GSW will create RCI-Korea

From Staff Reports

AMERICUS — Georgia Southwestern State University (GSW) President Kendall A. Blanchard and his wife, Connie Blanchard, will be in Korea next week with Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter to create an exciting new partnership with The Cyber University of Korea (CUK). President Blanchard and Rosalynn Carter will sign a Memorandum of Understanding on Monday in Seoul, Korea with CUK (formerly Korea Digital University) establishing a Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving in Korea.

While in Korea, President Carter will deliver the I’chon Lecture, the most prestigious lectureship in Korea. The University of Korea will also award Carter with an honorary doctorate.

“We are grateful to the Carters for their support of this initiative,” said President Blanchard. “None of this would have happened if the Carters were not so highly regarded in Korea. We are excited about this trip and the long term prospects of this relationship.”

This partnership, which falls under the umbrella of a general exchange agreement entered into by GSW and The Cyber University of Korea (CUK) in April 2009 in Seoul, Korea, addresses the need for caregiver training in Korea and across the rest of Asia. It will expand the reach of the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving (RCI), hereafter referred to as RCI-United States. The Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving in Korea, hereafter referred to as RCI-Korea, will be headquartered at The Cyber University of Korea.

The president of The Cyber University of Korea, Choong Soon Kim, Ph.D., is a long-time friend of President Blanchard. A graduate of the University of Georgia’s Ph.D. program in anthropology, Kim taught in Tennessee for many years before returning to Korea in 2001 to take over the helm at CUK. The principal purpose of the partnership is to develop a college-level, credit-bearing curriculum that will be delivered on-line both in English and Korean. This curriculum will be based on and incorporate RCI’s current Caregiving Certificate program at Georgia Southwestern and the RCI’s Caregiver Workshop (”Caring for You-Caring for Me”), and delivered from the Institute’s headquarters at Georgia Southwestern and at The Cyber University of Korea. The courses will be offered in Korean and designed to be relevant to the fundamental themes of Korean culture and the issues of everyday life in Korea. The staffs at the RCI-United States and RCI-Korea will work together as the curriculum is developed and evolves over time. In addition, Blanchard will be working with CUK to explore the possibility of developing a joint PGM (Professional Golf Management) program. Located in the heart of the capital city Seoul, CUK is the largest private on-line university in Korea and the fastest growing institution of higher learning in the country.

For more information, call 931-2037.

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