that were established under the support of Daegu City to foster relevant industries in the city. One company supports about 80 game blocs under the assistance of Digital Industrial Promotion Institute, Daegu City and North Gyeongsang Province. Although the E-sports festival is a domestic event at present, it will become an international event in the near future, Lee said. Daegu University forging stronger ties with city Daegu University plans to focus its efforts on building infrastructure for close cooperation with industrial sectors. There are five New University for Regional Innovation (NURI) projects, including two IT projects. NURI projects are designed to actively foster manpower in the relevant sectors. In Daegu City, about 200 subcontractors of Samsung Electronics are manufacturing mobile phones. Meanwhile, Daegu University has a close relationship with the subcontractors and many Daegu University students are working and developing new technology as interns there. Although there are many projects to accelerate industrialization of RFID technology, there are actually few application technologies. Accordingly, the industry needs to develop application technology in order to actually use the technology at industrial sites. In particular, the Gumi Industrial Complex in Daegu City requires a number of IT and design employees. So, Daegu University is striving to nurture many IT and design specialists to meet the rising demands by the industry. Noting that the design sector is classified into three fields . industrial, fashion and visual design . Lee said, "Fashion design is focused on the Milan project of the fashion city Daegu, visual design on gaming and industrial design on package and industrial goods." Long-term goals include reform, growth The rehabilitation engineering college of Daegu University has secured the top position among universities in the country. Daegu University plans to continue actively fostering and specializing the rehabilitation engineering college. Other universities also recently opened rehabilitation science colleges, but 40 to 50 percent of the manpower at the rehabilitation science colleges came from Daegu University. Chinese universities are also showing keen interest in the setup of rehabilitation engineering colleges. Since 1994, Daegu University has been controlled by the government-appointed trustee system, under which temporary directors dispatched by the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development employ professors. Accordingly, the university can guarantee fairness and a high level of quality in employing professors. In particular, there are many young professors at Daegu University. Graduates from Seoul National University account for the biggest portion of Daegu University faculty. "In particular, Daegu University boasts the top-class professors in the IT sector among Korean universities. Our university also operates an incentive system for SCI theses and a system presenting a study prize to excellent professors," reported the president. "Compared with other universities, Daegu University is equipped with more advanced assistance systems for study activities of both professors and students," he said. In the middle of the 1990s, Daegu University secured the top position in the IT sector among universities in the country. It is because Daegu University has pushed for various innovations in the IT sector by building a 2,000 pyong (6,600 square meter) information communication center and operating the MIT Post- Doctorate Information Communication College. However, Daegu City has no main industries. Most university students go to Seoul after graduating in Daegu. In terms of nurturing manpower, there is a limit in provincial regions. For the first 10 months since he took office as the president, Lee Yong-doo collected various opinions from constituents of Daegu University. For instance, Daegu University established a plan to expand the number of freshmen in the practical international science sector to 2,000 and push for globalization and informatization. As part of its efforts to accelerate international exchanges, Daegu University has expanded academic and manpower exchanges with universities in foreign countries. In particular, Daegu University has been building close relations with Chinese universities since early 2000. Daegu University plans to expand dormitory facilities to house over 5,000 students, more than two times the present capacity of 2,300 students. The university is an institution that authorizes the Korean language license test. Although there are four such institutions in the country, Daegu University is the only institution authorizing the Korean language license test in the southeastern part of Korea.