It’s time for SNU to set the standard of our time.
A sport-management scholar and institution-builder, educated at SNU, Wharton, and Michigan. He’s running to give Korea’s flagship university the autonomy and the connections it needs to lead.
Great people alone don’t make a great university.
For most of my career I kept my head down in my own field, sport management. Then I was pulled into administration, and I finally saw SNU from the inside: how much it had given me, and how much of its strength it never puts to work.
Our students are extraordinary and our faculty world-class. But the institution doesn’t yet add up to the sum of its people, and the walls stay high: between departments, and between the university and the outside world.
I’m running to change that, the SNU way. That means real autonomy for the people who teach and do research, connections that let ideas and talent move freely, and the nerve to pioneer and set the standard instead of chasing it.
Pioneering, the SNU Way.
The AI revolution, the climate crisis, and a remaking of the global order are arriving all at once, and the world is asking again what a university is for. SNU is the university that has to answer.
The answer is to discern what humanity must keep from what it must change, and to set the standard accordingly. That is the SNU way. Measured against that standard, we have to look honestly at both SNU’s excellence and its social responsibility, and reach for new challenges together.
That work rests on three commitments: autonomy, connection, and pioneering.
Autonomy
SNU should be driven by the free will of people who hold high ideals. We will clear out bureaucratic interference and the pressure of short-term metrics. People trusted with real autonomy hold themselves to a higher standard than any metric could impose.
Connection
This is an age of connection, yet too many walls still stand inside SNU. We will make it easy to connect: across disciplines, between the university and the outside world, and between people and machines, with AI as a genuine partner that opens new ground in teaching, research, and administration.
Pioneering
A university that sets the standard has to move first. We will make SNU a place where daring is the norm: research that opens new ground, ideas that leave campus and take shape in the world, and room to fail on the way to work that matters.
Four fundamental changes.
Rethink education for the AI era
AI is rewriting what it means to learn. We will redefine how SNU teaches, so students move past absorbing knowledge to producing it and putting it to work.
Open new ground in research
Getting somewhere first takes more than talent. We will build the innovative support systems and a culture that rewards daring, so SNU’s scholars can open paths no one has walked.
Strengthen SNU’s public role
The hardest problems of our era are too big for any one institution. We will take them on together with society, and put SNU’s knowledge to work in public.
Invest in the people who do the work
None of it happens with a faculty stretched thin. We will improve pay dramatically and cut the administrative load decisively, so research and teaching get people’s whole attention.
333: world-class support for faculty.
World-class research and teaching come from world-class support. 333 is where building that support begins, with three concrete promises to the faculty.
How we pay our faculty will decide SNU’s future.
This isn’t a possibility to explore. It’s a mandate for lifting SNU to the level it must reach, and the first priority. To attract and keep world-class faculty, you need a globally competitive way of paying them. Average full-professor compensation of ₩300M isn’t just a bigger number. It’s the baseline for standing alongside Asia’s leading universities, such as NUS and the University of Hong Kong.
Backing long-horizon inquiry, free and original.
Faculty are buried in writing proposals for the next grant cycle, and research that startles the world doesn’t come from that. We will provide a steady ₩30M a year so scholars can focus on the substance of their work, free of outside pressure. We will fold today’s tangle of support categories into one fund they can spend freely, with no line-item caps, and cut paperwork through after-the-fact reporting.
A teaching load on par with the world’s leading universities.
At the world’s leading universities the load is only two or three courses a year. With the 2024 revision to the Higher Education Act giving universities more autonomy, it’s time for SNU to meet that standard. We will cut the annual load substantially, from 18 credits toward about 9, while leaving each college and department free to adapt it to its own circumstances. The point is to give faculty back the time to devote themselves to research and advanced teaching.
Leadership the academy already knows.
Three decades across Korea and the United States: in the classroom, in the lab, and in the meeting rooms where a university actually gets run.
Settled SNU’s biggest tax problem for good
As head of the Tax-Law-Revision task force, resolved the largest post-incorporation tax issue permanently, saving roughly ₩300 billion every decade.
Built Korea’s first learning-sciences program
As Dean of the College of Education, founded the Learning Science Research Institute and an undergraduate major, leading the shift in education for the AI era.
Built gathering places for the whole campus
Created the Main Gate Square and rebuilt the Culture Center, securing ₩29B in government funds along the way.
Readied SNU for the AI era
Founded the university-wide SNU AI Committee, spanning AI education, AI research, and the Nakseongdae AI Valley.
Gave SNU a stronger voice
Built SNU’s dedicated strategic-communications team, brought in SK Telecom specialists, and launched the SNU Bird Letter.
Trained leaders for the world
Directed SNU’s Dream Together Master program for 13 years (₩25.4B), graduating 260-plus sport-administration leaders from 58 countries.
A sport-management scholar with decades of cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural leadership, and the global perspective to lead a great university.
Built to lead on the world stage.
The next chapter of higher education gets written across borders, and Joon-ho KANG already moves in that world. He taught at the University of Connecticut before coming home to SNU, and today he works internationally at the top of his field. He wants SNU to move in that world just as naturally.
An agent for everyone aboard.
The most basic quality of leadership is a public mind: putting the whole institution ahead of yourself. Leadership is public by nature, and a leader is an agent, entrusted by the community to do what the institution needs.
For me the goal isn’t to become president. It’s to do the work as president, adapting to a fast-changing world on the community’s behalf, and taking responsibility for the safety and the future of everyone aboard the aircraft carrier that is SNU.
My goal was never to become president. It was to do the work, for everyone who learns and discovers at this university.
Get in touch.
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