Stony Brook University SUNY Korea

JANUARY 19, 2021     The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we buy, the way we dress, even the way we design our homes. Several FIT faculty have weighed in on recent trend reports; here are six highlights, placed by FIT’s Media Relations.     Fuzzy slippers are having a moment. Ellen Lynch, professor, Accessories Design, spoke with The New York Times about the history of the fuzzy slipper. She said faux-fur footwear was popular in earlier decades but in fancy shoes. Only recently have these materials “reinterpreted themselves into a more comfortable, durable, but not work-related kind of shoe.”     Clothing retailer bankruptcies will slow. So said Vincent Quan, associate professor of Fashion Business Management, in a short and pithy interview with KCBS Radio Los Angeles. He pointed out that more than 30 retailers filed for bankruptcy in 2020, which surpassed the previous record held in 2019. “I see 2021 ebbing, because if you would have filed, you would have filed this year.” Another ray of hope: after more than a year of sweatpants and pajamas, Quan expects tailored looks to return by Q4 2021.     Cut-outs are in. Refinery29 examined the trend of artfully cut out areas of garments. Valerie Steele, director of The Museum at FIT, said that cut-outs are “playing with that issue of hiding and revealing.” She added, “Skin implies nakedness and therefore, as Barthes said, eroticism is where the garment gapes, where suddenly you’re showing a flash of skin … If you cover it up and you show a piece of skin then that’s an exciting revelation.”     Post-pandemic, expect a return to pre-pandemic trends. In Fast Company, Dr. Steele discussed how simple white gowns became popular during the French Revolution because women could be attacked for looking like an aristocrat—but these simple gowns had emerged the decade prior. “If these historical examples are useful to us, then we would not expect a completely new fashion once we come out of COVID, but rather an exaggeration of trends that were already in existence before March,” she said.     The comfy-cozy couch makes a comeback. Phyllis Harbinger, a faculty member in Interior Design, spoke with New York magazine about the resurgence of the slipcovered white couch. “These couches are like comfort food for the external body,” she said.     Interior designers are rethinking the environmental cost of marble. It’s not a sustainable choice, Grazyna Pilatowicz, associate professor of Interior Design, told CNA Luxury. “For many years [interior design] was considered a luxury item, and being luxury, it wasn’t considering any kind of responsibility to the public.”

SUNY Korea was introduced as the first American University established in Songdo in 2012 in [360 VR] Introduction to IFEZ (Incheon Free Economic Zone) YouTube video. Along with the other IGC universities, SUNY Korea is promoted as a global university that gives students the opportunity to take courses in Korea and abroad.       To watch the video, please refer to the link below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M_obs4J1kI&feature=share     

