Message from Korea

As I mentioned in my earlier communication, I am teaching “Principles of Engineering –Theory and Practice.” I spent a whole month preparing the textbook (more class notes than a textbook) in English and also in Korean. These together with power points that are used in class are all posted on the class website. We do not use a black-board but power points only. (Students are supposed to download these power point materials and copied before the class and use them as their notes. I can write on the power points if there is a need to do so.) I have nearly 90 students signed up, consisting of a half of freshmen and the other half of juniors and seniors but no sophomores. The curriculum here is very rigid and students pay a full tuition regardless of how many credits they take. They pay a fixed amount even if they take only one credit!. For example, the schedule for sophomores is so tight that they cannot sign up my course even if they want to. However, many juniors and seniors can since they have been to army for two years and they have a room to take extra courses and hence a number of juniors and seniors are taking this freshmen course. I understand that they have a high expectation from an old/experienced guy who speaks with funny accent and teaches the class in English.

At the end of the last class, I surveyed the class asking how many students understood my lecture. The result is given below.
Those who understood the lecture
1. 100% = 8%
2. 80% and better=11%
3. 50% and better =27%
4. 30% and better =19%
5. 0% = 35%

The next class will be tomorrow which is the 4th lecture and I hope that they are now a little better accustomed to my style of lecture and moreover have read the lecture notes before they come in. I will survey again in a couple of weeks and hope that the result will be more encouraging. I have been talking about etiquette, morals, and ethics that engineers should uphold and hence a lot of talking without numbers, which might have made the class a little difficult to follow. However, an old guy likes to see students become honest and hard working when they grow up and as a result, I place a lot of emphasis on this topic matter. Next topic will cover % uncertainty, % error, significant figures, etc. and they may feel better about the subject matter.

My Korean is improving relatively fast and I have even written a number of poems in Korean and shared them with my colleagues who have praised on the choice of my vocabulary. I still come to school 7 days a week, the habit I will carry to my tomb with pleasure. My research is going fantastic (only ideas at the moment) and I have even become an arrogant old fox!

Golf? It seems like that I have never heard of the term and I don’t even miss it. Can you believe it?

I will keep you informed with my activities here at the end of the world. Best wishes, Ken

PS: Attached are photos taken when my old research supervisor, Doug Fuerstenau, a good friend of SDSM&T visited our campus a couple of days ago. It shows my brand new office and research labs which are mostly empty and waiting for stuff to be filled with soon.