A University of Excellence

Kangnam University was selected as the University of Excellence in the category of educational infrastructure, presented at the ‘Selection for the Year 2011 Education Empowerment Project Best Practices’ on Tuesday 7 February. The purpose of the education empowerment project is to raise the quality of university education and strengthen self-competitiveness. Our university was chosen for this project for three consecutive years.

The leader in educational infrastructure

 The purpose of selecting the best practice case is to allow universities to conduct strategic and creative projects by rewarding them with the selection of the best practice case from each university which was put into effect last year for educational empowerment. The categories include: student competency support, employment competency support, and educational infrastructure. 1 university is chosen as the best university in each category and 2 universities are selected as excellent universities. Refer to Table 1 for further details. If chosen as excellent universities, they will receive extra points in the 2012 Project Performance Evaluation as well as receive an award certificate and reward creating an incentive for related personnel. Our university received honors as the University of Excellence in the category of educational infrastructure which is the ‘Kangnam University Student Competency Integrated Management Program (K-CMS)’. No university was awarded as the best university in the category of educational infrastructure and along with our university Konkuk University was awarded the University of Excellence. In the category of employment, Kumho National Institute of Technology was selected as the best university in addition to Gyeongnam National University of Science and Technology and Hanyang University. Sungkyunkwan University was chosen as the best university in the category of student competency followed by Pukyong University. Mr. Shin Young-Jae (Education Empowerment Project Center) stated, “I am delighted to see that our university has been officially recognized to be of the same caliber with some of the most prestigious universities in Korea.” I hope that students here at our university will feel a sense of pride knowing that we achieved a great feat.”

Find your true ability!

As mentioned above, Kangnam University was chosen as a university of excellence for education empowerment through the ‘Student Competency Integrated Management Program’. What exactly is this program? The student competency program was jointly developed by Kangnam University’s Center for Competency Empowerment and the Korean Standards Association designed to objectively diagnose the level of our students. Furthermore, through this diagnosis students will be provided with recommended education that will improve necessary competencies making long-term career development possible through coaching and self-development plans. The student competency diagnosis system is divided into 4 stages: job aptitude test, core competency diagnosis, job competency diagnosis, and primary factor diagnosis. Students will be able to obtain more information about their jobs of interest and learn about the requirements for these jobs in addition to providing an educational curriculum which can enhance lacking competencies guiding students on their road to employment. More information about this program can be found on our university’s website by logging into the portal site and clicking on the ‘Student Competency Diagnosis Service’ icon located on the bottom of the service link banner on the right side. This program began on March 15th and will continue for one year and the whole process is free of charge. In addition, there are a lot more educational contents such as coaching and counseling this year providing students more opportunities as there is a link between academics and character-building. Mr. Shin Young-Jae commented, “Although this is a great program, the success of this program rests in the hands of student participation.” He hopes that more students will participate in this program. In reality, there is only a 10% participation rate out of the total student population which is about 700 students per year including. He further went on to say, “Our ultimate goal is for the entire student population to participate in this program in 2-3 years time.”

Most young people these days are too busy building up their credentials. However, there are many great programs within the university. There is an old Korean saying, “The darkest place is under the candlestick.” We should not look too far for the things we need, so why not look within our university to build up your competency?

Translated by Julia Kim