DECEMBER 21, 2020 This past year has been challenging, frightening, and inspiring, sometimes all at the same time. Our most-read articles of the year speak to these unprecedented times, with an uplifting story about alumni working to provide masks to hospitals coming in at number one. On the other hand, despite our community working and studying remotely, much of the year unfolded as usual: students won major awards and scholarships, faculty continued to devote themselves to teaching and research, and alumni found innovative ways to advance their careers. Here’s hoping our school, our city, our state, our country, and our world all reach a sense of normalcy in 2021.     1. FIT Alumni and SUNY Rising to the Call When the pandemic first hit and personal protective equipment was scarce, a pair of alumni started Sew4Lives, a New York–based nonprofit to sew medical-grade PPE for hospitals. They made a significant impact at a pivotal moment in our nation’s history. Image from movie poster for 1963 film Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor     2. Fashion History Timeline Justine De Young, assistant professor of History of Art, created a scholarly web resource that chronicles fashion history from ancient times to the present. Hundreds of students from 42 majors created content that has already been referenced by fashion historians. In a feature on the new Hue website, we examined five diverse entries.     3. Fashionista Names FIT Among the World’s Top Fashion Schools Yet again, FIT earned a spot in this important ranking of global design programs. For more rankings, check out this roundup. Seven images of clothing and accessories on models     4. FIT Kicks Off Design Entrepreneurs 2020     Over the past decade, the FIT Design Entrepreneurs program helped more than 200 companies grow their businesses. In 2020, the program concluded. The kickoff announcement became one of the top stories on Newsroom this year. A retrospective story about the impact of the program didn’t quite make the list—but it provides testimonials from distinguished alumni of the program.     5. FIT Takes Five Spots in Met Museum Competition Fashion Design students excelled in this year’s Costume Institute competition, themed after the blockbuster exhibition About Time: Fashion and Duration. The assignment was to “create one design expressive of fashion as an acutely accurate and especially sensitive timepiece” and “generate temporal associations that conflate the past, present, and future in one ensemble.” deco style drawing of a woman's head with jewelry radiating from it     6. The Evolution of Fashion Through Illustration This spring, FIT’s renowned Special Collections and College Archives brought selections from its Frances Neady Collection of fashion illustrations to the Society of Illustrators for a seminal exhibition. The exhibition has ended, but you can still take in our slide show of sumptuous highlights. Elisabeth Moss and Alexis Bledel in The Handmaid's Tale     7. An FIT Guide to Binge-Watching At the start of the year, no one could have guessed just how much time they’d be spending at home, and in the first months of the pandemic, Americans watched a record amount of TV. Given that numerous alumni are established in costume design, producing, acting, and other essential parts of the TV biz, we listed some of the shows they worked on.     8. Three FIT Students Awarded Gucci Changemaker Scholarships To help increase diversity in the fashion industry, Gucci launched a major scholarship program that provides funding and mentorship to 20 fashion design students of color per year. FIT students won three in the first year.     9. FIT and Yellowbrick Launch Gaming and Esports Online Education Program As part of an expansive effort to create programming for diverse, nontraditional learners, FIT collaborated with online education provider Yellowbrick to debut a gaming and esports certificate.     10. How Will the Pandemic Change the Fashion Business? This story from the new Hue website brought in faculty and alumni experts to address the big question on everyone’s minds since COVID-19 triggered a global shutdown. Will the fashion industry survive? Editors’ Choice: Girl Scouts Enlists FIT Fashion Design Students for Uniform Redesign and New Apparel Collection The Girl Scouts uniform was in need of an update. FIT’s DTech Lab partnered with the Girl Scouts of the USA and brought together FIT students to design looks that would appeal to today’s kids. The makeover made national news.

SUNY Korea Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) was introduced in the KBS documentary program called “DocuOn” <Kris’s New Normal Journey: Foreigners’ Life in the COVID-19 Era>. FIT students in the two special locations of SUNY Korea, the Museum of Modern Costume and MSC, were brought to the screen. It was a great opportunity for SUNY Korea as it is promoted as a global education hub to the public.       To watch the documentary, please refer to the link below: http://vod.kbs.co.kr/index.html?source=episode&sname=vod&stype=vod&program_code=T2020-0388&program_id=PS-2020218102-01-000&broadcast_complete_yn=N&local_station_code=00&section_code=05&section_sub_code=08

