Professor Ilon’s office was very simple and well-organized, with not much furniture and interesting paintings of young working women in Uganda on the walls. On top of a shelf there was a jar, the contents of which looked like cigarette butts and it caught our attention.

“’They are very special”, Professor Illon said, taking us close to the shelf. “They are worn-out pencils from students in Africa. These kids are eager to learn, but the environment does not allow the opportunity. I decided to give them new pencils as a gift and they gave me their old used ones’”. She is reminded of the work she has left to do for the educationally disadvantaged in such regions as Africa every time she looks at this jar.

Professor Ilon holds degrees in International Development Education (Ph.D.), Economics (M.S.), Educational Research and Statistics (M.S.) and Education and Anthropology (B.A.). She has also worked for international organizations such as UNESCO and the World Bank as an educational economist in Asia and Africa.

Her interest in becoming an educational economist emerged after moving to Hawaii during her teenage years. Hawaii was a place with no racial discrimination between whites and non-whites. While growing up, she was taught that each individual has the right to be treated with dignity and to have their human rights respected regardless of their race.

Professor Ilon now works to give back the right to education to people from whom opportunities were taken away. “There are many ways to improve the educational environment of poor countries. In Malawi, for example, teenage girls were not entering secondary schools because the application process was complicated and they had financial constraints too”, she said. She went to Malawi to solve this problem and she found that all they needed was one dollar for tuition for a year, and a simpler application process.
Today, thousands of teenage girls in Malawi are able to get a secondary school education. Professor Ilon mentioned that her goal and passion is to make Africa a place full of educational opportunities for those in need.

SNU highly valued her experience with international organizations in many countries and contacted her when she was seeking an institution to help her achieve this goal. She said, “Korea is a successful example of how good education available to all citizens contributes to the development of a nation.” Professor Ilon wants to share her journey with more people and find ways to enlighten others about the unfair educational realities in underdeveloped countries.

July 27, 2009
KIM Lee-Kyung and SEONG Yeonju, SNU English Editors
SNU PR Office