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| Seoul National University is seeing an internal feud among professors over the school's plan to hire a faculty member for its Vocal Music Department. / Yonhap |
By Bahk Eun-ji
Seoul National University (SNU) has struggled for months to pull its Vocal Music Department out of a crisis caused by an internal feud among professors over the hiring of a new faculty member.
It announced on Wednesday that it will form a special committee aimed at "putting the Vocal Music Department back on track."
It came up with the idea of setting up a nine-member ad-hoc committee a day after it unprecedentedly appointed Lee Ji-youn, a professor of the Traditional Korean Music Department, as acting dean of the Vocal Music Department.
An official from SNU said the school had no other option but to appoint her to the position as part of its efforts to normalize the department.
"Professors in the vocal department have been in dispute for so long that we had to make such a decision to fix the problem," the official said.
The controversy involving the hiring of a new professor dates back to February 2013 when the school tried to hire Shin Dong-won, a well-known tenor, as its professor.
Three senior professors strongly resisted the school's move, claiming that Shin lacks proper credentials for the job. Shin earned an "artistic diploma" from The Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA) in Philadelphia.
The opposing professors insisted that the AVA is not a higher education institute granting a degree, but a private music academy, despite its international fame.
"It is not a degree but just sort of a certificate. Professors have to have an authorized degree in the field," said one of the professors.
On top of the diploma issue, the professors also said that Shin has not had enough teaching time to meet the qualification for the position.
Applicants usually build up teaching experience for five years in order to apply for the position, but Shin had only four years and 10 months at that time.
School officials said that AVA is a world-famous international vocal arts institution that has an enviable reputation despite being a private academy. Still, the school had to drop its plan to employ Shin in the face of fierce protests from the professors.
The university held another round of recruitment of new professors for the second semester in 2013.
Shin applied for the position again after he worked as an assistant professor at Catholic University of Daegu for four months, but he was again denied the job.
"Under school regulations for qualification of professorial employment of SNU, Shin's diploma was only recognized as being 70 percent of a formal degree, so he needed to serve an additional one and a half years of teaching time to be qualified," a school official said.
The school official said SNU strictly abided by its regulations. But he declined to disclose detailed information about recruitment standards as they are confidential.
The school is left with only four professors for 104 students in the Vocal Music Department, which normally requires eight, due to the failure to hire new professors. Four professors have retired since 2011.
One of the four remaining professors is also in trouble as he is being investigated by the school over allegations that he sexually harassed one of his students.
With the disputes between professors and the school showing no signs of abating, students have become the biggest victims of the infighting.
"To be honest, we all know this is a factional conflict between professors. Some professors want to employ a successor as a new professor, but others are against them," said a student at the school's College of Music, declining to be named.
"We have demanded the school take all necessary steps to normalize the music department. We don't want our right to learn to be infringed upon."
The Student Council of SNU issued statements on Feb. 28 and March 4, demanding the school launch an investigation into the dispute and protect students' rights to learn.
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