Miha Lee’s Grant Proposal
1
Miha Lee
Dr. Berry
SED 610
April 9, 2008
CURRICULUM FUNDING PROJECT
GRANTOR
Funding Agency: The Korea Science Foundation
Website: http://www.ksf.or.kr/en/main/main.jsp
The Korea Science Foundation is a national foundation whose mission is to develop
our country by advancing public understanding and knowledge of science technology,
and by promoting the culture so that it will be more widely available throughout society
in all aspects of their daily lives.
 Goal
The Korea Science Foundation will carry out following projects in order to achieve
our mission.
1. Research ways to promote science and technology and develop action plans.
2. Advance understanding of science and technology in youths and the general public.
3. Promote and support organizations and projects involved in activities spreading the
knowledge of science and technology.
4. Operate and support public media projects to spread and promote science and
technology.
5. Promote the international exchange and cooperation of science culture activities.
6. Utilize broadcasting channels to spread science culture.
7. Increase the morale of scientists and improve benefits available to them.
8. Carry out projects designated or commissioned by the Minister of Science and
Technology.
9. Carry out other projects that the Korea Science Foundation's board of directors decided
and are required to achieve the mission and goal of the Korea Science Foundation.
Funding Request: $ 100,000 for 2 years.
See Budget for details.
PROPOSER
Principal Investigator: Miha Lee
Miha Lee’s Grant Proposal
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Miha Lee is a teacher who is teaching chemistry in Kang-Seo Technical High School.
She is also a director of Seoul Chemistry Teachers Association.
Co-Investigators
1. Members of Seoul Chemistry Teachers’ Association.
The Seoul Chemistry Teachers Association is a group of chemistry teachers who
teaches physical science in middle schools and chemistry in high schools within Seoul
Metropolitan Office of Education. SCTA was founded in 1988 on teacher’s own initiative
in order to promote chemistry education by communicating with other teachers,
developing teaching strategies, and spreading our works through teachers’ workshop.
Now we have almost 80 teachers. SCTA holds one-week professional development
programs for science teachers every winter and summer vacation to distribute our work.
Particularly, our members are committed to improvement of chemistry education by
developing quality teaching materials including chemistry textbooks, reference books,
and experiment guide books for Korea chemistry education, and by giving lectures to
Seoul Science and chemistry teachers in a diverse form of teachers’ professional
development program in our school district.
2. Research group with Professor Noh at Seoul National University
Professor Noh is a prominent researcher in chemistry education. He has two ph. D.s.
One is in organic chemistry from the University of Chicago, and the other is in science
education from Kansas State University. He became a professor of Seoul National University
in 1993 when he came back from the U.S. Since then, he has written a numerous science and
chemistry textbooks and excellent research papers. He is leading the most competent research
group on chemistry education in Korea, hosting a very useful website for Korean chemistry
teachers. He and his research group will help the project become the theory-based one.
Project Name: Living By Chemistry for Korean
Investigator Credentials: 1st rate- Korean Secondary Education Teaching
Credential for Chemistry
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The important of developing chemistry literacy to be a good citizen
Science is a basic discipline that is taught throughout our educational system (from
Korean 7th Revised Curriculum). However, many high school students don’t appreciate its
importance and relevance to our lives because they don’t develop scientific literacy while
they are learning science. Scientific literacy is not specialized jargons of the experts. Students
don’t have to be able to synthesize new drugs to appreciate the importance of medical
advances, nor do they need to be able to calculate the orbit of the space station to understand
Miha Lee’s Grant Proposal
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its role in space exploration. Scientific literacy is rooted in the most general scientific
principles and broad knowledge of science; the scientifically literate citizen possesses facts
and vocabulary sufficient to comprehend the context of the daily news and newspapers.
Scientific literacy means a broad understanding of basic concepts (from
http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/hazen.html).
Scientific literacy will help people to understand issues that we come across daily in
news stories and government debates, appreciate how the natural laws of science influence
our life, and gain perspective on the intellectual climate of our time. To make a decision and
cast our vote as a citizen about issues that affect our lives, we need to have science literacy.
