By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Soojung Han, 35, who visited Dowagiac Friday, went to Union High School and toured Southwestern Michigan College.
"One of her major goals is to meet some of the students who participated in her pen pals program for the last few years, as well as the school and its staff," including teacher Teri Frantz, according to DUHS graduate Chris Hodshire, who accompanied her.
"The main goal with SMC is to create an exchange between them and a college in South Korea."
Hodshire teaches for Davenport University in Lansing.
Han graduated in 1991 from Masan Junior College as a dental hygienist. She is from Changwon city, South Korea.
She met with 10 student pen pals at Union High and toured Southwestern Michigan College guided by Sara Essig.
Soojung, who also visited Dowagiac in 2003, was impressed by the infrastructure available in such a small town, including a college, hospital and airport.
From 2003 to 2005 she worked for her government as an educator and administrator for the Ministry of Education in Gyeongsangnamdo.
From 2000 to 2003 she had been a volunteer teaching South Korean language for foreign workers in the Migrant Foreign Workers Office in Changwon city.
Soojung spent April to November 2003 in the Refugee Service in Lansing as an international volunteer with the Red Cross. She also served as a volunteer guest teacher of South Korean for the Walter French Academy in Lansing.
"I came to Kalamazoo in May of this year," she said. "I'll be going back next week."
"She was invited here by Michigan South Korean Initiative to expand programs she's already got and to create new initiatives throughout the state," explained Hodshire, who visited South Korea in February with a Lansing group.
"She kind of works with her government, the embassy, in promoting Michigan and South Korea, at schools, libraries and community centers. She has a lot of things established – at least in the southern part."
In South Korea, "I talked to some deans over there," he said. "They're looking for someone about their size. We think SMC would be a good fit with Mason. One major challenge is finding a perfect fit because they've got to be about the same size. A lot goes into it and it takes a couple of years to establish something like that."
That kind of relationship would be new for SMC. In fact, very few Americans colleges have entered into it except in Washington state and Oregon, where there is a steady stream of Asian students, including Japan as well as South Korea.
Most of SMC's foreign students hail from Africa, particularly Kenya, according to Gerhard Stigler, SMC's international student adviser.