ICU is one of the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia (UB) network institutions. One of the UB's programs includes UB Fellows Program, which is designed to answer the needs of leadership development for mid-career faculty and administrators from Asian colleges and universities.

For 2024-2025, Dr. Seunghun LEE (Major: Linguistics) of ICU looks forward to gaining experience as a United Board Fellow and sharing approaches to leadership, whole-person education, and research initiatives.

He participated in the summer workshop from July 22-26, 2024 in Singapore. For a two-week study trip, he plans to be based in De La Salle University in the Philippines in March 2025 and hopes to visit ICU's partner universities as well: Ateneo de Manila University, University of the Philippines, and Silliman University.

Comments from Dr. Lee

Developing leadership skills is not straightforward. Every aspect of one person's life journey provides seeds for developing leadership: for example, being a class president in secondary schools, being a major representative at the university, or being a principal investigator of grant projects, etc. The leadership I would like to vest in is a model in which a leader is knowledgeable on various aspects of an organization, is brave in taking necessary for the organization, and is virtuous in his actions. I believe that leadership is associated with how one can open his eyes and ears to the surroundings. Decision making is a key role with any leadership, and leadership can build an organization that develops processes that lead to informed decision making.

By participating in the UB Fellows program, I expect to learn about diverse situations in liberal arts or faith-based institutions across Asia. During the meeting with the summer cohort, I was able to interact with fellows from various institutions and learn about how similar or different various institutions are. Over the course of this year, I hope to learn more about the international institutions in the region.

To the readers, I would like to say stay tuned. The United Board Fellows program has just begun, and I hope to share more about the program and about what I learned after the end of this year.

Profile

Dr. Seunghun Lee is a Senior Associate Professor of Linguistics and is currently the Head of the Department of Psychology and Linguistics at International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, Japan. He previously served as director of the Institute for Educational Research and Service at ICU. After receiving his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 2009, he worked in the TESOL program at Central Connecticut State University before coming to Tokyo in 2015. His research interests combine the documentation of lesser-studied languages in Africa and Asia with linguistic theory. He looks forward to gaining experience as a United Board Fellow and sharing approaches to leadership, whole-person education, and research initiatives. He regularly participates in orchestral performances as a violist.