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| Prof. Cascio explains the EEMI and the US system to the delegation. |
On November 20, 2015, EEM Professors Joe Cascio and Jonathan Deason hosted a Korean delegation of five officials representing the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards (KATS) – counterpart to the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Korean Standards Association (KSA) – counterpart to the U.S. American National Standards Institute (ANSI). They came at the recommendation of NIST to learn about the Environmental and Energy Management Institute’s (EEMI) mission related to voluntary consensus standards and particularly about the new course developed by EEMI and GWIPP: EMSE 6992-80, Global Connections: Standards in Technology, Business & Public Policy. They were also interested in our use of the ISO 14000 and ISO 50000 series of standards on environmental and energy management respectively. Those standards are featured in another new course: EMSE 6992-14, Beyond Compliance: Next Generation Environmental Self-governance.
Since 2004, KATS and KSA have implemented a country-wide initiative in Korea to provide standards education to students in primary, secondary, and higher education, as well as to professionals and consumers. Some 60 universities participate in the initiative and over 43,000 graduates have received standards education in Korea.
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| Dr. Donggeun Choi, Chief of Research at the Korean Standards Association, presents the delegation's program. |
Professor Cascio informed the representatives that standards education is not as advanced in the U.S. but that the NIST Standards Services Curricula Development Cooperative Agreement Program is being very successful in motivating U.S. universities to fill the existing educational gap. The above-mentioned EMSE 6992-80 course was developed through a NIST grant from that program. Dr. Byung Goo Kang, Director General of KATS, one of the five officials in the visiting delegation, volunteered to arrange for a Korean university to make contact with EEMI to discuss the desirability of establishing a liaison relationship. EEMI looks forward to that discussion and to the possibility to liaise with an experienced Korean university.