During the first two weeks of the fall semester, the KAIST Freshman Administrative Team received applications for the 2013 Fall Coaching Program. The applications were limited to 20 KAIST freshmen, 17 Koreans and 3 foreigners. After the allocation of the coaches to the students, the program is due to run for the entire semester.
The Coaching Program was first implemented in the fall semester of 2011 and has been running regularly every semester. The main objective of this program is to help students find their set of skills for a successful university life. Unlike other nurturing programs, the Coaching Program focuses on self-development. Each coach encourages the students to find their own innate aptitudes or talents and assists them in choosing their future career paths based on their strengths.
The coaches are from Happy Forum, which is a branch of the Korean Coaching Organization. As they are all from the fields of natural sciences or engineering, they are capable of providing helpful assistance and guidance to KAIST freshmen. Although their coaching is rarely free, the coaches for this program are volunteers, willingly contributing to the upbringing of successful Korean leaders free of charge.
The coaching program consists of two parts: first of which are the two offline sessions where the students meet their respective coaches in person to receive various advice; the latter are the four online sessions where the students are given guidance by coaches through phone calls or Skype. Previously, all six of the sessions were carried out on a one-to-one basis. However, as many previous students of the program suggested that group coaching would also be effective, a five-member group coaching has been added to the program starting this semester.
Dong-Kyeong Lee
dk1558@gmail.com