From Maxwell Perspective...

Dual Perspectives

Mincheol Song and Jiyeon Oh are South Korean students at Maxwell pursuing a new two-nation degree.

Korean students Jiyeon Oh (left) and Mincheol Song

As a public officer working for South Korea’s National Agency for Administrative City Construction, Mincheol Song has been involved with a unique multi-billion-dollar planned city in his country: Sejong Metropolitan Autonomous City, essentially South Korea’s administrative hub. The new capital opened in July 2012 with nine ministries and four national agencies relocating from Seoul; by the end of this year, 36 more agencies will have moved there.

After six years with the agency, Song, whose educational background is in architecture, realized he could be more effective if he had training in government administration. He became one of the first students in a new Global Master of Public Administration Program launched by Seoul National University (SNU), tailored for civil servants of Korea and other countries.

The dual-degree program is taught in English and includes a year of courses at SNU and a year at one of six foreign universities, with students earning a degree from each institution. Not surprisingly, one of those foreign universities is Syracuse, where the Maxwell School has a long history of partnering its executive education programs with international universities and ministries.  

“In Korea, the professor lectures and the students usually listen politely. Here, there is much more interaction.”
— Mincheol Song

“Maxwell is an ideal partner for SNU because of the inherent flexibility in our executive program and the opportunity for multidisciplinary study,” says Margaret Lane, assistant director of Executive Education at Maxwell. “Students from SNU have diverse sets of skills and professional backgrounds. We allow them to create an individualized program of study, so each returns home with the exact skills and knowledge they seek to fill in gaps.” 

That’s true for Song and his classmate Jiyeon Oh, who this fall became the first SNU students to pursue the dual degree at Maxwell, sponsored by a Korean government fellowship program.

 Two months into the first semester, Song said he was already gaining practical leadership and management skills he can implement in his office.

Oh is a veterinarian by training who has worked for her country’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety for nine years, responsible for food safety of imported livestock products. She was looking forward to an upcoming course in food security, which is not only relevant to her work but will put her in contact with other students with similar interests and concerns.

“I want to improve my competencies,” she says, “but my boss and colleagues also expect me to return an improved and better officer.”

The students have been impressed with the collegial nature of Maxwell. “In Korea, the professor lectures and the students usually listen politely,” says Song. “Here, there is much more interaction.”

They had a chance to meet Dean James Steinberg when he visited SNU, and now work with high-level practitioners on the faculty. “Being in the U.S. increases the opportunity to meet great scholars in the field, because we study many materials written in the U.S.,” Song says.

They also appreciate widening their point of view. Oh points to one of their first courses, Policy Analysis, a subject that was part of their SNU curriculum last year.

“I thought it would be repetitive, but I’ve actually learned new, different things,” she says. “The professor has a different perspective and goes into things at a deeper level. Hopefully I will have a broader and more diverse perspective when I return to my job.”

— Renée Gearhart Levy

This article appeared in the fall 2015 print edition of Maxwell Perspective; © 2015 Maxwell School of Syracuse University.