International students are already stressed with Korean academics and life, but when they graduate and leave the comforts of KAIST for a career in Korea, will they be prepared? On September 13, KISA has created for the first ever the Mentor Forum to address this concern. The forum was held in the Fusion Hall at the KI Building (E4) where four KAIST alumni with careers in major Korean institutions talked about their experiences. The event was headed by Faustine Devaga from the KISA Events Team, and The KAIST Herald met with her to discuss the details about this program.

Hello, my name is Faustine Devaga from Indonesia. I am in my third year, majoring in biological sciences, and I am also a member of the KISA Event Team.

We at KISA wanted to address concerns international students have about their current school life, their adaptation to Korean society, and their future careers. Our intent was to show the undergraduates the variety of options available to them once they graduate and how they can reach that goal. So my co-member at KISA Talha and I collaborated to create this forum and selected various alumni with different cultural and work backgrounds. Three of the alumni come from major companies such as Samsung and Daelim and one currently works at Solbridge Business School in Daejeon. They spoke to the undergraduates and described the life experiences they had while trying to obtain a career in Korea. We hope that the undergraduates can learn much from what they have to say and feel a little more relaxed with their future plans.

Language and culture are the most apparent but one specific problem is the hierarchical system present in the Korean society and workplace. For students from other Asian countries, such as Vietnam and Indonesia, this is not too big of a concern since they have something similar in their home countries, but for Europeans and Americans, this hierarchy seems quite strict and bewildering. Some of these people have a hard time speaking up or managing a conversation with their Korean peers. Hopefully, the forum will give them a good push and a little more confidence in trying to communicate with Koreans.

For the most part, I think so, but some things can be improved. For example, the language courses available in this school are sufficient but a bit too rudimentary. I think they need to increase the level of the course to make sure that the foreigners can speak at least comfortably with Koreans. Another thing I think the school needs is events that both foreigners and Koreans can partake in. One such example is the sports festival held this November and we hope to get as much involvement from students as possible. The more success we have, the more events we can plan for the future.

For now, we plan on making this forum an annual event. If we could, we might expand this to twice a year, but due to arrangement issues, it is for now limited to once a year. However, we plan on creating similar events. One idea we have is a Department’s Day, which is similar to a mobility fair, and it allows the undergraduates to have a look into the various majors and get help in choosing a department. We still have much planning to do, since most of the staff are Korean, and we need a lot of people to act as translators, but we are trying out best and thinking of new ideas, so look forward to them!