August 25, 2020     Internships, a signature component of the FIT experience, are still going strong during the pandemic—albeit remotely. According to a recent survey, 93 percent of FIT’s summer interns reported that they achieved their learning objectives, and 83 percent would recommend their internships to other students.     “There’s a myth out there that everything has shut down,” says Tardis Johnson, associate dean for Student Academic Support. “Everything hasn’t shut down—it’s migrated remotely.”     When the pandemic put the city on lockdown, the tools for remote learning were already in place, though not at this scale, says Frantz Alcindor, director of Career and Internship Services. In moving internships online, he has educated employers on which tasks, like social media outreach and writing, can be done online.     To those struggling to find internships or jobs right now, Marjorie Silverman, chair of Internship Studies—a department that offers courses that help prepare students for their internships—says to keep learning. “Employers are going to know what it meant to be a student in 2020,” she says. “How do you use this time to develop your skill set, whether it’s learning a foreign language or serving your community? How do you use this time to show that you are relevant to industry?”     We spoke with four students about how their summer internships played out.     Hoover Yu Hau Chung, Menswear ’20 “I am a pro-online learning person,” says Hoover, who had a career in advertising before coming to FIT. He finds he can focus better in video meetings, and if he doesn’t understand a term—he grew up in Hong Kong and his first language is Cantonese—he can unobtrusively look it up.     His summer internship, which took place after he completed the coursework for his degree, was with an avant-garde, gender-fluid label called Linder. Previous internships at Derek Lam and Eckhaus Latta were more structured; for Linder, Hoover helped the two owner/designers complete their spring 2021 collection, which involved lots of sample-making on his home sewing machine.     He missed the in-person interactions with more experienced artisans that might have improved his own skills, but he learned what he’d hoped to: “How artistic brands create their DNA and come up with their clothing—that is something that cannot be taught.”     As a graduate, he is still looking to build skills, to give him an edge in the job market during this historic recession. He plans to study 3D design and intern in performance wear, and will look for a full-time position next year.     “It’s going to be a long haul,” he says. “I just have to be a renaissance man right now.”     Apoorva Grover, Advertising and Marketing Communications ’21 Apoorva, a student from Nigeria, had a seven-week marketing internship with Carol Hannah, a luxury bridal company. Each morning, her supervisor would lay out the day’s tasks in a Google Doc, and they would talk them through on the phone or a video call. She carried out market research on the brand’s competitors, bolstered traffic to the website using search engine optimization (SEO), drafted blog posts, and ran social media analytics.     Toward the end of her internship, restrictions in New York City relaxed, and she was allowed to work in the store. She finally met her supervisor and Carol Hannah in person, and she worked on an in-house photo shoot and mailed out sample gowns for brides to try on.     She says that working remotely could have been demotivating, but she had a great relationship with her supervisor and felt that her work mattered (she was the company’s only intern).     “Knowing that sitting behind my laptop and making a few tweaks is making a huge difference for Carol Hannah was a really good feeling,” she says.     Jay Son, Fashion Business Management ’21 When Jay’s prestigious summer internship with Ralph Lauren was canceled, he scrambled and found one at La Perla, an Italian luxury intimates brand. He couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.     Monday mornings, his supervisor, a merchandising manager, gives him a project for the week, and Monday afternoons, he attends a corporate videoconference to hear about the state of the brand. His work mirrors what he studied at FIT: organizing data to make a report of each week’s sales trends, creating line sheets to help sell the products to each store, and assisting with buying and replenishment programs.     “I’m really excited, because this is exactly what I wanted to learn,” he says.     Jay also enjoys the work-at-home lifestyle. He doesn’t have to wake up early, he saves money on lunch, and he records every conference with his boss so that he doesn’t have to keep following up. He does miss face-to-face interaction, though: “That is not something you can achieve from a video chat.”     He plans on continuing the internship through the fall semester, and he looks forward to the going into the office.     “Before I started, I was worried—I thought it would be ridiculous to work remotely,” he says. “But surprisingly it has been going really smoothly.”      Kia Ward, Textile/Surface Design ’21 Kia interned with Fashion Fights Cancer, a nonprofit that offers fashion- and design-related activities to those who have been affected by cancer.     “My aunt passed about five years ago from ovarian cancer,” Kia says. “When I saw the opportunity, I knew I had to give something back.”     Every morning, she logged into the organization’s project-management system to see her assignments, which included asking established designers to donate clothes or their time. Some designers taught classes to cancer survivors; others appeared in photos to promote the charity.     Adjusting to remote work was not easy, and Kia wished she had gotten to meet her team in person and see the facilities. With two weeks left in the internship, she hit upon a project she became passionate about: working behind the scenes on the Fashion Fights Cancer’s Therapy Podcast, which featured FIT alumnus Byron Lars, Jason Wu, and other designers talking about current issues, such as the impact of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement. One episode was a conversation about natural hair in the Black community. She loved working on the podcast so much that she extended her internship.     Kia is nervous about the job market; she sees companies laying off their workforce and hopes the industry will rebound by the time she graduates. Ultimately she wants to open a boutique where she can sell African-inspired prints that she designs.     “I’m praying and hoping that there will be opportunities for me,” she says.     Click here to read the original article

