My time in South Korea, though it has now ended, was endlessly educational and will continue to impact me in countless ways moving forward. Throughout this blog, I’ve detailed my many experiences overseas, but in this post, I hope to establish a continuity between them all and highlight the true value this experience had for my continued professional development.

Social Aspects of Professional Development

My time in South Korea helped me to grow as a professional in engineering. As is seen in any professional field, social skills are vital to success, and my time in South Korea helped me to understand this, both through the practical experiences with professional life’s social environment demonstrated to me throughout this trip and the experience I gained working in a complex, multi-disciplinary group to achieve our goals for this trip.

I am endlessly grateful for the opportunity this trip gave me to experience a professional social environment firsthhand. Around the second week of our time in South Korea, we transferred to Pohang from Golgulsa where we spent two days establishing a connection with POSTECH, the first research institution in South Korea. This time was enlightening for many reasons (of which I detailed in the relevant blogs), but something I neglected to mention was the professional side of the experience. While there were countless gadgets and fascinating projects throughout the campus, the professionalism on display from all parties involved was a lesson on its own. Dr. Yun and Chris held us to a high standard of respect and responsibility throughout the trip, and during our time in Pohang, we saw that same professionalism returned in multitudes. Every moment we were in a room with a presenter, a respectful silence would fall over the entire room, seemingly unbreakable. Every room we entered for a briefing would have each seat prepared with a water bottle, showing a deep consideration. Whenever Dr. Yun gave a presentation on the history of Pitt for the board at POSTECH, I noticed them all listen intently to his every word, both the staff and students present. Seeing that level of mutual respect gave me an appreciation for the social environment present in the professional world, but I think embodying those values, ourselves, was the even more impactful aspect of our time in POSTECH. When we sat down for lunch with POSTECH students on the first day, I watched every student in our group listen more intently than at any other point on that trip, trying to truly build a sustainable connection between themselves and the students they spoke with. Personally, I think it was those moments where we experienced professional life firsthand that had the greatest impacts on our future professional lives as we were allowed to fully embody the traits of a professional social environment.

My time in South Korea also gave me the so-far-unique experience of working in a multi-disciplinary group. While I have worked in many diverse groups so far as a first-year engineering student at Pitt, this trip allowed me to work with those outside of the Swanson School of Engineering (SSoE) due to the collaboration between the SSoE and the School of Computing and Information (SCI). Furthermore, as we are all finished with the first-year curriculum, this experience allowed us to work with engineers outside of our own disciplines for the first time, especially as many of us had started taking courses within our discipline last semester due to an advanced standing. Personally, my group consisted of two SCI students, Jacqueline (data science) and Manav (computer science); an industrial engineer, Emma; a biomedical engineer, Varnujah; a computer engineer, Ben; and a chemical engineer, myself. This brought many unique perspectives into all of our assignments. For instance, when we were at the water treatment facility, Arisu, I was speaking with Emma, and while I was expressing an endless fascination with the various electrochemical reactions present in the filtration process, she emphasized the actual interactions between each step and the importance of their order in the process, which I hadn’t even considered before that. In fact, one of my first questions was why the plant used a gravity filter on the water prior to the charcoal filter since the charcoal filter is just a higher-resolution version of the gravity filter. After speaking with Emma, however, it made me realize Arisu likely did this to increase the lifespan of the charcoal filters because they can only filter a limited amount of contaminants while the sand and gravel used in gravity filtration are unlimited. By initially using gravity filtration, the amount of contaminants interacting with the charcoal filter is limited, allowing the plant to filter much more water before pausing the process to replace the charcoal filter. I had similar experiences with all of my group members throughout the trip, as well, and each one demonstrated the value of our different perspectives to me, no matter how minor the interaction may have been.

Education and the Complexities of Professional Development

Professional development is not a solely social experience, however, and this trip taught me many other lessons including the ethical issues faced in engineering, the value of educational breadth, and how to adopt a mindset geared toward lifelong learning and continuing development.

Anywhere that engineering is involved, professional ethics are naturally going to follow. That said, our time at the Transport Operation & Information Service (TOPIS) office in Seoul demonstrated a valuable real-life lesson in engineering ethics. When we arrived at city hall on the last structured day of the trip, we were taken to the situation room in the basement where TOPIS was situated, and while we were there we were debriefed on Seoul’s public transit system and all of the sensors that make it possible. While this might sound typical, some of us were alarmed by the volume of sensors and cameras and the precision of the data TOPIS was able to collect. This introduced an ethical dilemma in many of our heads between personal privacy and societal efficiency that admittedly made many of us uncomfortable on first contact—myself included. As we continued to ask questions, however, we were shown a real-world example of how such dilemmas are addressed as the TOPIS representative answering our questions told us how personal information was censored and individuals were protected by their systems. For instance, each CCTV camera on the roads houses a native algorithm to censor the view through a car’s front windshield, protecting the privacy of drivers while still effectively monitoring the roads, recognizing traffic violations and accidents. Furthermore, all data gathered from public transport systems regarding departure times and routes taken are censored, removing the T-Money card (public transit card) used from the data, thus disconnecting individuals from their daily commutes before processing the data. This real-world example of how ethical dilemmas are addressed in the professional space was enlightening, and I have to admit, hearing how this was addressed also made me feel more comfortable as it showed me how similar issues are commonly screened and handled across professional spaces.