In order to develop students’ science literacy, science instruction should be focused
on conceptual understanding, not rote learning, and take the STS (Science-TeachnologySociety) approach. In other words, its content should be closely related social problems.
The importance of science education for development of Korea
According to Thomas L. Friedman, as the globalization progress, the world is
becoming flat, which means there is no limit in competition in a level playing field where all
competitors have an equal opportunity. A shift in perception is required if countries,
companies and individuals want to remain competitive in a global market where historical,
regional and geographical divisions are becoming increasingly irrelevant. (from the world is
flat) The shift demands our country to improve the quality of education to develop highly
competitive workforce. In fact, simple manufacturing jobs are gone to China and other
Southeast Asia countries. On the other hand, we don’t yet have enough competing power in
high technology industry and culture industry. As a result, we are suffering from high
unemployment rate these days. To survive in this changing world, we need to reform our
education.
First, we need to empower more students to learn science subjects. Nowadays, high
school students don’t want to study science than they did ten years ago because they think of
science as a difficult discipline to achieve high score on such test as Korean SAT.
Consequently, the number of our college students who major in science and engineering has
been declined seriously. This became a national concern. Why do they have difficulty geting
high scores? That’s because they don’t understand its overarching concepts. Therefore, our
mission of teaching practice should be promotion of students’ conceptual understanding. To
achieve this mission, we need to create an effective curriculum.
Second, we need to support teachers to get better their instruction. While existing
textbooks provide descriptions of the subject matter, they offer little specific guidance about
the most effective ways of teaching this subject matter. What is the best way of helping to
promote student understanding of a specific topic? For the most part, this question is not
addressed, and teachers are left on their own to make assumptions about how best to teach
each topic. If we expect high quality instruction in every classroom, then we need to help
teachers shoulder this huge burden, especially new teachers and teachers who are less
familiar with teaching a particular subject. Teachers need to be provided with information as
to which concepts are most difficult for students, why students have these difficulties, and
how to guide all students towards mastering the subject matter. The lessons should include
various teaching material such as experiments, worksheets with problems, and model
building, along with assessment questions to provide teachers and students with a periodic
check of the degree of student mastery of the concepts. When a curriculum provides detailed
daily lessons, the teachers can focus their attention on what the students are learning and the
effects of their teaching on this learning. (from http://www.keypress.com/x5166.xml)
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The importance of Inquiry in Science education.
Scientific inquiry refers to the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural
world and propose explanations based on the evidence derived from their work. Inquiry also
refers to the activities of students in which they develop knowledge and understanding of
scientific ideas, as well as an understanding of how scientists study the natural world. (from
National Science Education Standards, p. 23.)
Students who use inquiry to learn science engage in many of the same activities and
thinking processes as scientists who are seeking to expand human knowledge of the natural
world. In particular, the school laboratory has been given a central and distinctive role in
chemistry education, and science educators have suggested that rich benefits in learning
accrue from using laboratory activities (from Hofstein & Lunetta, 2004, Science education,
88, 28~54). Yet many teachers don’t feel comfortable with students doing laboratory work
because the activities and thinking processes used by scientists are not always familiar to
teachers who are seeking to introduce inquiry into their school laboratory. Thus, teachers
need an examples and detailed guide book for many facets of inquiry in science education so
that they can to incorporate laboratory to enhance intended learning outcomes.. The guide
book need to show how students and teachers can use inquiry to learn how to do science,
learn about the nature of science, and learn science content (National Research Council,
2000).
When I attended 2006 CSTA annual conference in San Francisco, I met Angelica M.
Stacy who was the developer of a detracking chemistry curriculum for 10, 11 graders of high
school. She gave us a lecture about what her curriculum was and what the strengths are. In
addition, I participated in another program which was about how to use her curriculum in
schools and what the results were. I was very impressed with the curriculum for her
curriculum was centered on big concepts of chemistry and actively made connection between
contents and inquiry-based laboratory. As a result, I decided to develop similar curriculum
for Korean students when I go back to Korea to teach again.
