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Hot summer days at UC Berkeley - September issue
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- REG_DATE : 2015.08.31
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Hot summer days at UC Berkeley
Sophomores from GIST College attended classes at the University of California at Berkeley this summer. We [Science Donga Magazine] went along with them to find out how they study at one of the most prestigious university in the world.
UC Berkeley is near San Francisco, the seaport city with a population of 830,000 people. San Francisco is always bustling with tourists visiting famous attractions like the Golden Gate Bridge. Berkeley is just 30 minutes to the east by subway, and there are more students riding around town on bicycles than in cars. It is a city that is serious about education, and a bookstore seems to be on every street corner. In its distinguished 150 year history, UC Berkeley has produced 70 Nobel Prize winners, and it is considered to be one of the world’s most prestigious university.
Every year during summer vacation, GIST sophomores are given a chance to attend the UC Berkeley Summer Session program. This is made possible thanks to the global programs offered by GIST. Almost all major expenses such as tuition, room and board, and the meal plan is paid for by GIST. The students only have to pay for their round-trip plane tickets to America. Any sophomore with a TOEIC score of 785 or higher or a TOEFL iBT score of 80 or higher can participate in the program. This summer, there were 99 GIST students enrolled in the eight-week program from June 22 to August 14.
What is the secret to getting a job at Google?
UC Berkeley is well known for computer science and many alumni find employment at nearby IT companies in Silicon Valley. A student named Jin Woo Kim was attending a computer science class and noticed that the other students" programming skills were rather mediocre. He wondered how these students could end up working for the top IT companies. He soon discovered that UC Berkeley had a very good curriculum. The school focuses on strong fundamentals and adds practical experience and anything else related to the subject. He also found out that unlike Korean study groups where everyone gets the same grade, study groups at UC Berkeley were different because everyone is graded individually so--along with jeopardizing the group"s grade--a student is also hurting his or her own grade by not fully participating with the rest of the group.
An assignment to meditate for five minutes in a botanical garden
Soo Hee Boo attended an architecture class but, to her amazement, the homework was to go to a botanical garden and meditate for five minutes and then draw her favorite plant. It was unclear to her why such an assignment was given to architecture majors. Some other strange assignments were to figure out how to reduce the amount of her daily garbage and to find signs of California’s drought on the campus. Summers at Berkeley are different than in Korea. Korea is like a sauna with too much humidity, but Berkeley has very little humidity. It was scorching hot under the sun but quite chilly in the shade. There were news about forest fires every day, but finding signs of the drought on the campus was not easy. After wandering around all day, Soo Hee found yellowed leaves of a tree and a dried up stream. She remembered a line from the movie “Architecture 101” that said architecture is to affectionately understand your current living space. She always wanted to actively participate in an architecture class, and her wish was granted at UC Berkeley. GIST College has no major for architecture. Only seven major tracks are offered at GIST: physics, chemistry, biology, electrical engineering & computer science, mechanical engineering, material science & engineering, and earth & environmental engineering tracks.
The summer semester in the United States is an important opportunity to quench a student’s intellectual thirst. GIST students take two classes at UC Berkeley: One class can be from any of the sciences (such as quantum mechanics, organic chemistry, physiology, or discrete mathematics), and the other class can be anything that appeals to them. Interestingly enough, many GIST students were interested in Social Inequality, which is a sociology course. Twenty-two GIST students signed up for that class where they learned about various forms of social discrimination, such as racial, sexual, and economic. Electrical engineering and computer science student Chae Seung said, “I was curious about how UC Berkeley, the school that is famous for the most progressive social movement of the 1960"s, would teach social inequality. Taking such a course re-emphasizes our school"s motto about learning to think critically.”
Google, Apple, and Stanford
GIST students took field trips to Google and Apple. Their campuses are larger than GIST"s! GIST professor Steve Kyoung Rae Cho emphasized to students that they should see the world from a wider perspective. They also met with the 2013 Nobel Prize winner in physiology or medicine: Stanford University professor Thomas Südhof (pictured above). He gave them the important advice that Asian students, especially male students, need to communicate more effectively with researchers around them to be successful. Also, he told the students that you are more likely to find success if you knock on doors rather than just being a smart student who waits for something to happen. He wants students to constantly create their own opportunities by following their passions and engaging with their professors who can help them discover their own interests.
Hyuk Jin Cho knocked on the door of UC Berkeley’s life science professor Luke Lee. Professor Lee (pictured above) is the world’s leading scholars in the field of nanobio fusion technology. Because Hyuk Jin knocked on the professor"s door (and because Jyuk Jin is a good student), Dr. Lee accepted him as an intern in his lab. As a Korean-American professor, Dr. Lee jokingly told Hyuk Jin to learn from the graduate students even when they go to the restroom. Dr. Lee wanted Hyuk Jin to learn as much as he can before returning back to Korea.
Numerous global programs available at GIST College
Although the Berkeley Summer Session is the most popular educational program among GIST students, there are numerous other global programs available at GIST College. Another popular program is called the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF), and it allows GIST students to perform laboratory research over the summer with professors at the California Institute of Technology. And through the Study Abroad Program (SAP), GIST students can attend UC Berkeley or Caltech as an exchange student for an entire semester. There is also an entrepreneurship training program that GIST students can attend at the Israel Institute of Technology, which is part of Israel Technion. GIST College offers many amazing educational opportunities for students!