My time in Korea also showed me the value of educational breadth in one’s professional development. We toured many companies during our time in Korea, and the greatest continuity between each was their reliance on countless different professional skills to operate smoothly. Within the Arisu water treatment plant chemical engineers, environmental engineers, industrial/process engineers, and data scientists are all absolutely necessary from the first moment you walk in, but as you look deeper into the systems, so many other skillsets are needed, even within the same individual. Technicians are required to keep the systems working without issues; computer scientists are needed to update the plant’s technical infrastructure every time a device is improved or replaced; sales representatives are vital to ensuring expansion to neighboring provinces. Even the aforementioned workers in the treatment facility need diverse skills likely outside of their basic capabilities. A chemical engineer might need some electrical engineering knowledge to create the electrolytic cell required for the electrically-activated coagulants to filter the water. An environmental engineer on-site might need knowledge on a heat-and-mass transfer process that is more typical in chemical engineering. Throughout the entire facility there are examples of cross-disciplinary projects that require either an educational breadth in each professional, effective teamwork in a multi-discipline team, or both. This was also something I experienced firsthand on our South Korea trip as the sole chemical engineering student on a trip primarily dominated by electrical and computer engineers. This trip highlighted the importance of having skills outside of just my own major. The prevalence of smart systems and sensors in the regulation of chemical processes made me realize the importance of at least understanding the theory behind how different types of sensors work, nonetheless the utility of basic software engineering skills in creating self-regulating processes. I had similar experiences in the Hyundai assembly line and POSCO cold roll shop where many complex mechanisms worked in tandem to sense and standardize processes across countless repetitions. In the Hyundai assembly line, there was more human interaction as the cars were built by both human workers and mechanical arms depending on the complexity of a part, but the precision of the conveyor belts still had to be perfectly consistent for things to function, and if they weren’t the use of sensors would allow the process to systematically correct itself. The same is true for POSCO’s roll shop as the steel, which oftentimes has significant inconsistencies prior to being rolled, was entirely automated with no human intervention. This meant that every physical fault in the steel or mistake in the production line had to be sensed and corrected for the process to be carried out correctly. This interaction between mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering is seen in countless other facilities, demonstrating the importance of educational breadth in an individual, even outside of one’s own field.

Finally, my time with Plus3 Korea showed me how to embrace lifelong learning. Continuing my own development past college is vital in any field. It doesn’t matter if you work in the humanities, the sciences, or any other field: if you don’t use your experiences to learn throughout your life, you will stagnate and fail to develop as a professional. In South Korea, I learned how to effectively learn from every experience I have. While in Korea, I found that the best way for me to learn from the world around me was to acknowledge my innate curiosity. In Seoul, we were all shocked by the complete lack of litter in the city, especially with the distinct lack of trash cans around the city. Instead of simply accepting this, however, I questioned why there was a lack of litter in Korea compared to the United States. When I got back to the hotel, I opened my laptop and researched local litter laws, and while I saw there was stricter enforcement than in America, I also wondered whether it could be a cultural aspect. I continued researching and found it was a combination of both where South Korea’s emphasis on mutual respect combined with their stricter enforcement, supported by CCTV cameras and investigations of illegally dumped trash, caused the greatly reduced litter throughout Seoul. This is an admittedly absurd example, but it shows the value of embracing one’s curiosity to learn more, and this leads into the second part of my strategy for continuing my professional development: as an engineer, it is worth viewing every observation or conclusion as either a future problem to solve or a potential solution. When I noticed the lack of litter in South Korea, I saw the potential for a solution, so I looked at the problem of littering in America and compared it to the potential solutions I saw in Korea. In doing this, I learned possible routes I could take to improve this issue in America like investigating illegal trash for named receipts and sending fines like some cities in South Korea.

Every day I was in Korea, I learned another lesson that will continue to inform my decisions going forward in both my professional and personal life. At POSTECH, I was given the opportunity to socialize in a truly professional environment. In Group C, I learned skills vital for working in a multi-disciplinary group alongside the importance of having those diverse perspectives. At the TOPIS offices, I was presented with a real-life example of an ethical dilemma in the engineering space and then walked through how it was resolved. At Arisu, I learned the value of educational breadth as I saw the countless overlapping skillset that make such a complicated process possible. On the streets of Seoul, I learned how to truly embrace my natural curiosity to become a lifelong learner, endlessly developing as a professional.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Yun and Chris for being excellent mentors throughout this entire trip. They were vital to every aspect of my time in South Korea, and I couldn’t imagine the trip without them. I would also like to thank our amazing tour staff from Authentica, Esther and Aakash. Both were so kind and welcoming, and they each taught me so much, from the stops we made along the tour to the small conversations I had with each during downtime. Finally, I want to thank Group C for being so kind, thoughtful, and fun to hang out with, as well as every other person I met on this trip that made it the unforgettable experience it was. I loved every second I spent in Korea, and without any one of my peers, it wouldn’t have been the same.