Underwood Division (UD)
Founded in 2005, Underwood Division (UD) is the oldest division at UIC with five specialized majors combined by a rigorous common curriculum program, emphasizing core reasoning and communication skills. UD students may choose from five majors covering humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.
During their first-year of study, all Underwood Division students will be involved in a residential college life at the Yonsei International Campus, where they will take common curriculum courses with students from other UIC divisions, introductory courses to majors and various electives. Starting from their second year, students will move to the Sinchon Campus, where they will take the courses of their respective majors, electives, UIC seminars and other common curriculum courses.
Majors
The Comparative Literature and Culture (CLC) major integrates the study of diverse literary traditions with critical theory, film, and popular culture. Taught by faculty with a wide range of specializations including Asian, European and American literature, the CLC major is designed to whet the intellectual appetites of literature-loving students from various, international backgrounds. The CLC major is essentially interdisciplinary and offers students a flexible approach to understanding both historic and contemporary works. CLC courses analyze a vast array of classical and modern materials including classical Chinese poetry, Shakespearian drama, postcolonial novels, film noirs, Cold War culture, French poststructuralist theory, and the gender politics of K-pop.
Economics is the study of how individuals and societies make decisions; most human and social phenomena cannot be properly understood without economic perspectives. Majoring in Economics seeks to nurture students to be equipped with economic problem-solving skills that are vital to understanding and responding to modern society. Students majoring in Economics will learn conceptual models and analytical tools necessary to comprehend their everyday lives with regards to international issues. They are expected to hone their critical thinking and communication skills to become leading experts of their desired fields.
The International Studies (IS) major equips students with multidisciplinary training in analyzing the underlying dynamics of global affairs. Combining traditional fields of study like international relations, international economics and international law with innovative approaches to globalization studies, the IS major gives students the intellectual skills with which to pursue leadership positions in government and foreign services, international organizations and development NGOs, and multinational corporations alike. Emphasizing the importance of developing a strong regional expertise, the IS major capitalizes on UIC’s location in Seoul as an academic, commercial, and technological hub to offer an especially rich array of courses dealing with East Asia. But true to its name, the ultimate goal of the IS major is to help students develop the thinking skills they would need to be effective in careers anywhere in the world.
The Political Science and International Relations (PSIR) major offers a wide range of opportunities to study theories and practices about political science and international relations. The PSIR major intends to train future leaders in various sections of society who have a deeper understanding of the world and a wider perspective on how the world works. To meet such challenges, we provide a wide range of courses including Political Philosophy, Comparative Politics, International Relations and Korean Politics.
The Life Science and Biotechnology (LSBT) major has been methodically created to prepare undergraduate students who aspire to join the ranks of cutting-edge scientists solving society’s problems today as well as anticipating tomorrow’s challenges. Disese, famine, and drought create human health and environmental struggles, which can be confronted and overcome by professionals who have been educated and trained in the basic sciences as well as applied- and integrated-scientific fields. Genomics and proteomics have led the scientific frontier to integrative omics, the culmination of interdisciplinary research and collaboration. It is through this integration of scientific study and research that society will triumph over disease and natural disaster by: crafting personalized medical treatments based on an individual’s genome and proteome, creating plants that can nourish and immunize human populations, resisting insect and microbiological pests without the need for pesticides, and surviving drought conditions.