January 26, 2021     Postdoctoral researchers play a special role in academic research, bringing in new ideas and energy while they advance their careers into independent scholars. Stony Brook’s Institute for AI-Driven Discovery and Innovation is benefiting from two new postdoctoral associates, Baojian Zhou and Naoya Inoue, both of whom were welcomed to the team this past year. They are spearheading new research that will advance our understanding of online optimization, explainable AI, natural language processing and machine learning. By working with diverse faculty and graduate students across many research groups, their presence amplifies activities across the Institute.     Ai postdocs Baojian and NaoyaTheir stories are revealing. Zhou’s path started with his education at Anhui University in China, now the home of a study program with Stony Brook. His interest was piqued when he encountered combinatorial problems from discrete mathematics and graph theory in his undergraduate algorithms course. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Anhui University and his master’s degree from Beihang University, Zhou made the concerted effort to earn a PhD in the United States. He landed at the University of Albany, where he concentrated his studies in data mining and machine learning to continue his exploration of mathematical models. Zhou graduated with his PhD in computer science and a master’s degree in mathematics early in 2020.     A chance meeting with a Stony Brook graduate student at the ACM Knowledge and Data Discovery Conference tipped Zhou off about postdoctoral positions at the Institute. Zhou went on to meet Steven Skiena, director of Stony Brook’s AI Institute, and they bonded over shared research interests in data mining, data science and machine learning. “I discovered that Stony Brook is the perfect place to work with diligent and inspired faculty, and to expand my research experience,” said Zhou.     Zhou has dedicated his Stony Brook research predominantly toward graphical representation learning, with the goal to design models that can comprehend network data. Coupled with his focus in online optimization, these two domains create a platform to amplify knowledge of user behavior in social media.     “Through embarking on this new research, we can garner a better understanding of social media users’ behavioral patterns,” said Zhou. In a society dominated with social networking, this behavioral understanding lends itself to its impact on a corporate, academic and personal level.     Since arriving at Stony Brook, he has been working with several faculty members at the university, including Yifan Sun, assistant professor of Computer Science. Professor Sun, an expert in online optimization, has been working closely with Zhou to further his progress in optimization to deal with graphical data. Zhou credits both Professors Skiena and Sun as being cornerstones of his research.     The second postdoctoral scholar, Naoya Inoue, left a faculty position in Japan to join the Institute. He was inspired by artificial intelligence in childhood and blossomed with his introduction to programming,     “When I was 10 years old my father was trying to learn programming, and following in his footsteps, I hand-typed a sample game program into the computer. From then on I fell in love with programming,” said Inoue.     In his home country of Japan, Inoue received his bachelor’s degree in economics. Although this field strays from artificial intelligence, “I enjoyed seeing how human behaviors are modeled in a mathematical manner,” he said. After graduating, Inoue was introduced to Natural Language Processing and went on to receive a master’s degree in the field from Nara Institute of Science and Technology in 2010. Just three years later, he earned his PhD in information science from Tohoku University. But Inoue wanted to gain research experience in the United States.     The value of working with those from diverse backgrounds is indispensable. Inoue says that “the AI Institute at Stony Brook is a great choice for me because it has researchers and students from diverse backgrounds, and its research vision matched with my vision of AI.”     While Stony Brook was enticing, Inoue’s decision was not so simple. With his family and wife back in Yamanashi, Japan, leaving them was a difficult decision, particularly in a pandemic. However, with the unwavering support from his family and the Institute, Inoue rests assured that he made the best decision as he embarks on his new research endeavors at Stony Brook.     Inoue has set his research focus toward machine learning applied to natural language processing and machine reading comprehension. He has tried to tackle disparities within machine intelligence to develop machines that can think and explain their own thinking.     “Some studies report that computers already have a reading comprehension ability almost equivalent to that of humans,” said Inoue. “The truth is that machines are not so strong because they cheat.”     Inoue has focused his research toward quantifying machines’ true level of reading comprehension. This extends itself to “explainable AI,” which is artificial intelligence that can explain its own thinking. Inoue’s work with AI faculty members and students has greatly advanced this work. With respect to his research in developing quantitative data, Inoue has been working closely with Niranjan Balasubramanian, assistant professor of Computer Science, and several graduate students. The group meets weekly to discuss their research progress. He is also working with Steven Skiena and his students to advance their research with explainable AI.     “All of these collaborations will make for better research and will make for a better contribution to the AI community,” added Inoue.     These two young scholars have brought a strong sense of vigor and energy to the Institute.     “Baojian is always the last person to leave the Computer Science building each night, while Naoya has started projects with multiple of our faculty,” said Professor Skiena.     Looking forward, Zhou and Inoue both say that they cannot wait to work in a more in-person, collaborative environment. The research collaborations conducted by both postdocs would have never been possible without the unwavering camaraderie and drive within the Institute. Zhou and Inoue anticipate a productive year in 2021, supplemented by collaboration and diligence.     — Alyssa Dey, Communications Assistant, Institute for AI-Driven Discovery and Innovation     Click here to read the full article

