General Education and New Visions from Ewha Womans University

Lee, Bae Yong

Korean Journal of General Education 2009;3(1):5-20.
Published online June 30, 2009.

Bae Yong Lee

대학교양교육과 이화여자대학교의 비전

이배용

Abstract

As today’s universities enter a stage of major transitions, the question of how we will carry out general education is an important one. This paper seeks to find answers to this question by discussing the essence of general education and new visions regarding the issue, as experienced by the general education program at Ewha Womans University. In the history of mankind, universities has continued to communicate and grow with the times while at the same time maintaining autonomy in its search for truth. What has prevailed throughout is its role in preserving and developing humanity, wherein lies the importance of general education. For an effective general education program, however, there are obstacles that must be overcome, including the dependence of universities on government support; problems in evaluation index; and the tendency among mid-career faculty to avoid teaching general education courses. Ewha Womans University has long been playing a pioneering role in improving the general education curriculum in Korea. Currently, under our new vision, “Initiative Ewha,” we are reorganizing Ewha’s general education program in preparation for a new era. The main focus of this reform lies in cultivating competent individuals who can respond proactively in the face of fast change in our increasingly complex and diverse society, and one of the first steps we took was to enhance the students’ communication skills in Korean and fluency levels in English. We also established a core curriculum in our general education program to provide the opportunity for students to study a wide range of topics, perspectives and methodology, with aims to develop analytical and thinking skills. As a means to strengthen character education and other basic learning, we founded the General Education Institute, which will be in charge of providing a program in character education appropriate for our globalized times. All this will allow us to play a major role in discovering and nurturing new talent for the 21stcentury.

Key Words: general education, Ewha Womans University, General Education Institute, a core curriculum, the general education curriculum, communication skills, fluency levels