Hong Daesik, Recipient of the Best Teacher Award in Applied Science Professor Hong Daesik of the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering is blessed with a loud voice and ringing laughter, and these are the qualities that Professor Hong attributes to his success in teaching, which earned him the Best Teacher Award in Applied Science at Yonsei University. Of course, he is being modest. Despite the fact that his classes are huge, owing partly to the structure of lectures in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and also partly to his popularity, Hong makes it his mission to meet with his students individually at least three times during the semester. Motivation is the Key “The most important thing is ‘motivation.’ To speak in lofty words, I try to elicit from my students their own dreams and visions. Once motivation kicks in, there is no holding them back. They will begin to think and study for themselves and go in search for answers to their problems.” Professor Hong groups his students into twos and assigns each group a project to visit corporations. The groups will then report their experiences and share their information in a conference-style setting. This helps the students to understand the relevance of what they are learning as they apply to corporate business. The next thing he emphasizes is time management. “Learning is not a sprint but a marathon, but not many students come to my class prepared for this long journey. I believe that undergraduate students should devote about 60 hours of their week time to study (for graduate students the hours go up to 80), and I try to instill in my students the importance of good time management.” Interacting with Students Professor Hong’s interview methods deserve some attention. He is well-known for conducting no less than three interviews per student during the semester, even in large-scale classes. “On the first interview, I make my students come in groups of threes. Our School of Electric and Electronic Engineering is so large that students of the same graduating class don’t even know each other.” Bringing them into my room in threes helps them to break the ice faster, he says. In addition, the interviews help him to remember his students more easily. By the end of the semester, he gets to know his students well enough to joke around with them. What is he most proud of? “It gladdens me to hear that my students are doing well after graduation, whether in academic or corporate settings. Currently I visit Samsung Electronics frequently on account of a project and quite often hear how well one of my students is doing, which pleases me to no end.” Although Professor Hong has won various awards for research, he is most proud to have been chosen Best Teacher for 2006 by his students: “I am honored and grateful. I will try harder to become a better teacher and counselor to my students.”