Resident Kisa King receives the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, administered by Pharmacist Ian Pak.     December 16, 2020     After caring for thousands of patients battling COVID-19, Stony Brook University Hospital (SBUH) has received the coronavirus vaccine and has begun vaccinating hospital workers at the highest risk of exposure. Kisa King, a resident in the Department of Emergency Medicine at SBUH, received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, administered by Ian Pak, a pharmacist at the Hospital.     “I am so excited and thankful to be a part of the solution,” said King. “Not only does this mean that I can continue delivering care to my patients, but it also means I am providing protection to my family, friends and community.”     Based on guidance from the New York State Department of Health, more than 250 personnel working in emergency rooms, critical care units and other high-risk hospital units are scheduled to receive the vaccine at SBUH by the end of the day. The vaccine administration will be staggered in such a way as to ensure staff have the ability to continue providing necessary patient care. Stony Brook Medicine expects to receive additional doses of vaccine in the coming weeks.     This major milestone comes after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued the first emergency use authorization for a vaccine for the prevention of COVID-19 in individuals 16 years of age and older. The emergency use authorization allows the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to be distributed in the U.S. The vaccine has been found to be more than 90 percent effective in preventing COVID-19 after two doses.     Click here to read the original article 

September 21, 2020             The following was written by Stony Brook School of Journalism alumna Taylor Ha ’18. Taylor is currently a staff writer for the Marketing and Communications Department at Fordham University.      When I accepted my first full-time job, I felt like I had betrayed my original dream. I’d graduated as the co-valedictorian of Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism, but I wasn’t about to begin a nationally renowned fellowship, nor a job as a local reporter for a newspaper. Instead, I would become a staff writer for the Marketing and Communications Department at Fordham University.     After I graduated and moved back into my childhood home, I applied to more than 100 entry-level jobs. I never heard back from most of them. In July, I landed an interview at Forbes’ Jersey City office. Two editors were looking for a reporter in diversity and inclusion, and they were impressed by my senior capstone project on the lack of teacher diversity on Long Island. But there was another job that had caught my eye. It was the job at Fordham. The school was looking for someone with strong writing skills, good news judgment, experience with SLR cameras, a commitment to accuracy and the ability to meet deadlines. The job required weekly travel between Manhattan and the Bronx, but I was thrilled. (I prefer public transportation to driving because the latter makes me anxious.) If I hadn’t known any better, I would’ve thought the job application at Fordham was for any newsroom I’d visited on a Professional Fridays trip.     Ten days after I applied, a Fordham editor emailed me and asked if I could come in for an interview. And ten days after that, I was officially hired.     I took the job for several reasons. I was wooed by the starting salary, $65,000 — much more than I had expected as a recent college graduate in the writing field. I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to drive around unfamiliar towns and cities, like a traditional reporter does. But most of all, I was happy I could continue doing what I love most: telling people’s stories with a pen, notebook and camera, as I had done for the past four years.     Since August 2018, I’ve told more than 160 stories. I’ve spoken with a silver-haired rabbi and a young Palestinian activist who share an unlikely friendship. I met the first living Iraq War veteran to receive the national Medal of Honor. I’ve penned obituaries for a Fordham freshman who passed away after a severe asthma attack and a man who mentored Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists. More recently, I independently shot and produced a video profile on an Irish step dancer, which won a university-wide award, and moderated a Q&A on achieving antiracism at Fordham. I’ve accomplished more than I thought I could ever achieve as a writer for a private university.     Being a reporter for a newspaper or TV station is wonderful and rewarding. But time has taught me that you can find that joy at other places, too. There are hundreds of opportunities outside traditional newsrooms. (FYI: If you work at a university, you can earn a tuition-free master’s degree from your employer, the way I did.)     Two summers ago, Forbes turned me down. Now I think of it as a blessing in disguise. I still interview people, document their stories, and share them with the world. It’s a smaller world, but a vibrant world nonetheless.         Click here to read the original article

