Brain Korea 21 PLUS Grant

One of SKKU’s greatest achievements is that the university’s thirty one project groups won the Brain Korea 21 PLUS 2016, ranking second in the nation and the first amongst private universities in terms of the number of selected project groups.

The College of Science also demonstrated its academic excellence and competitive edge against the comparable disciplines at other Korean Universities, by winning the bids for the grant program. This remarkable accomplishment also enabled our college to stand as one of two universities where all departments of the four major areas of Basic Science - Biological Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry - have been selected after going through the mid-term evaluation and review conducted in 2015. The total amount of financial aid that the College of Science is going to collect from 2016 to 2019 reaches approximately 12.7 billion KRW (11 million USD).

The Brain Korea 21 PLUS Grant, or BK21 PLUS in short, which is one of the largest and long-standing government-led research grant programs, was initiated in 1999 with the aim of supporting South Korean higher education and research institutions which foster future generation in academia. In other words, its primary goal is to develop competitive graduate programs by financially supporting them with government resources where outstanding scholastic and research outcomes are expected to be created; and therefore produce global leading institutions with quality research capabilities and learning environments. Currently, the grant is jointly administered by the Ministry of Education and Korea Research Foundation.

World Univeristy Ranking

According to QS World University Ranking by Subject 2021, SKKU’s Natural Sciences has been proven to be as competitive as some prestigious universities, such as Pennsylvania, Texas A&M and Shanghai Jiaotong, by ranking at 79th place.

Even through, the disciplines the College of Science houses do not ideally match with the categorization for evaluation and review prescribed by the ranking organizations, this data attests that the College of Science contributes to SKKU’s overall global recognition as well as to the prosperity, development, and sustainability of the entire globe.

Narrowing down each department, the released data by QS World University Ranking by Subject 2021, places biological sciences, mathematics, chemistry and physics anywhere between 51 and 100. Even though, we made significant strides in our global reputation, recognition and contribution, there is still a long way ahead to becoming a global leading power house for research and development in natural sciences.

Advancement of College Educaton

The College of Science’s commitment to quality education, particularly for undergraduates, is well exemplified by the fact that the College has been taking a pivotal role of SKKU’s university-wide initiative to take advantage of the government grant program called the Advancement of College of Education, or ACE.

Acknowledged as the leading university in undergraduate education specifically having competitive edges on well-organized teaching and founding ideology-based pedagogy, SKKU has engaged in the ACE project since the inaugural year of 2010, as one of a few institutions which won the bid at the time. The College of Science, where undergraduate education for Basic Sciences and Mathematics (BSM), such as General Biology, Physics, Chemistry, and Calculus, is carried out for all students in the Natural Sciences Campus, has been one of the major contributors to the improvement of science learning and education in South Korea. Currently, we are in the second phase of the program started in 2014, working on creating a web media contents-based creative science laboratory where ubiquitous and flipped learning are able to be actualized in accordance with the four-year plan to form the admirable learning environment for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, or STEM Field students.

IEQAS Certified

SKKU is one of the Korean universities which have been accredited by International Education Quality Assurance System (IEQAS) administered by Ministry of Education and National Research Foundation of Korea. IEQAS qualitatively as well as quantitatively examines a particular university’s services, administration, education, infrastructure and other factors that are generally considered important for international students. In short, IEQAS aims at enhancing South Korean universities’ management skills of international students by suggesting ideal standards for international student recruitment, caring, and retention. A tertiary higher education institution accredited by IEQAS will have more chances to win the Global Korea Scholarship, which will eventually and substantially benefit the students it takes in.