ACTIVITIES
1. Conducting a Research to develop Living By Chemisty
When we develop a curriculum, we need to think about our vision and mission to
achieve through the curriculum. Our vision is that students’ conceptual understanding is a top
priority in chemistry education. Then, what is the best way of helping to promote student
understanding of a specific topic? To find an answer to this question, we need to conduct a
research with experts in science education. Professor Noh and his research group will help us
with this research so that lessons in our curriculum can be designed based on research about
which concepts are most difficult for students, why students have these difficulties, and how
to guide all students towards mastering the subject matter. We SCTA members will help the
research group by providing data that they need, and the preliminary curriculum will be
tested and refined in multiple classrooms with diverse students from SCTA teachers’ schools.
This research will start in December 2008. Before summer vacation, the direction for the
Miha Lee’s Grant Proposal
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curriculum from the research will come out. However, the research will continue until the
project will end to support us.
Time
Task
2008
December
The executives of SCTA will meet Dr. Noh to consult
about the project
 The first meeting of the committee to embark the
project
2009
January
08
2009
January
~
July
2010
March
2010
December
2011
January
Note
 Dr. Noh’s research group will hold a meeting with SCTA
teachers to make a plan for the project.
 Make a decision about the direction of our project and roles
of members in the project.
 Assign the task to find out information we need for our
curriculum development.
 Carry out a research to find out the direction for our
curriculum with Seoul National University
Research group




Make a proposal for the research.
Collect the data from SCTA members’ schools.
Analyze the data with the committee.
Discuss the implications of findings with SCTA committee
members.
The committee members
of SCTA will participate
in the research by
providing students’ data,
analyze the data together,
and discuss the results.
 Take the pre diagnostic test in the control group of
schools and treatment group of schools.
 Analyze the data
 Take the post achievement test in the control group
of schools and treatment group of schools.
 Analyze the data
 Finish writing a research paper and share it with
SCTA members in an annual general meeting of
SCTA.
 Publish the report and send it to all members of
SCTA and teachers from the schools where the
curriculum was implemented.
2. Development of new curriculum
Living By Chemistry will be a full-year general chemistry curriculum specifically
designed to encourage more students with diverse learning styles to learn real chemistry.
Living By Chemistry will organize lessons around the big ideas of chemistry, framing the
core concepts within daily life contexts. This approach helps students learn and remember
more and narrows the achievement gap so that all students grasp conceptual understanding.
Living By Chemistry will be aligned to the7th revised National Chemistry
Curriculum Standard developed in 2008. Living By Chemistry will consist of student guides,
teacher guides, and lab kits for five units that explore the chemistry behind air, metal, water,
fossil fuel, and derivatives of hydrocarbons (these topics are tentative.). The context will
provide a real world foundation for the chemistry concepts and serves to hold the interest of
Miha Lee’s Grant Proposal
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the students. Each unit will consist of 12 to 16 lessons of 50-minute duration each, clustered
into investigations on specific topics. The lessons will be challenging and engaging, and we
will have high expectations for all students. We want to improve student performance with
the Living By Chemistry curriculum by encouraging students to participate actively in their
knowledge building.
The authors of the textbook and teacher’s guide book will be CSTA members who
have at least a master’s degree in chemistry or science education and have more than 10 years
teaching experience in high schools. We will have meetings with the research group on a
monthly basis to keep our books on the appropriate track while we will be writing the books
from July to November in 2009.
Time
2008
December
19
2009
January
08
2009
June
05
Task
 Hold an annual general meeting of SCTA
 Announce the project and recruit teachers who want to participate in the committee for
the project.
 Hold a meeting of the committee to embark the project
 SCTA teachers will hold a meeting with Dr. Noh’s research group to make a plan for the
project.
 Make a decision about the direction of our project and roles of members in the project.
 Assign the task to find out information we need for our curriculum development.
 Hold a meeting of the committee to check the progression of the project




Talk about the material that we will have found for our curriculum.
Discuss features of our curriculum.
Figure out the outline and structure of the curriculum.
Assign the task to develop the outline of the curriculum.
 Hold a meeting of the committee to check the progression of the project
2009
 Decide the outline of the curriculum.
July
 Make a decision about the general structure of our textbook and teacher’s guidebook.
03
 Assign a topic to each member to develop the curriculum.
