Sungkyunkwan University has opened a joint semiconductor course run under the same curriculum as leading universities in Europe and North America. It marks the first time universities across three continents — North America, Europe and Asia — have run an identical curriculum with each institution granting regular academic credit.
According to reporting by Seoul Economic Daily on the 15th, Sungkyunkwan University has newly opened "Advanced Analog Circuit Design," a major course in its Department of Semiconductor Convergence Engineering, this fall semester. The curriculum was designed jointly with Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the University of Toronto in Canada, and the three universities are teaching the same curriculum in the same semester.
Three co-instructors from the three universities each teach for three weeks, for a combined nine weeks, followed by five weeks of lectures from five experts invited from countries including the United States, Japan, Canada and Germany. With two weeks of online discussion sessions added, the course runs for a total of 16 weeks. Classes are held online and cover power, clocking and wireless communications, core areas of system semiconductor circuit design.
What sets the course apart is that it is not a one-off special lecture by visiting scholars but a regular course in which the three universities have linked their curricula and credit systems. The teaching lineup consists of researchers who are Fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) or distinguished lecturers. The course is open to fourth-year undergraduates and master's students.
Sungkyunkwan University expects the program to let students complete a curriculum on par with that of top overseas universities while experiencing a global research and education environment. It is also significant in that the joint curriculum could broaden cooperation to student and faculty exchanges and joint semiconductor research going forward, the university said.
The course was spearheaded by Lee Woo-geun, a professor in the university's Department of Semiconductor Convergence Engineering who has worked in the United States and China. "I believed it was important to give students a global education experience, so I spent more than six months preparing," the professor said. "We were able to open the course this fall semester."
