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Lamont Weekly Report – August
12, 2005
OFFICE
OF THE DIRECTOR
P.O. Box 1000, 61 Route 9W Palisades, New York 10964
<> REPORT SUMMARY <>
– Letter from the Director –
____________________________________
<> LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR
I flew out to Seoul Korea on Monday and have
spent the last three days with Sean Solomon from Carnegie,
Ray Weiss from Scripps, Howard Roe from Southampton and Teruyuki
Nakajima from University of Tokyo, carrying out an external
review of the School of Earth Sciences at the Seoul National
University (SNU). In fact it has been an extremely interesting
several days, and we have all learned a lot. It is an impressive
school with faculty almost exclusively educated in the US,
and all functioning at the highest levels of our science.
SNU is so good that it has no peer in South Korea, which sets
up a complex national dynamic with all students and all young
faculty wanting to work at only one university, and being
willing to experience very low pay and receive almost no incentives,
simply for the prestige associated with being on the SNU staff.
They must learn to function very differently from an American
university in order to avoid the possible stagnation that
'in-breeding' would produce. But as they have grown over the
past few years this has not been a problem and they have a
great set of diverse and highly international projects, and
have succeeded in attracting faculty out of tenure track positions
in top US universities.
It is tough to believe as one drives down the
busy downtown streets of modern Seoul, that it is only 30km
from the border with North Korea. And it is even tougher to
hear the students talk of the three year mandatory military
service that they must all undertake, and casually discuss
the need to defend Seoul from the North for only three days,
because that is how long it will take for the US to bring
in the tactical nuclear weapons...
We unexpectedly had an audience with the President
of SNU on Friday morning - he got his PhD from Princeton and
taught at Columbia business school for 3 years - so he was
completely familiar with the US university system - it was
a very good and open conversation. And it was interesting
to see the massive steel blast doors in the corridor outside
his office used as protection during the student riots of
a few decades ago.
Korean hospitality was overwhelming - and as
usual when traveling in Asia I ate some of the best food I
have ever tasted, but almost never knew what I was eating...
I fly home Saturday afternoon and get into JFK in the evening,
so I will have Sunday to recover, and be ready for a 'normal'
week next week.
Hope all is well at Lamont, and have a great
weekend,
– Mike
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