2009
Write each chapter of textbook for our curriculum
 Finish the first draft of each chapter
August
2009
 Hold a meeting of the committee to check the progression of the project
 Present the first draft to the committee.
September
 Inspect and give suggestion to revise the drafts.
25
 Hold a meeting of the committee to check the progression of the project
2009
 Present the second draft to the committee.
October
 Inspect and give suggestion to revise the drafts.
 Begin to edit the textbook
23
 Begin to write the teacher’s guidebook
2009
November
27
2009
December
18
 Hold a meeting of the committee
 Present the finished textbook
 Present the first draft of the teacher’s guidebook
 Inspect and give suggestion to revise the drafts.
 Hold a meeting of the committee to finish all publishing
 Present the finished teacher’s guide book to the committee.
 Discuss the professional development program
3. Evaluation of the curriculum
For assessment of our project, we chose to focus on student conceptual
understanding of a few aspects of matter. We will develop a set of questions for each topic of
Miha Lee’s Grant Proposal
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units along with scoring guides to measure the level of student understanding of each concept
from the content topics.
We will chose two or three schools from the average achievement group in Seoul
Office of Education as a control group. Total students in the control group will be about 100
male students and 100 female students. The treatment group will be from the schools using
the Living By Chemistry curriculum, but we will select students from the average
achievement group in Seoul Office of Education to make comparison with the control group.
This comparison data will be used in our research paper as well.
Besides, a pretest/post-test format will be used. The pretest will conduct in March
2010 and consist of open-ended questions and be administered in the beginning of school
year for both control and treatment groups. A post-test that will include both open-ended and
multiple-choice questions will be administered in December 2010. In Korea, the school year
begins in March and ends in December. Student responses will be scored, coded, and
analyzed. The Rasch analysis will provide item estimates, case estimates, fit statistics, other
test statistics, and a variety of reliability indices. http://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt94k.htm
Finally, we will hold a hearing for improvement of the curriculum with teachers from
implementing schools, and will administer a survey to probe students’ attitude toward our
curriculum in December 2010.
4. Professional Development
When we finish developing our preliminary curriculum, we will organize and
conduct a one-month professional development program for chemistry teachers. We send an
official letter to each high school in Seoul to inform them about our curriculum and gather
teachers for our program in November 2009. We will give the engaging teachers 60 hours 4
credits for their professional development score, which will encourage them to participate.
The lecturers are the developers of textbook and teachers’ guide book. They will impart their
developing foci to the teachers to help them practice effectively. The venue will be Se-Jong
Science high school in Seoul because the principal is an advisor for SCTA, and our president
works for the school. Korean schools have long winter vacation from end of December to
February. So, we will hold the program in January 2010.
5. Implementation of the curriculum in schools
We will choose some schools for our tryout. Maybe, most of them are from SCTA
members’ schools. However, we need approval of schools to conduct the field test. For this,
we will ask for help from Seoul Office of Education to support us to find out appropriate
schools and persuade teachers. There is a system in which Seoul Office of Education gives
tryout schools and teachers incentives. We will actively seek for this support from Seoul
Office of Education to make our effort in effect.
6. Revision of the curriculum
Based on the data from two major data, one of which will be from students’ survey
and teacher’ hearing, and the other of which will be from the assessment, we will revise our
preliminary curriculum in January 2011. After that, we will collect teachers’ opinion through
our website to revise it on a regular basis.
7. Make a report of project
Miha Lee’s Grant Proposal
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In January 2011, we will finish writing a report for the funding agency. This will be
accompanied by a research paper from Professor Noh and his research group. We will also
publish this research paper in science educational journals.
DISTRIBUTION and CONTINUATION
1. Dissemination of the curriculum
We also will make a booklet of the report and send it to all members of SCTA and
teachers from the schools where the curriculum was implemented. When we find out our
curriculum successful, we will apply for the adoption of national chemistry textbooks to
distribute our curriculum around Korea.
