Sookmyung University, selected as the only large-scale PRIME Project women’s university
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- Writer 커뮤니케이션팀
- 보도일자 2016-05-31
Our university made the final selection in the metropolitan area’s large-scale category from the PRIME Project screening result announced by the Ministry of Education and National Research Foundation of Korea on May 3 (Wed). Accordingly, our university will receive a total of 45 billion KRW in financial support from the government for 3 years, starting from this year to 2018.
The purpose of the PRIME Project is to preemptively respond to reduction in student population, increase in youth unemployment rate, and mismatch of human resources per sector, and radically reform universities. The essential point of the project is to induce universities to autonomously reflect future social demands in order to reform academic structures and reinforce students’ major and career competencies.
Our university applied for the large PRIME Project that supports annual 15 billion KRW per university and was selected as one of the 3 universities in the metropolitan area among Konkuk University and Hanyang (Erica) University. Among the total of 9 universities selected in the large-scale category, our university was the only women’s university.
Since the announcement of the PRIME Project selection by the Ministry of Education on May 3, there were acclamations all around from President Sunhye Hwang, academic board members, faculty and staff, and many others.
The secret to the award of this project has been interpreted as our university’s continuous efforts toward radical reformation. Our university has already been pursuing academic reform that caters to social demands such as establishment of new engineering college promotion project team and selection of new engineering college freshmen this year, among others, in accordance with the long-term university advancement plan SM Global "I" Promise since 2013. In addition, our university has made dedicated efforts toward fostering tailored talents centered on Career Development Center for the Creative Economy, while expanding industry-academic curriculum such as IPP-type work-based learning project and industry-connected curriculum.
There are plans to increase the 5.1% science and engineering major proportion to 18.6% in comparison to the entire student percentage by 2017 in accordance with the PRIME Project in the future and to promote school system reform that will expand the engineering college through women-friendly and promising fields such as ICT convergence engineering software and mechanical systems. In addition, we plan to produce customized women human resources by selecting target industries with high future growth potential by analyzing employment demands in each industry and women employment structure.
Along with this, there are plans to lead the way toward convergence human resource development through the expansion of multi majors. Through the new establishment of Educational Innovation Center under the Office of Academic Affairs, there are plans to take charge in supply and demand of research and educational curriculum analysis and reflect the new improvement direction on educational curriculum of each major. The plan is to guarantee academic options and induce voluntary motivation for the students by newly establishing a self-designing interdisciplinary program + humanities convergence curriculum that enable students to design an educational curriculum of their interest on their own.
President Sunhye Hwang said, “I am happy because I believe this is the result from the recognition of our university’s substantiation and excellence shown through our structural reform that has been preemptively planned in line with the changes in social structure,” and “through the project promotion committee that will soon be organized, we will make efforts to fully utilize our accumulated school reformation experience and educational knowhow in order to maximize the project performance toward the advancement of our school.”