August 5, 2020 Stony Brook University is among the top 100 universities in the world for reducing inequalities in higher education based on the Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings 2020 — ranking #1 among all U.S. institutions and #27 worldwide. The Impact Rankings show which universities are successfully reducing inequalities in higher education for first generation students or students from lower socio-economic backgrounds.     Campus fall 19The ranking is based on how universities around the world are committing to the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are a global call to action to tackle poverty, climate change and inequality. SDG 10 covers reducing inequalities.      According to Times Higher Education, some of the metrics that helped to measure which universities were excelling at reducing inequalities were:     - The number of first generation students - The number of students from developing countries - The proportion of students and staff with disabilities - The measures against discrimination - The amount of research a university undertakes on reduced inequalities     More information on the methodology can be found here.     Click here to read the original article

July 29, 2020     For the third time in his career, Joel Hurowitz, assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences at Stony Brook University, is going to Mars — well, kind of. “I have invested my professional life in this series of missions. This mission feels like the culmination of the last 14 years of my life. It is definitely a capstone or a mid-career milestone, if you will,” he says.     Hurowitz got involved with the Mars Exploration Rover mission in 2004 when he was a graduate student at Stony Brook University. Following that, he went to work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and worked on the Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity, rover mission. Now, however, he has reached a professional milestone with the latest rover mission, Perseverance.     After joining the faculty at Stony Brook in 2013, Hurowitz was invited to serve as deputy principal investigator of a JPL-led team that was proposing to fly a new instrument to Mars as part of the science payload on the Perseverance rover. That instrument, called “PIXL” (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry), was selected by NASA on July 31, 2014, and Hurowitz set to work as part of the team that was tasked with building, testing and perfecting the PIXL instrument. The PIXL instrument is attached to the end of the arm of the rover and is designed to examine the chemical makeup of rocks on Mars.     The purpose of his segment of this mission is to seek signs and possibly confirmation of ancient, fossilized microbial life in Martian rocks using the rover science instruments, including PIXL. Once such evidence is established, rock samples will be collected via a drill and set aside in a “cache” during the time Perseverance will be roving the surface of the planet.     “We have established that there was water on Mars, so now we have this opportunity to look at the bigger picture. This chemical information allows us to understand what the environment on Mars was like billions of years ago when the rocks formed, and this chemical information also allows us to understand whether microbial life may have played a role in forming or modifying those rocks,” Hurowitz says.     Although, he says, the exploration of Mars won’t be over with this mission. If the samples are deemed interesting by the greater science community, they will be brought back to Earth via a series of follow-up missions.     Perseverance is set to launch on Thursday, July 30, at 7:46 am. According to NASA, it will be at a point when Earth and Mars are in good positions relative to each other for landing on Mars. The Rover is scheduled to land on Mars on February 18, 2020. The mission is set to last for 2.5 Earth years, equating to 1.25 years on the Red Planet.     Click here to read the original article