2. Development and Maintain a website for our curriculum
A new domain, whose tentative name is livingbychemistry, will be developed to
upload the report, e-textbook, and teachers’ guide including other helping material. We
SCTA members will maintain the website as our homepage. We also will have a new group
board to collect teachers’ and students’ opinions about our books. Our SCTA will conduct
small projects to develop strategies to help teachers to incorporate the curriculum into their
teaching practice efficiently.
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TIMELINE
Time
2008
December
19
2009
January
08
2009
January
~
July
2009
August
~
November
Task
 Hold an annual general meeting of SCTA
 Announce the project and recruit teachers who want to participate in the committee for
the project.
 Hold a meeting with Dr. Noh’s research group
 Discuss a developing plan and directions.
 Organize a committee for the project.
 Carry out a research to find out the direction for our curriculum with Seoul
National University Research group




Make a proposal for the research.
Collect the data from SCTA members’ schools.
Analyze the data with the committee.
Discuss the implications of findings with SCTA committee members.
 Development of new curriculum




Discuss and Assign chapters to the committee.
Write a new textbook for 11th grade chemistry
Write a new teacher’s guidebook for the textbook
Develop a student’s workbook for the textbook
 Preparation for Teachers professional development program to disseminate
the new curriculum
2009
November
~
December
2010
January
2010
February
2010
March
2010
December
2011
January
 Send letters to all secondary schools in Seoul to let teachers know that we have a
program for them
 Receive the application from the teachers
 Hold an annual general meeting of SCTA
 Report the project to all members and ask to help to try out the curriculum in their
schools.
 Encourage them to participate in the professional development program.
 Carry out the professional development program of SCTA
 Collect teachers’ opinion.
 Find difficulties from the program.
 Revise the tentative curriculum.
 Take a survey for improvement of the curriculum from teacher participants
in the professional development program.
 Implementation of new curriculum for a field test to the schools principals of
which will accept the curriculum.
 Take the pre diagnostic test in the control group of schools and treatment
group of schools.
 Take the post achievement test in the control group of schools and treatment
group of schools.
 Hold a hearing for improvement of the curriculum with teachers from
implementing schools.
 Finish writing a report and send it to the funding agency
 Finish writing a research paper and share it with SCTA members in an
annual general meeting of SCTA.
 Develop a website to help teachers and students to use the curriculum.
 Publish the report and send it to all members of SCTA and teachers from the
schools where the curriculum was implemented.
Miha Lee’s Grant Proposal
BUDGET
10
Miha Lee’s Grant Proposal
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BUDGET JUSTIFICATION
Personnel Services.
1. SALARIES
Faculty Academic Year Appointments:
(9 months).


The University pays for your effort during the year
Salary of Dr.Noh who is the Research leader will use 10% of his time for the project
One month salary from grant = 5000×0.1= $500
Salary of Coordinator who is the director of the project will use 20% of his extra time
for the project. One month salary from grant = 3000×0.2= $600
2. Payment for manuscripts
Page
Total page
textbook
200
Teacher’s guide
300
Total
Payment per page
50
20
Total Payment
10,000
6,000
16,000
3. Payment for lectures in the professional development program

60 hours × $50 = $ 3,000
Other than Personnel Services.
1. Professional development program: $ 4,000
 Rent for the place of professional development program : $1000 for one month
 Books for the program: 100 books × $30 = $3000
2. Hearing from teachers
 Rent for the place of professional development program : $100 for one day
 Lunch for the participants and lecturers: 100 people × $10 = $1,000
 Booklets for the program: 100 books × $10 = $1000
3. Tests and surveys
Tests: 400students × $20 = $8,000
Survey: 200 students × $ 10 = $ 2,000
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RESUME
1. Biographical Information
Name: Lee, Miha (Female)
Birth Date: 07, January 1968
Current Address: Seoul, Korea (south)
Degree: Two Master’s Degrees (One of Chemistry, the other of Science Education)
2. Educational History
1986. February, Graduated Dae-Jeon Girl's High school
1990. February, Graduated Seoul National University, College of Education,
Department of Chemistry Education with Bachelor of Science degree
Grade Point Average: 3.37 (89.7%)
1992. February, Graduated Seoul National University as a Master of Science
in Physical Chemistry with GPA 3.82 (94.2%)
2008. May, will Graduate California State University, Northridge as a Master of
Art in Science education with honor
3. Relevant Work Experience
Currently, I am a public high school chemistry teacher. I've been teaching chemistry
about fourteen years in Seoul, Korea since I graduated Seoul National University with a
Master degree in 1992. From 2001 to 2002, I worked as a field researcher for Seoul
Educational Research & Information Institute, organizing teachers’ professional development
programs.
