Passion and effort: University administrative staff and department receive special awards for demonstrating advanced administration capabilities

On Wednesday, December 28, at 10pm, a special awards ceremony took place at the KU Main Hall to award the excellence of an administrative department that showed advanced administration capabilities and of staff members who made significant contribution to KU’s development.

Unlike regular annual awards, special awards are given out on special occasions, and comprise personal awards and department awards.

Both Jang Dong-Hyun, the assistant manager of the International Education Team in the Office of International Affairs and Park Myung-Ah, the administrative officer of the Evaluation Team in the Office of Planning and Budget received personal awards.

Jang Dong-Hyun, who is in charge of the International Summer Campus (ISC), was recognized for his contribution to enhancing the program and establishing a developmental strategy that led to the increase of participants and profits. He was recognized for his great contribution in attracting students and elevating KU’s status in terms of globalization in the midst of intensive competition among domestic universities in hosting summer campuses.

Mr. Jang has been in charge of the ISC since 2010. To attract students, he personally visited over twenty major universities in countries such as the U.K., Singapore, the U.S., and Canada. For the past six months, he has also held briefing sessions to attract international students. As a result of his efforts, the number of overseas students coming to KU has surged since last year.

Moreover, Mr. Jang has designed ground-breaking programs by continuously communicating and receiving feedback from students, which has led to increased satisfaction. He has also greatly contributed to the diversity of the ISC students and to stabilizing the program.

KU President Yeom Jaeho said, “The first thing that comes to people’s mind when they think of KU abroad is the ISC. Starting from 2004, the ISC has grown to be perhaps the best in quantitative and qualitative aspects. This year, the KU ISC has operated Korea’s largest summer campus ever. I hope to see more progress in making the ISC as one the main programs representing KU.”

A joint award went to Park Myung-Ah from the Evaluation Team, Office of Planning and Budget. In charge of overseas evaluation, Ms. Park was recognized for contributing to improving KU’s status by actively and effectively addressing all sorts of evaluations. She played a leading role in helping KU break into the top 100 in the QS World University Rankings. By managing the quantitative index and analyzing KU’s strengths and weaknesses, she was able to find ways to maximize the scores of each indicator. In order to make this happen, she collected relevant evaluation information by attending domestic and overseas forums. She also met with staff at ratings agencies. Ms. Park has been recognized for her role in making KU the first private university in Korea to rank 98th place in the QS World University Rankings.

Not only did KU break into the top 100 in the QS rankings, but also gained prominence in other international evaluations, in part thanks to Ms. Park’s efforts. In the QS University Rankings: Asia, KU climbed two places becoming the 4th highest among domestic universities and the No. 1 private university in Korea. To improve KU’s ranking, Ms. Park gathered supporting evidence by utilizing evaluation data that revealed KU’s competences in areas that were not documented computationally. Her efforts gained KU high scores in the reputation and education indicators, which took up the highest weightings.

In addition, by identifying and integrating education, industry imports, globalization indicators and missing indicators that showed short-term accomplishments and by supplementing supporting data, KU was able to make it into the top 10 for the first time in history by climbing 9 places in the Times Higher Education (THE) Rankings compared to last year’s evaluation.

Efforts continued in the QS Academic Rankings evaluation. Ms. Park hosted briefing sessions for individual colleges and encouraged departments to take part in the evaluation process. She strived to maintain steady growth in both humanities and sciences and succeeded in supporting 23 departments as they made it into the top 100 rankings.

The Shanghai Jiao Tong University Academic Rankings was another measure in which KU gained prominence.  From 2010 to 2015, KU ranked between 200th and 300th place. However, in 2016 KU moved to the 188th position. This would not have been possible if it were not for Ms. Park’s efforts in consistently maintaining an ongoing, organic relationship with the rating agency.

President Yeom said, “Ms. Park has played a major role in bringing change to KU despite her brief experience on the administrative team here. I hope she continues her efforts toward KU’s evaluation in the future.”

The personal award ceremony was followed by the administrative department award ceremony. The award went to the Financial Department.

The Financial Department has been selected as the awardee. The department has actively coped with the changing tax environment and made various efforts to carry out efficient and advanced tax administration.

President Yeom said, “In light of the rapidly changing environment in and outside the university, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all the members of the Financial Department for their active engagement in their work. I hope to see them continue to consistently and proactively carry out their hard work and effort to enhance and advance KU’s administration.”