Director Kevin Insik Hahn has taken up part-time teaching duties this semester at Ewha Womans University, his former affiliation before CENS. In his latest guest column at Seoul Newspaper, he recounts inspirational professors and experiences during his postsecondary education.
During his undergraduate years at UCLA, Kevin was registered in an overview course on linguistics. To his intrigue, the American professor of the course discussed the Korean language rather often, with great expertise. When asked how to pronounce a Korean vowel “ㅡ” (usually transcribed as “eu”), the professor answered, “It is like saying ‘Goooood morning!’ to a close friend of yours with an elongated vowel.” Kevin was very impressed with the apt explanation, and that episode was a motivation for him to teach his academic subject with passion, confidence and depth.
In addition, Kevin recalls a unique experience in a graduate-level course on atomic physics. Rather than a typical final exam consisting of writing answers to a set of problems, the enrolled students in that course had to select and explain verbally the latest scientific publications in their specialized fields to the course instructor. In hindsight, such oral exams were very effective in training individuals to be acquainted with frontier research topics. It would require much more effort to listen and critique each student’s response than grading generic written exams, but a professor who granted this valuable experience to Kevin and his colleagues was Serge Haroche, a 2012 Nobel Prize laureate in Physics.
Professor Hahn has vowed to be at his best
when teaching for over 20 years, because his one-hour lecture to a class of 100
students would occupy their precious 100 hours. While he admits his
shortcomings, Hahn’s resolve has not wavered – especially since this semester
may be his last.
URL to the column (in Korean): http://www.seoul.co.kr/news/newsView.php?id=20210323029012
Center for Exotic Nuclear Studies