In addition, when I was a grad student, I worked as teaching assistant in General
Chemistry and Physical Chemistry experiment classes from 1990 to 1992.
Besides, I joined 2004 summer CCE (Center for Chemistry Education) Program for
Korean Chemistry teachers held in Miami University, Ohio and got a certificate of successful
completion and 6 graduate credit hours in Chemistry.
And I worked for EBS (Korea's only educational broadcasting system) as a member
of team for producing e-Learning programs for chemistry for three years from 2003 to 2006.
My job was to examine the contents of programs from chemistry teacher’s point of view.
4. Research Experience
When I finished my undergraduate course in the college of education, I didn't want to
stop learning about chemistry. Therefore, I entered the graduated school of Seoul National
University to do chemistry research. My research involved taking a closer look at the
physical property of semiconductor colloids of ZnS. If a semiconductor material is made in a
form of colloids, it can change its color depending on its size, especially its diameter because
the band gap of semiconductor depends on the number of atoms in its colloidal crystal. The
smaller the colloid size is, the more blue-shifted the emission maximum wavelength is. I
found out a way to prepare a specific size of colloids and ways to control the wavelengths of
their fluorescence. The fluorescence of SnS colloid was enhanced by excessive anions or
cations and quenched by conc. N(et)3 solution(10-4M≤). It's a kind of Nano chemistry. It was
Miha Lee’s Grant Proposal
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very interesting. So, I completed my research with Master of Science in physical chemistry.
During this time, I experienced how to develop my thesis and carry out a systematic research.
While I was teaching, I alone carried out two action research projects. One was about
how to use our school homepage as an e-learning tool; the other was about developing and
using multimedia computer-based chemistry teaching material. I examined my students’
perceptions about these two ways to teach chemistry and evaluated their efficiency in my
research papers. From these experiences, I learned how to conduct educational action
research and what important things in science education are.
However, I didn’t have profound knowledge about science education to make my
teaching theory-based. So, I applied a fellowship program of Education Department of Korea
and was sent to California State University, Northridge in order to study about science
education for master’s degree. From the university’s program, I developed knowledge about
many aspects of science education. Particularly, my interest was in the new cognitive theory,
in which students actively build their knowledge based on their preconception, and teachers’
role is to scaffold students’ knowledge construction. Besides, I also found inquiry and
technology-based lab useful in promoting conceptual understanding. Consequently, my
action research paper was about investigating the effect of inquiry-based laboratory on
conceptual understanding. The result of this paper was encouraging. From this experience, I
built pedagogical content knowledge and became a confident action research armed with
educational theory.
5. Publications
 I wrote two books about chemistry for the public. One is the book titled "the tale
about Periodic table narrated by Mendeleev". The other is "the tale about chemical
cells narrated by Volta". These were aimed to promote the public appreciation about
chemistry.
 I wrote a chemistry chapter for 9th grade middle school science textbook for 7th
national curriculum in 2002, and it’s been used in many middle schools. I also wrote
two chemistry chapters for 10th grade high school science textbook, but it was not
adopted.
 I wrote three guidebooks of chemistry experiment with other teachers for the Seoul
office of education.
 I published a few chemistry test preparation books for high school students.
6. Honors and Awards
 I received the certificate of recognition from Seoul Education Research and
Information Institute on September 03, 1996.
 I won the Superintendent's Award for excellence in work as a field researcher on
February 15, 2002.
 I got a Superintendent's Award for presenting an excellent example in the
"Improvement in classroom environment contest” on December 20, 2004.
 I got another Superintendent's Award for presenting an excellent work in the
"educational material" contest on July 04, 2005.
 I got a fellowship from Korean government for teacher long-term overseas training
program in 2006.
As stated above, I am an active and determined educator and researcher.