Monday messages

International universities

June is always a time to pause, catch our breath, and settle in for the summer heat. The formal academic year ended with Commencement, summer school has begun, and incoming freshmen visit for orientation. It is a relaxed, welcome time, and I usually take advantage of the period to travel abroad to visit KU's international programs and meet KU"s international alumni. These are important trips because I firmly believe that the only great universities of the 21st Century will be international universities. I want to ensure that KU offers opportunities to American students to study abroad, while we continue our long tradition of offering opportunities here to international students.

On June 4th, I was privileged to be the guest of honor at a reception given by Ambassador Howard Baker and his wife, Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker, in the Ambassador's residence in Tokyo. Almost 200 loyal Jayhawk graduates and their families attended. Some of these graduates have not been back to Lawrence since they graduated. Others have come back occasionally for visits, often when their son or daughter enrolled at KU as a second generation Jayhawk. Virtually all these graduates held a warm place in their heart for KU, and one of them put his KU experience in perspective. "Having not traveled outside Japan," he said, "I had a distorted vision of the United States. Then I came to Lawrence and discovered the real
America."

We went from Japan to Korea, where KU again has many hundreds of graduates. (Currently, there are 170 Korean and 130 Japanese students at KU.) South Korea is a country of 60 million living on a peninsula half the size of Kansas, with 70% of the land mass being steep, heavily forested mountains. Over 20 million live in and around the capital, Seoul. This makes for a lot of traffic jams, but the Korean people are so kind and generous that a traveler easily adjusts. Our Korean alumni certainly have great loyalty to KU.

My hosts in Korea were Dean Kwang Sun Kim of the Korea University of Technology (with whom we signed an exchange agreement), and Colonel Chang-Il Ohn of the Korea National Army Academy, both of whom received their Ph.D.'s from KU.

I spent the first day in Korea as the guest of Governor Sim Dae-Pyung of Chungnam Province, an area with one of the fastest growing economies in the country. I had been asked to give a lecture to provincial government officials about the Kansas Regents system and its relation to state government. Chungnam is very focused on increasing educational opportunity in the province as a key to increasing international trade.

The next day I met with President Jung-Don Seo of Sungkyunkuan University in Seoul, the oldest private university in Korea. It was founded as a Confucian study center some 600 years ago. Today, SKKU is a bustling modern university, very similar to KU in size, mission, and ambition. We have signed an exchange agreement with them, which will offer rich possibilities for KU students and faculty in the future. They also have a strong medical school, largely funded by the multinational conglomerate Samsung, which should enable our life sciences research faculty to create international collaborations in medical disciplines.

The highlight of our Korean trip was an alumni event in Seoul that was attended by 50 KU Korean graduates. This Seoul alumni group has played a major role in contributing to KU's plans for a Korean War Memorial honoring KU faculty, staff, and students who gave their lives during the Korean War of 1950-53. This memorial will be built west of the Campanile, along Memorial Drive, and construction will begin this summer.

The most memorable part of my visit was the chance to sit and talk with Hak Soon Chang, a Korean engineer who was hospitalized at the KU Medical Center in 1955. Mr. Chang was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and his illness could easily have been fatal. Drug therapies for TB were in their early stages then. He had few funds and he was a long way from home.

Through the kindness of strangers, and an extraordinary outpouring of care and friendship by KU medical staff, Mr. Chang recovered his health, after being hospitalized for an entire year. Recently, as a token of his appreciation, Mr. Chang, who is now a successful engineer, gave $100,000 to the University of Kansas Hospital and KU School of Medicine to help support indigent patients like himself, and also to encourage research in pulmonary diseases.

Mr. Chang is a remarkable person with a remarkable story. His experience reminds us of how American friendships can build bridges around the world, individual by individual. As Mr. Chang put it to me, "KU literally saved my life."

Today we fear for our image abroad and the way that the world relates to the American presence. It is instructive to meet KU's international alumni and listen to their stories and their views. It reminds us that international relations are built, individual by individual, upon acts of kindness and understanding.