Ms. CHOI Sun Hwa will be taking her flight to Britain as soon as she finishes her doctoral degree in accounting at SNU this semester.

CHOI has been appointed as a Lecturer of Management at Lancaster University, one of the top 10 UK universities whose Management School (LUMS) is consistently among the UK's top five. LUMS has also been ranked on average 31st -- 24th in 2010 -- in the Financial Times’ Global MBA Rankings for the last three years.

A glance at CHOI’s career shows that she was fully qualified for the lectureship. She entered SNU with top grades, became a certified public accountant (CPA) when she was an undergraduate, and later worked for a renowned accounting firm for three years. CHOI is also a chartered financial analyst (CFA). She began teaching SNU undergraduates in English last year and the fact that her joint research paper is undergoing evaluation by a top-ranked academic journal was a major consideration in her appointment.

What makes CHOI even more special is that she has almost no experience studying abroad. She is the first “home-grown” figure to receive a lectureship in accounting at a European business school. CHOI completed her secondary and university education in Korea and the only record of her visiting a foreign country for an academic purpose is her four-month stay in Canada as an exchange student. “Taking courses conducted in English during my graduate program helped me a lot,” said CHOI. SNU’s College of Business Administration graduate course in accounting has been offering most of its classes in English since 2003. In class, a presenter introduces academic papers in English and the rest of the students also get to participate in English. “I was not used to presenting in English and had to prepare a written script in the beginning but as I went through several presentations, I started to feel comfortable using the language.” SNU is planning to expand its support for outstanding undergraduates wishing to pursue their postgraduate studies through its initiative entitled “Korean Values and Academic Globalization”. This project aims to send an increasing number of intelligent domestically-educated doctors into the world.

“I had opportunities to further my studies in the US but I chose to stay at SNU due to personal reasons. It is truly meaningful that my research conducted here in Korea was acknowledged by a foreign university.” CHOI will commence teaching at Lancaster University in October of this year.

Written by LEE Ye Ha, SNU English Editor, gabrielle@snu.ac.kr   ?
Proofread by Brett Johnson, SNU English Editor