Information and Communications University Activities
Information and Communications University (ICU) has established itself as the premier IT university in Korea, one of the IT powerhouses of the world, for its short history of eight years. ICU is now in the pursuit of a more ambitious goal of becoming one of the world's top five IT universities by the year 2012.
Since its inception, ICU has made particular efforts to enhance its research capabilities to make itself attractive to government and industrial project donors and hence to be financially self-sufficient. In order to secure more finances to invest on the development of ICU, President Huh asked the half of its annual budget, standing at 50 billion won, to be filled with the project funds from outside organizations landed by faculty members and students.
Those efforts to upgrade research capabilities have borne fruits. ICU has opened the world's 7th Auto-ID Lab last year in collaboration with MIT and has attracted the highest number of government-sponsored research centers among the small universities in Korea. It is also the only Korean university that has a joint research center with Samsung. In addition, ICU research teams have produced a number of technological breakthroughs including the world's first optical PCB system (Prof. Hyo-hoon Park's team) and CMIP technology (Prof. Jun-kyun Choi's team), the first Korean BcN technology adopted as an international standard at ITU-T (International Telecommunications Union - Telecommunication Standardization Sector).
In order to strengthen the partnership with the IT industry, ICU has developed custom-designed curricula, accommodating the needs and trends of the industry. ICU also operates a flexible track system removing the barrier of departments and offers interdisciplinary education in order to adapt to the age of technological convergence.
ICU trains top-class software engineers to lead the domestic software industry, the goldmine of future IT, through dual degree programs with US's Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and with India's I2IT (International Institute of Information Technology, Pune), both of which are internationally recognized for their excellent software engineering programs. ICU also has been elevating its research capabilities in the field of telecommunications such as communication networks and RF electronics, where Korea has a relative edge.
As a globalization strategy, ICU has adopted an unprecedented educational strategy among the Korean universities by offering all the major courses in English. As a result, ICU has been able to attract far more international students (20% of the ICU graduate students) and has formed partnership with near 80 international institutions from 30 countries as of September 2006, including internationally acclaimed universities such as MIT, Munich University of Technology, and Tokyo University.
As part of the globalization effort, ICU is aggressively developing dual degree and student exchange programs with the world's prestigious IT universities. In addition to the dual degree programs with CMU and I2IT, ICU runs a dual master's degree program with France's INT (Institute National Des Telecommunications), one of the Grandes Ecoles of telecommunications, and will offer another dual degree program with DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology) of Ireland next year.
Furthermore, ICU has student exchange programs with a number of the world's prestigious universities such as CMU, Purdue University, and Michigan State University of the US, INT and EFREI (Ecole D'ingenieurs des Technologies de L'information et du Management) of France, Munich University of Technology of Germany, DIT of Ireland, and BUPT (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications) of China. Now 30 ICU students are studying abroad as exchange students. With Cyber education, ICU is also tapping into the global IT education market. It is jointly developing cyber education software and contents with established cyber education firms and is planning to offer cyber degree programs. ICU has already agreed to export an e-Learning program and system to a number of the universities in the Middle East countries including Qatar University.
Elevating ICU's education to the world-class level is another globalization effort that President Huh puts emphasis on. ICU is seeking to obtain international certifications from the Accreditation Board for Engineering Education of Korea (ABEEK) for its engineering programs and from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business for its management courses. To offer a more internationalized education, it plans to increase the number of foreign professors to 25 % of the faculty by 2012 by actively recruiting international scholars with distinguished academic and research achievements. In addition, to recruit more gifted students, ICU operates youth clubs and international IT summer camps for gifted high school students.
With the successful implementation of innovative educational approaches, ICU became an object of awe by producing 98.17% of master's and doctoral theses in English (as of October 2005), the highest percentage in Korea, and being selected by MIT as the best university in Korea for research collaboration.
Achievements by proactive leadership
Huh Unna, president of ICU, has been a pioneer in the field of educational technology in Korea, an IT policymaker with clear foresight and leadership, and an international leader of IT education.
After attaining a doctoral degree in educational technology at Florida State University in 1976 as the youngest doctorate awardee ever in Korea at that time, she became a professor of educational technology at Hanyang University in 1983.
While working as a professor at Hanyang University for 20 years, Huh founded and led the Center for Computer-based Education Technology (now the Institute for Educational Technology). She developed and distributed educational software in collaboration with Samsung and Hyundai Electronics in the 1980's, when even the term "educational technology" was a novelty in Korea.
From 2000 to 2004, Huh held office in the Korean parliament, where she continued to promote IT education and introduced many national IT policies to set Korea's informatization in the right direction. She also made great contributions to the IT exchange between South and North Korea as chair of the IT Exchange Committee of South and North Korea under the Korean Ministry of Unification.
In June 2004, Huh was inaugurated as president of ICU and transformed the newly founded university into Korea's premier IT university that produces exceptional global IT talents through her successful adoption of innovative IT education approaches. To educate its students as IT leaders with global minds and abilities required by the 'real-world' industry, ICU teaches all the major courses in English, an unprecedented case among the Korean universities, has adopted interdisciplinary curriculum and a flexible track system without the barrier of departments, and has boosted internship programs.
With her extensive knowledge and experiences as an IT expert of 30 years, along with her visionary leadership, Dr. Huh has been an effective leader of Korea's IT education and industry and offered essential strategies for the informatization of Korea and education of future global IT leaders.
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