Professor Jihoon Ryoo in the CS department introduced his technology startup company, idciti, in an IoT promotion video by Incheon Startup Park. Paired with SDR equipment, idciti transforms the GPS signal into software and creates computer equipment in a tunnel. Incheon city provided a field in order to test the new technology. The company hopes to install the equipment in various cities in Korea and eventually abroad.       Related video:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51T-kk-0Xfk       

SUNY Korea Research & Business Foundation and the Industry-Academic Cooperation of Incheon Catholic University made an MOU agreement. SUNY Korea Vice President, Min Koo Han and the head of the Industry- Academic Cooperation Foundation of Incheon Catholic university, Hyoung Chan, Kim participated in the MOU signing ceremony on January 26.       Min Koo Han, the Vice President of SUNY Korea mentioned, “As a closely located university, Incheon Catholic University has strength in art and culture. It would be a great opportunity for SBU and FIT of SUNY Korea to cooperate with Incheon Catholic University and think of ways to contribute to the development of Incheon city.”       Hyoung Chan Kim, the Dean of General Affairs at Incheon Catholic University, said, “I hope this agreement will be helpful in the mutual development of each university, cooperation in the field of culture, art and design, and promoting the local community-related businesses.

SUNY Korea signed an MOU agreement with CMIS Canada on Monday January 25, 2021. On the day of the agreement, SUNY Korea delegates (President Wonki Min, Dean Johng-Ihl Lee) and CMIS Canada (Chief Director Byunghwan Jang, and Director Daewook Noh) participated in the ceremony.     CMIS Canada is the first school that is fully accredited by the Ministry of Education, Manitoba Canada. International students and Korean students from early years to high school are educated according to the Manitoba education curriculum. Upon graduation, all students are granted a diploma with the same qualifications as the students in Canada.       SUNY Korea and CMIS Canada both share the goal of raising students who engage in global concerns by providing high quality education in Korea with the same curriculums of American and Canadian schools, respectively.       Upon signing the agreement, SUNY Korea and CMIS Canada will establish a cooperative system to promote student achievement and educational development of IFEZ. Exchange of academic information, recommendation of students for SUNY Korea admissions and discount on CMIS Canada tuition fee for the children of SUNY Korea faculty and staff are the agreed principles of the MOU.        

