{"id":7470,"date":"2026-04-07T21:43:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T21:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/07\/isu-partners-with-south-korean-chungnam-university-to-push-innovation-especially-with-ai-wglt\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T21:43:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T21:43:20","slug":"isu-partners-with-south-korean-chungnam-university-to-push-innovation-especially-with-ai-wglt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/07\/isu-partners-with-south-korean-chungnam-university-to-push-innovation-especially-with-ai-wglt\/","title":{"rendered":"ISU partners with South Korean Chungnam University to push innovation\u2014especially with AI – WGLT"},"content":{"rendered":"

Illinois State University<\/a> formalized a new international partnership Tuesday, signing a joint memorandum of understanding with Chungnam National University in Seoul, South Korea.
At a signing ceremony before lunch, Chungnam President Jeong-Kyoum Kim said he\u2019d been in Normal for less than three hours, but it already felt like home.
\u201cIt\u2019s probably that my background college is education,\u201d he said through an interpreter. \u201cAnd staff and faculty are really generous. That\u2019s why I feel really comfortable, and feel like I’m home now.\u201d
ISU President Aondover Tarhule said the agreement is the first step in establishing an exchange of culture and knowledge between the two universities, while leaning into similarities and shared values.
That includes research and innovation with special emphasis on the appropriate use of artificial intelligence.
\u201cAt such a time as this, when global challenges increasingly demand global solutions, partnerships such as ours are not only beneficial\u2014they\u2019re essential,\u201d Tarhule said.
Among the opportunities open to the two institutions are collaborative research, knowledge sharing among faculty and staff and the potential for students to study abroad.
\u201cWhat is really important here, I think, is the cross nature of what we can learn from each other,\u201d Tarhule said.
Tarhule said he was particularly impressed by the partnerships developed with Chungnam\u2019s engineering program. That’s something to consider as ISU builds out its campus on G.E. Road for the still-new College of Engineering<\/a>.
\u201cI think you are situated next to an industrial area specifically to synergize those partnerships,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is something that we at Illinois State can learn.\u201d
Tarhule also found kinship between the universities\u2019 agriculture programs and lauded Chungnam\u2019s many research institutes.
\u201cAnd of course you\u2019re one of 10 national flagship universities, which in Korea it\u2019s a big honor given you have almost 200 universities.\u201d
The partnership, which was prompted by a former ISU faculty member who now works for Chungnam, is in its early stages, with meetings just beginning to take place over the past several months.
President Kim said he felt good about his Tuesday morning meetings on campus.
Among those was a stop at ISU\u2019s Adaptive Edge Institute<\/a>, which is leading the way on responsibly adopting AI on campus.
South Korea is far ahead of the United States in developing and adopting AI, but Executive Director of International Engagement Roopa Rawjee said \u201cwe, too, are doing some amazing work.\u201d
Rawjee said the partnership is an opportunity to challenge assumptions, engage in conversations and \u201ccome back with concrete learning and understanding of each other\u2019s cultures\u2014and how we are all working with AI in this new era.\u201d
During his remarks, Kim said through an interpreter most AI in Korea is \u201ctop down.\u201d Kim was intrigued by ISU\u2019s approach, with policy recommendation driven by faculty and staff.
\u201cTop-down strategy looks like it works in the short-term, but over time, it doesn\u2019t work,\u201d he said, saying institutions should use a ground-up strategy for as long as they can.
Rawjee attended the meeting and said she\u2019s interested in seeing how two cultures work differently with AI.
\u201cSome of the pieces that came out are about embracing the uncertainty of AI,\u201d she said, \u201cembracing the humanness of it, making sure the humans are using critical learning skills and critical thinking skills to utilize AI in a responsible way.
\u201cThat really resonated with our visitors,\u201d she said.
Rawjee said AI policymaking is another topic ISU hopes to collaborate on.
\u201cOne of the pieces that really resonated was the work occurring at our Metcalf School<\/a> with our middle school students,\u201d she said, \u201c…talking about responsible use of AI and thinking about how AI can help our teachers and our faculty do a better job of our learning plans and our prep materials.\u201d
Rawjee said collaborations with Chungnam will be of a variety of types, including virtual conferences and bringing visiting faculty and scholars to ISU. Director of the Mennonite College of Nursing\u2019s Office of Nursing Research [and native Korean] Myoung Jin Kim will be the first faculty fellow for the Adaptive Edge Institute.
\u201cThe world is our oyster and we\u2019re so excited about everything we\u2019re going to be able to do together,\u201d she said.
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Illinois State University formalized a new international partnership Tuesday, signing a joint memorandum of understanding with Chungnam National University in Seoul, South Korea.At a signing ceremony before lunch, Chungnam President Jeong-Kyoum Kim said he\u2019d been in Normal for less than three hours, but it already felt like home.\u201cIt\u2019s probably that my background college is education,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7470","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}