Ewha President Lee Bae-yong |
By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
Ewha Womans University will open a TESOL graduate school next March to meet the growing demand for English teachers.
``Our school has been prominent in English education and will lead Korea’s TESOL education with the new graduate school,’’ university President Lee Bae-yong told reporters at a press meeting to celebrate the second anniversary of her presidency, Monday. ``We will also improve education in British and American culture for the teachers.’’
Under the plan, the oldest and biggest women’s school will recruit 40 students at the end of the year and work together with the University of London Institute of Education on dual degree programs. TESOL is short for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, and TESOL programs have been recently spotlighted as one of the training courses for elementary and secondary school English teachers.
With the programs, the university aims to lead foreign language education in the country. Early this year, Ewha has introduced a training program for Chinese teachers in cooperation with Peking University, Ewha-Peking Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (EPTeCSOL), the first of such a kind among Korean universities.
Lee, 61, also said she wants to push for globalization projects. Ewha will set up eight more global centers in overseas universities. So far, Ewha has built centers in 12 cities including New York, Beijing, Boston, Tokyo and Hong Kong for networking. With the bases, it aims to send 60 percent of freshmen to sister universities as part of global outreach programs by 2010.
Currently, some 1,300 Ewha students are studying overseas, a sharp rise compared to 629 in 2006. It has about 3,500 foreign students under exchange programs, which has increased more than 7-fold compared to 695, two years ago. Meanwhile, Ewha will recruit more foreign faculty members to have them make up 10 percent of the total number of professors.
kswho@koreatimes.co.kr
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