DIS, established in the year 2001, offers all its courses in English and strives to create successful leaders in the field of international relations. The new DSIS was formed with the slightly different goal to offer future global leaders chances for an interdisciplinary education, combining in-depth knowledge from several traditional fields.
“The DIS and DSIS both aim to cultivate potential women leaders in the globalized society of the 21st century,” said Kim Hei-sook (Philosophy), the Dean of Scranton College. However, said Kim, “ The DSIS will differ from the DIS in the students it hopes to attract, as well as in its curriculum.
“The DIS consists mainly of students who have experience living abroad and who speak English well. Besides, International Studies is the only division of Ewha which offers its courses all in English. The school wished to give other students a chance to receive a global education as well, so we plan to have chaired professors and invite nobel laureates to teach in the DSIS,” said Kim
Unlike the other departments of Ewha, the DSIS will coordinate courses in philosophy, literature, and history to create an interdisciplinary major called Critical and Cultural Studies. Such a synthesis has been planned due to the belief that an expert in a single area cannot manage the complex and rapidly changing nature of the modern society. Other majors will include Digital Humanities, Initiatives in Social Sciences, Science, and Life and Society. DSIS students may pick one among those five areas as their major upon becoming sophomores, or they will also be allowed to design independent majors of their own called Self-Designed Majors. Moreover, the students of DSIS will enjoy privileges such as one-year full scholarships and being automatic acceptance when they sign up
for a room in the dormitory, while other students are put on a waiting list and chosen randomly.
Most DSIS majors offered are a convergence of studies in the fields of cultural and social science and engineering.The Self-designed major, however, is a new concept at Ewha. “The Self-Designed Major is designed to meet the needs of students who wish to enter law schools and medical schools since, these days, colleges are transforming their law and medical departments into graduate schools. However, this does not mean that the college is restricting the boundary of the independent major to pre-law or pre-med. I also would like to offer a variety of opportunities for students to develop their potential,” said Kim.
The DSIS program can be understood as a type of double major. Students accepted to the program keep their original majors which they applied for when entering Ewha, but expand their studies taking the specialized interdisciplinary courses provided by the DSIS.
Thirty freshmen were accepted as the inaugural students of the DSIS this spring based on interest and their suneung (Korean SAT) scores, high school GPAs, and interviews. The 90 highest-scoring students were contacted during the vacation for an in-depth interview, which focused on the students’ specific career development goals. Another 70 students will be admitted to the program at the end of the year based on their grades at Ewha.
Kim Da-som (Molecular & Life Sciences, 1), a newly accepted DSIS student said, “When applying for Ewha, there was a check box on the application form which asked whether I wanted to sign up for the DSIS. I marked the box after reading about the DSIS in the admissions brochure.”
Park So-yoon (Molecular & Life Sciences, 1) another DSIS student says, “For now, thirty of us are studying the courses offered by our original majors and taking only one DSIS course, Thinking and Writing, together. We still don’t know what kind of courses will be offered by