By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
Konkuk University, one of Korea's major private schools, plans to invite students from Colombia for masters and Ph.D. courses.
According to officials at the university in Seoul, Monday, it will run an information technology (IT) related program for 40 Colombian students from the fall semester in cooperation with the Korea Electronics Technology Institute (KETI) and other IT agencies in Korea.
All of the invited students will get full-scholarships plus living expenses from the two countries and are able to choose either a one-year short program or courses for Ph.D.s. The programs are set to foster IT specialties.
The Colombian students will have opportunities to apply what they have learned at Korean government-supported IT agencies such as KETI and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).
The Colombian government will recruit applicants for the special IT programs and raise funds worth $4.5 million for the scholarship along with its Korean counterpart.
Those who complete the courses are expected to be core IT experts and will be able to work at an IT research center planned by the Korean government, which is investing $10 million.
Earlier last December, Konkuk also built an IT research center in Paraguay. This is in line with joint efforts by the Korean government and universities to promote the export of Korea's information technology to South American countries. Konkuk, headed by former science and technology minister Oh Myung, is leading the move.
The university has provided 300 computers to Paraguay and Columbia and invested in IT infrastructure in the countries in cooperation with government IT agencies.
In addition, the higher education institute has offered a management of technology (MOT) course since March 2009, the first among Korean universities to offer such a course.
At the "Miller MOT School," three majors, technology innovation management, technology innovation policy and venture technology management are offered and the inter-disciplinary school is working with Stanford and Stony Brook universities for dual degree courses.
Established in 1931, Konkuk has 15 colleges and graduate schools with some 26,000 students and 1,000 professors.