How can Korea’s Social Culture Evolve to Support its Entrepreneurship Education?   Written by Dr. Chihmao Hsieh (Professor, Department of Business Management)       Entrepreneurship training and education programs have grown exponentially around the world in the last two decades.  Naturally, the government and educational sector in Korea have been busy creating programs for students. Since 2002, the Korean Ministry of SMEs and Startups has been implementing the “Youth Biz School” project to spread entrepreneurship to young people. Across all those years, about 3,700 schools have participated in that program. The Korea Institute of Startup & Entrepreneurship Development (KISED) was then launched in 2008 as a business incubator foundation, which now also adds a wide variety of entrepreneurship education and training programs. Middle schools and high schools all across Korea have created their own in-house entrepreneurship education programs, some yielding dozens of project-based outcomes every year. Today we can find good startup enthusiasm at dozens of Korean universities. Courses and educational events aiming to foster innovation and entrepreneurship are almost countless.     Yet, decades later, the entrepreneurship output at the highest educational level—the university—is still underwhelming.  According to the Korea Herald Business Daily (미주헤럴드경제), government support for university entrepreneurship programming in Korea recently is around 209 억 KRW while the startup revenue during the equivalent period has only been 102 억 KRW.  Startup revenue can certainly lag that programming expenditure, but many entrepreneurship ecosystem leaders still lament these days that the output cannot rationalize the educational expenditure. While revenue isn’t the only indicator of success in entrepreneurship education, rapidly growing innovative startups are still the most respected indicator.  In part due to my experience as an entrepreneurship educator for 15 years in the USA, Europe, and now Korea, I can suggest 3 different sociocultural elements of the entrepreneurship ecosystem here in Korea that still require development, to fully appreciate the potential of its entrepreneurship education.     First, existing medium-sized enterprises should be more involved in the entrepreneurship education ecosystem.  Large corporations like Samsung have steadily developed entrepreneurship and innovation programming that targets and benefits students, but chaebols alone cannot serve all the promising student ventures.  While Samsung now has an in-house startup incubation program for its employees, and Hyundai and SK have recently partnered to nurture mobility and connected-car startups, many students today still have resistant pre-conceptions that Korean chaebols are unfriendly towards student entrepreneurship efforts and any startup success.  The government should consider gathering successful medium-sized businesses into a national R&D network that can be leveraged to partner with new student startups.  Of course, this is not easy.  Those successful medium-sized businesses would ideally be vetted and certified in terms of their resources, commitment, reputation, and collegiality towards students.  The Korean government should enlist and partner with financial institutions to play a larger role in developing innovative financing programs that stimulate partnerships between successful medium-sized enterprises and award-winning student startups.     Second, parents should become more willing to accept and motivate their children to develop their creative ability and explore entrepreneurship during schooling.  In April 2017, the “Presidential Youth Committee” (대통령직속 청년위원회) conducted a survey of 423 young entrepreneurs, asking them about their parents’ attitudes towards their startup.  28.1% of those parents had objected to their children creating startups.  From those parents, the top two reasons for opposing start-ups were that they wanted their children to find stable jobs (37.8%), and that they believed that startup success was difficult (22.7%).  Many of today’s parents are still stuck on their children working for large stable chaebols like Samsung, LG, or Lotte, and some may furthermore subscribe to the cultural history where scholars and government officials tend to have a higher status than businesspeople (“양천제”).  Government and educational programs should welcome parents to the learning process, educating them about the value of entrepreneurial thinking for worklife in startups and in today’s large corporations.  Schools and entrepreneurship training programs should not always turn away parents after they drop off their children to these programs. Even if they are not allowed to physically join their children during educational sessions, in today’s Youtube and Zoom world, parents should still be offered some information access.     Lastly, Korea needs to find ways to give successful entrepreneurs some celebrity status and make them stronger positive role models.  Maybe people are cynical that extremely rich and successful entrepreneurs are not very forthcoming in explaining their success.  Many successful Korean entrepreneurs seem to hide from the public eye, so that their behavior cannot be monitored and scrutinized.  Thus, instead of becoming celebrities, most Korean startup founders don’t usually stay on as CEO’s after tasting huge success; instead they often transition into the background as board directors or chairmen.  Ultimately, there is very little opportunity to ‘cheerlead’ the successful entrepreneurs in Korean culture, as we see in American culture.  Without those role models, students have one less source of inspiration.  Dramatic angel-investment TV shows like the USA’s “Shark Tank” or the UK’s “Dragon’s Den” could be a good start.     Young-ha Koh, head of the Korea Business Angel Association, remarks that “The most talented American students who grow up receiving entrepreneurship education dream of launching start-ups, but Koreans have no dreams of start-ups.” For almost two decades, a lot of energy, attention, and resources have gone into changing the mindsets of kids here in Korea, in terms of fostering their abilities to think about how they can be creative, to think about how they think, and to re-frame the path to success.  Those are wonderful attempts at development.  But if broader Korean policy and culture cannot nurture entrepreneurial capabilities after that educational programming and training is over, then much of that effort will have been wasted.  The most inspired kids may feel abandoned, remember that abandonment, and take their hungry innovative mindset to another country instead.     Please click here to know more about the Department of Business  Management.  Please click here to read the Korean version on the Maeil Business Newspaper.

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