Teaching

At UC San Diego, I taught three undergraduate courses on Comparative Bureaucracy, Political Institutions in Asia, and Korean Politics as well as four teaching sections of an introductory course on Research Methods. At University of Nottingham, I taught a year 2 module on Contentious Politics in Greater China. At Seoul National University, I taught discussion sections of an introductory course on Public Administration and Public Policy. For each of these courses, I designed a course syllabus, produced lecture slides, led group discussion, and wrote and graded the midterm, final, and assignments.

1. Contentious Politics in Greater China (University of Nottingham 2017)

This module aims at stimulating students to think critically about the uniqueness of China, its people, tradition and politics. It compares and contrasts social and political development in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan from the late 1970s until the present day. It introduces students to rapidly changing state-society relations in three distinctive and yet interrelated Chinese communities. During the ten 2h lecture-seminars, students analyse the interplay between political institutions and civil society in the Greater China region. More specifically, students appraise how executive overreach and/or factional infighting among ruling elites have time and again led to cracks in the authoritarian edifice. Drawing on specific case studies on mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, students recognise how dissidents, civil society practitioners, and social movement leaders have made good use of resulting political opportunity structures and challenged state authority. Students assess to what extent civil society-led contentious politics has managed or failed to bring about political liberalisation and democratisation in the Greater China region. Course materials are available upon request.

2. Introduction to Public Administration and Public Policy (with Soonae Park, Seoul National University 2016)

This was an introductory course in public administration and public policy, which focused on learning core concepts of public administration and management and their applications to actual cases and specific policy areas. I taught seminar/discussion sections of this course. The eight areas this course covered include policy making process, organization theory, public management, public leadership, public personnel management, public budgeting, bureaucracy, and federalism.

3. Introduction to Research Methods (UCSD 2014-15)

This was an introductory course in political methodology, which focused on research design and methods in political science. I taught four teaching/discussion sections of this course. This course was divided into three parts: (1) exploring causal hypotheses, (2) describing and collecting data, and (3) testing causal hypotheses. In the teaching/discussion sections, I produced lecture slides to review concepts covered in lectures and discuss assigned readings. I also taught three lab sessions of SPSS per section to give an instruction of using the statistical program for assignments. The main objective of this course was to improve the ability of students to pose and answer their own research questions. Course materials are available upon request.

4. Comparative Bureaucracy (UCSD 2015)

This was an upper division course in politics and international relations, focused on comparative bureaucracy. This course analyzed the politics of the administrative state in advanced and developing democracies. The general focus was on how electoral, legislative, and bureaucratic institutions affect the nature of governance in these democracies. I focused specifically on the extent to which elected politicians are able to control bureaucrats. Finally, I turned to three policy areas - civil service reform, regulatory policy and fiscal policy - and discussed the politics of each in comparative and theoretical terms.

5. Political Institutions in East Asia (UCSD 2013)

This was an upper division course in politics and international relations, focused on political institutions substantively and countries in East Asia regionally. This course was divided into two broad sections: conceptual framework and its application to cases. For the conceptual framework, I created three analytical modules in democratic institutions: (1) collective action, representation, and organization, (2) mechanisms of delegation and accountability, and (3) policy-making process; and one analytical module in authoritarian institutions: delegation and accountability mechanisms in authoritarian systems. I applied these analytical tools to two groups of countries: Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan as democratic systems and China and North Korea as authoritarian systems. In this course, students learned how political institutions shape political elites' incentives to behave in certain ways. Students selected a country of particular interest to them for in-depth case study research.

6. Korean Politics (UCSD 2014)

This was an upper division course in politics and international relations, focused on politics, economy, and security surrounding the Korean peninsula. The five broad themes of this course were (1) political history, (2) economic development, policy making, and reform, (3) democratic institutions and consolidation, (4) inter-Korea relations and foreign policy, and (5) contemporary issues in Korean politics and society. One of primary goals of this course was for students to develop an understanding of important political events and policy choices in Korean history and how these events and choices have affected politics, economy, and society of Korea today. Course materials are available upon request.

Teaching Resources and Certificate

I was a participant of the College Classroom which is affiliated with the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) network and received a certificate of completion for the course in 2015. You can find many useful teaching resources on the blog.