Earlier this semester the Career Development Center (CDC) held the Happy Forum, a coaching program and mentoring service made up of professionals of various occupations who aim to help students develop a better understanding of themselves. The program is evaluated as a revolutionary project of CDC for its one-of-a-kind self-leadership program.
The Happy Forum Coaching Association, the sponsor of this program, is famous among companies and entrepreneurs. It provides consulting service to promote oneself or an institute by deeper understanding of themselves and searching for one’s future vision. Ewha is the first university to conduct the Happy Forum coaching program in association.
“The Happy Forum coaching provides optimized service. It first analyzes the participant’s overall character and then connects with the coach,” said Jinny Kang, a staff member from CDC.
To analyze the participant of the coaching program, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment was performed individually. The MBTI assessment examines test-takers’ characteristic by classifying into 16 different personalities and this enables relevant coaches to hold details about participants and provide coaching of participants’ interests.
“The Happy Forum coaching differentiates itself from other mentoring programs as a “Self-Leadership” program. Our premier goal is to help students acknowledge about themselves better by answering questions during in-depth coaching,” said Kang.
For the first session from September to January, 15 students, freshmen and sophomores of various majors, and seven coaches from Happy Forum take the lead of the coaching. Students discuss their personal, career, diverse problems with their assigned coach. Total five coaching will be provided until the end of 2009-02 semester and details like location and methods are different from student to student.
“Private coaching just for me – it comforts me a lot,” said Yang Soo-jin (Mathematics Education, 2). “There is no designated syllabus in my coaching. It is focused on my temporary state. She listens to me attentively and advises me by using the data that was given before.”
Also Yang’s coach emphasized on developing Yang’s ability to solve problems by herself. “Coach usually asks questions that can pull the answer out from me. In the end, I got to know that I had the answer all the time, and coach helps me to have more confidence in me,” said Yang.
Apart from students’ satisfaction toward the coaching program, the coaches from the HFCA are also satisfied with their first coaching contact with undergraduate students.
“So far, Ewha students impressed me huge,” said Mo Kyung-ja coach from Happy Forum Coaching Association (HFCA). According to coaches in Happy Forum program, students mostly show fear regarding their future. However coaches say that student are different from adult in a way that they are more honest when talking about their problems.
“Also through my coaching experience, I learned that students are more eager to change their problems and push themselves on for development,” said Mo.
The Happy Forum coaching for this semester will be finished after five coaching sessions for every student in December, before winter vacation. CDC and HFCA will gather the data from its first coaching service by receiving feedbacks from all participants including HFCA coaches and redesign the program.