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Administration Building of Kyung Hee University in Seoul |
By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
Founded in May 1949, Kyung Hee University in Seoul marked its 58th anniversary this year. For humans, the age 58 may be the start of preparation for their golden years, spending what they have made and hesitating to take on any great challenges in their lives.
Meanwhile, the 58-year-old university is planning to take steps this year toward its goal of being a global top university by 2010.
On Oct. 18, the university will hold a milestone event to unveil its largest ever development plans for its Seoul campus.
The plan dubbed ``Kyung Hee Campus Master Plan'' was devised with the goals of dismantling barriers among diverse disciplines and pursuing convergent knowledge, as well as putting the faltering dignity of academia back on the right track, and eventually making Kyung Hee University a world class university.
Kyung Hee invests 400 billion won to upgrade Seoul campus
The school authorities plan to pour as much as 400 billion won ($436 million) into upgrading the Seoul campus, the largest development project in Korean university history.
In the first step, the school will build five new buildings on 323,891 square meters from October 2008.
It will construct Oriental Medicine and Nursing Science colleges to secure enough room for lectures, research and support facilities.
Kyung Hee Cyber University, a guesthouse and an industry-university cooperation center will also be built on the campus allowing students, researchers and young entrepreneurs to easily pursue and achieve what they aim for.
The university also has a plan to construct an indoor gymnasium, underground parking lots, and other welfare-related facilities on the campus with the hopes of providing students, faculty members and researchers with a more convenient and relaxing school environment.
In the second phase, the university will build three more college buildings _ residence halls for students from overseas and a student union center.
The College of Business Administration to be completed by May 2008 in Kyung Hee University's Seoul Campus. |
The school announced that the mass development project will adopt environment-friendly measures, not significantly changing the contour of the current campus and surrounding topography.
Strategic points of mass development
One of the reasons for the large-scale development is to nurture subjects, which have enjoyed a relatively high reputation in Korea, such as Hotel and Tourism Management, Oriental Medicine and Information Displays.
The new College of Hotel and Tourism Management is to ensure there is enough space for practical training and increase the possibility of turning it into a hotel and tourism specialized graduate school in the future.
The College of Oriental Medicine is designed to pursue convergent medical studies through joint research with the College of Medicine and other scientific fields.
The Department of Information Displays will try to form an alliance in engineering with renowned local universities such as the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and Korea University.
More than half of the buildings on the Seoul campus were built in the 1960s. According to a report by the university, 56.4 percent or 27 out of 48 buildings on the campus were constructed then. Moreover, the buildings built in the 1990s are mainly located in the eastern part of the campus.
``That's the reason why Kyung Hee University needs comprehensive maintenance work and new buildings to improve the school environment,'' said an official of the school. ``Especially, students belonged to College of Humanities, the College of Political and Economics, and the College of Science are suffering from cramped class rooms.''
Kyung Hee collects 300 billion won in donations
Kyung Hee University plans to complete the mass development plan in financial cooperation with donors.
According to its development plan, it will cost more than 400 billion won to accomplish the mega-size mission. And it predicts that approximately 82 percent of the budget required or 330 billion won will be collected from donations.
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yistory@koreatimes.co.kr
