Robert John Hart(Tourism Management)
B.A. & M.A. from Murray State University
Ph.D. from Paichai University (Tourism Management)
Q1. In the United States, is it easy to get a job right after graduating from a university?
The unemployment rate in the U.S. is very high right now, so it is not easy for anyone to get a job. In times like this, it can be especially difficult for new graduates. This is one reason it is vital for students to get as much practical experience as possible during their university years. One activity I do with my students is writing resumes in English, and too often students do not have anything to put on their resumes. In a competitive job market, it is vital to have something there – volunteer work, internships, club activities – and it is never too early for students to start thinking about how to gain practical experience.
Q2. Could you tell us any good things about the library at MurrayStateUniversity?
It is very common for university students to work at part-time jobs in the United States, and when I was an undergraduate student one of my part-time jobs for two semesters was working in the main library at MurrayState. I worked in the periodicals section, and my job was helping students find information contained on microfilm and microfiche and then printing it out for them if requested. Helping other students with their research served as an excellent introduction to how to define keywords for computerized information searches and how to go about gaining access to materials through services like interlibrary loan. It is one thing to find the perfect source material for your research. It is quite another to get your hands on that material in order to read it. This is compounded when living in a foreign country like Korea. The final and perhaps most important thing I learned from working in the Murray State Library was how invaluable help from the librarians can be. Librarians have been trained in how to find information, and they know places to look that most students could not imagine. This can be especially important when researching a topic with which you are not familiar. Therefore, students at KMU should take advantage of the expertise of the librarians.
Q3. Could you tell us your impression of Dongsan Library?
To be truthful, I have not been inside the library very many times. I would like to visit more often, and from what I have seen, the facilities are very nice. Most of my use of the library comes from using its resources online. As the faculty at KeimyungUniversity becomes more international, the library is making an effort to internationalize its materials with English-language pages. I hope that continues in order to make searching for information easier. I have also heard very positive things about the interlibrary loan program here, and this summer I am planning on taking advantage of that.
Q4. Could you briefly compare the library at MurrayStateUniversity with Dongsan Library?
Physically, I do not think they are that different. The main difference would be the technological innovations. I got my M.A. from MurrayState in 1995. At that time the internet was in its infancy and difficult to use. Now, it is possible to read a lot of material online, without ever setting foot in a library. With access to academic databases like those available through the Dongsan Library website, there is an incredible amount of information available at any hour and for free. Also, it is much easier to find now than when I was a student in the U.S.
Q5. Are there any things you wish to tell KMU students?
Let me give you another example. I like fishing, and my doctoral dissertation was related to recreational fishing in Korea and Japan. I had a chance to travel to Seoul to meet one of the pioneers in the study of outdoor recreational activities, Dr. Robert Ditton from TexasA&MUniversity. We do not normally associate fishing with classroom study. What does it involve? Among other things, the fish themselves (biology, ichthyology), their surroundings (botany, hydrology, entomology, ecology, environmental science), why and where people fish (psychology, sociology, tourism, leisure studies, geography) and what they fish with and where they buy their equipment (materials engineering, manufacturing, marketing, business management). To finish my dissertation I needed skills related to mathematics, statistics, computers, and writing. Dr. Ditton told me that his own research changed significantly when he began working with an economist, and if he could do it all over, he would focus on ecotourism.
What would I like to tell students? That it is all connected, even if you cannot yet see the connections. Around 200 years ago in Europe, for the first time in human history, children would grow up to live and work in ways unimagined and unimaginable by their parents. The same is true in Korea, where university students today live in a world that would be unrecognizable to Korean university students a mere fifty years ago. When I was a graduate student in America 15 years ago, I did not imagine it would be possible for me to live and teach overseas, and I did not know tourism management was even a subject to be studied in universities. Now, I am living in my third foreign country and have a Ph.D. in tourism management. Students entering KeimyungUniversity will have to prepare for jobs that currently do not exist, using skills that are unknown at present, working with technology that has not even been invented yet. The only way to do that is by being armed with as much knowledge as possible, and the place to begin doing that is at the library. Good luck.
