As a pioneer in engineering education in Korea, Hanyang University has played a key role in the Miracle of the Han by supplying talent for the electronic, mechanical, automotive, steel and construction industries.

The school, founded in 1939 as a small polytechnic college, is one of Korea’s top 10 universities, with strengths in engineering, medicine and applied sciences. Its ability to meet the needs of industries, close cooperation with companies and constant self-reforms to that end have underpinned its growth for 70 years.

The school is now facing another major transformation to cope with a fast-changing environment. Innovation, imagination and inter-disciplinary convergences are key to success in industry and academia. Korea, a global leader in the technology industry, can no longer resort to its past “catch-up” development strategy, but must carve out new frontiers for growth.

“Hanyang University has led the country’s industrialization drive so far, but industry is now calling for new growth engines for further development. We’ve been focusing on developing new fields of study,” Lim Duck-ho, its president, said in an interview with The Korea Herald.

“We aim to train students with knowledge of advanced technologies, a sense of morality and responsibility and an international perspective to stand out in the global market,” he added.

New frontiers

The convergence of information technology and the automobile industry is one of its latest priority areas. The Department of Automotive Engineering signed in 2011 an agreement with Hyundai Motor Group, the country’s biggest automobile company, to establish a joint research institute at the Seoul campus.

The school earlier this year secured government funding worth 3.4 billion won ($3 million) to open the IT and Automobile Center at its main campus in Seoul.

HYU is also planning to run two new majors; actuarial science and robot engineering, from next year at its campus in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province.

The actuarial science major, which applies mathematical and statistical methods to assess risk in the insurance and finance industries, is already popular among European and American institutions, but HYU is the first Korean university to introduce such a course, according to Lim.

“There is a greater need for experts who are capable of analyzing probability and statistics for business. Also considering the greater needs of robot engineering in various fields, we decided to set up a Department of Robot Engineering,” Lim said.

Other robot engineering courses, he added, tend to focus on electronic engineering to build robots. But HYU’s course is designed to nurture experts with all-around knowledge of the robot industry.

Lim said that industry-university cooperation was the driving force behind Hanyang’s successful efforts to put ideas and innovation into practice.

Hanyang’s school of engineering has its origins in DongA Polytechnic Institute, which opened its doors in 1939.

“Over the past 70 years, Hanyang has played a key role in the education and training of professionals in the fields of engineering, science and technology,” Lim said.

HYU has been expanding partnerships with the country’s leading business firms, such as Samsung Electronics, to train students to meet the needs of business.

Samsung Electronics, for instance, helped open a software research course in 2011, offering full scholarships upon admission and opportunities for graduates work at its companies.

As part of its effort to become a world-class research institution, HYU launched the Industry University Cooperation Foundation in 2003 to create a more cooperative environment for research and high-quality professional training.

The IUCF currently operates various entities for industry collaboration, including the Center for Business Incubation and the Technology Transfer Center, which has been responsible for producing R&D achievements through collaboration with prominent companies such as LG, Hynix and Samsung, he said.

One of the Hanyang’s strengths is proximity and accessibility, said the president. The HYU’s main campus located in Sungdong District, central Seoul is directly linked to Hanyang University Station on Subway Line No. 2. In fact, the subway exit is within the campus, offering accessibility to anywhere in the city.

Hanyang’s second campus, the ERICA campus, is located in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, some 40 kilometers south of Seoul.

As the name ERICA ― short for Education, Research and Industry Cluster at Ansan ― suggests, the campus is in an ideal locale for cooperation between business firms and universities, the president said.

More than 150 business firms and institutions, such as Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, Gyeonggi Technopark Korea Testing Laboratory and Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute, are located at the ERICA campus, he said.

“The ERICA is leading the way in creating an industry-university-research cluster,” he said.

Lim, well known for his hard work, took the helm of HYU in March 2011 after serving more than 20 years as a professor. Lim set the goal of making HYU one of the world’s top 100 universities when it turns 100 in 2039.

School reform

He has successfully led a reform drive with a management style emphasizing flexibility and autonomy, and an educational philosophy stressing globalization and diversity.

He allowed each department of the school to budget themselves and determine admission for students and faculty members, minimizing the university’s administration role.

Lim said “liberal management based on responsibility” is one of the key goals he purses as the head of HYU.

“Self-controlled management is what I believe to be the source of creative administration, so much in need in our generation. The environment surrounding universities is changing rapidly. In order to keep the pace up, and make sure all 104 courses at HYU run smoothly, each department has to be managed autonomously under the responsibility of its deans. And the administration office needs to just observe through regular audits and evaluation,” he said.

In keeping with the era of globalization, Lim has also been working hard to extend international exchange activities with other universities around the world.

As a result, HYU is currently in partnerships with 393 universities in more than 40 countries and runs overseas study programs at 104 institutions around the world.

Also thanks to its diversified efforts to attract competent foreign students, each year about 1,900 full-time and part-time foreign students study at Hanyang.

Lim also stresses the importance of well-balanced learning in liberal arts and practical areas as a basis for nurturing creative leaders.

All HYU students are required to take the “classic literature reading” class and are advised to read 75 classic literary works selected by the university.

“Having a broad range of understanding in liberal arts is essential to being a creative leader in this globalized world. And since we have more students in natural sciences and engineering courses, it’s even more important to have such a course,” Lim explained.

While HYU has been the forerunner of performing a field-based education, producing creative talents in the country’s high-tech industries, its founding philosophy, “Love in Truth and in Deed,” is what makes HYU students unique, he said.

“I think our graduates have a great reputation, not only for their performance, but for their personality. When I meet CEOs and business leaders, they say our students have unique assets; they are honest and diligent,” he said. 

Lim Duck-ho

● Lim was named president of Hanyang University in March 2011. He has worked as a professor at the Department of Economics since 1988. He previously served as dean of the Graduate School of Industrial Engineering, Management and Design as well as of the College of Economics and Business Administration at Hanyang.

● Lim also held a number of off-campus positions, including president of the Korean Association for Housing Policy Studies and advisory professor of the Bank of Korea.

● He graduated from HYU with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1982, and earned his doctoral degree in the same field at Rice University in the United States in 1986.

By Oh Kyu-wook (596story@heraldcopr.com)