Institutions
KAIST was founded with government funding and was initially staffed with a number of Korean engineers and scientists educated in the United States. From the onset, the emphasis has been in theoretical as well as applied research. KAIST continues to be Korea's foremost center of strategic research and development projects. The University helped pioneer the establishment of competitive research oriented graduate school programs in Korea.
The University's some 540 faculty conducts research in cooperation with academies and industries all over the world. KAIST offers grants and fellowships to international students.
The present KAIST president is Nam Pyo Suh. Soon-Heung Chang, a nuclear scientist, serves as provost and Ji-won Yang, a chemical engineer, as vice president for external affairs.
The University has for many decades recruited faculty from overseas. Current president Nam Pyo Suh taught for many years at MIT. His predecessor, Robert Laughlin, a Nobel laureate and a physics professor at Stanford University, was the first non-Korean to head a Korean university.
The vast majority of professors come from US higher education institutions. The school engages in many international programs with leading European and Asian universities. The university is a member of LAOTSE, an international network of universities in Europe and Asia. It is also a member of the Association of East Asian Research Universities.
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Famous quotes containing the word institutions:
“The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails—aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond the hunter’s reach long after they are dead. It is of no use to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but merely, as it were a prehensile tail.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)