Newsletter - March 2013
Special Points of Interest:
- Upcoming Grants
- 2013 Curriculum and classes that are new
- Our finalized list of faculty members
- Upcoming Process for da Vinci Grants
- Research and Development Projects
- Conference at Oxford
- Curriculum
- Educational Supplies
- Faculty
- Grants
- Research & Development
- DPRK Conference Oxford
- The da Vinci Program
Message from the Director
By: Asaph Young Chun
Asaph Young Chun, PSI Director and Program Chair of Statistics without Borders of American Statistical Association, and Yena Lee, PSI Associate Director and Da Vinci Grant Program Director
The Pyongyang Summer Institute in Survey Science and Quantitative Methodology (PSI) aims to engage the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) in the spirit of science diplomacy. By promoting people-to-people contact with DPRK students, scholars, and professionals, PSI fosters sustainable international collaboration over survey methodology and statistical science. Science, an empirical and data-driven field, promises great potential for such collaboration..
Modern examples demonstrate science diplomacy’s potential to surmount geopolitical differences. The Shanghai Communiqué President Nixon signed in 1972 included science as one of the key areas for future cooperation between Washington and Beijing. This document has created the foundation for the fairly trusting, collaborative relationship across the Pacific as many observe today.
Forty years after the historical Shanghai Communiqué, the Pyongyang Summer Institute launched in 2012 to engage DPRK in a similar manner. Founded jointly by the International Strategy and Reconciliation Foundation (ISR), a Washington-based non-governmental organization, and Statistics Without Borders, an outreach arm of the American Statistical Association, PSI began at the only private and international university in DPRK, the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST).
These partners designed PSI to meet established benchmarks of successful science diplomacy. Such benchmarks come from precedent like the past four decades of science collaboration initiated by the Nixon-Kissinger administration with Beijing and over half a century of science cooperation John F. Kennedy started off with Tokyo
In 1961 (see further details in Turekian & Neureiter, 2012). Notable characteristics of PSI’s science diplomacy include a narrowed focus on the vehicle of education in statistics and survey methodology for university students and professionals in DPRK.
PSI standards are modeled after the 65-year-old University of Michigan Summer Institute in Survey Research Techniques, yet still tailored to DPRK’s needs. PSI also welcomes the guidance of scholars with decades of experience in science diplomacy, such as Advisory Board Members Peter Agre, Nobel Laureate in chemistry, and Norman Neureiter, the first Science and Technology Adviser in 2000 to the U.S. Secretary of State.
Bearing in mind lessons from PSI’s 2012 launch year, PSI’s international faculty and staff continue this vision for PSI 2013. This summer, PSI will conduct classes in survey statistics and methodology to hundreds of PUST students. It will also lead intensive workshops of applied survey methods for DPRK professionals of business, trade, public health, education, and statistics in Pyongyang and for business professionals in the Rajin-Sonbong Free Trade Zone.
In March, PSI welcomes scores of newly joined faculty and staff committed to statistical science diplomacy with DPRK and encourages the steady contribution of PSI’s institutional partners in developing synergy across the Atlantic. We welcome the reader’s support and constructive criticism to help make PSI’s science diplomacy sustainable through core values shared by the PSI family: respecting different cultures, building relationships over time, and patiently working through reconciliation.
Curriculum
For the upcoming summer and second annual session of PSI, PSI will be launching two additional programs for government professionals in Pyongyang and the Rajin-Sonbong Free Trade Zone in addition to returning to teach university students at the PUST campus. The PUST program will last for four weeks, and like last year, we will offer statistics and survey methodology courses on two “tracks”: one track that is more mathematical and focused on theory and the other track that is focused on applied and interdisciplinary approaches to quantitative methods. An exciting change for PSI 2013 is that half of our student body, many of whom are returning students, will be eligible to choose from higher-level courses to continue their studies in survey methodology and quantitative methods. The government professional programs are a new development for PSI this year, and the PSI team is excited about the potential these programs hold. These programs will engage professionals from various ministries of DPRK government and are designed to be subject specific with applied methods that professionals can immediately put to use in their work. Currently, topics for the professional programs vary from business survey methodology/marketing statistics to health survey methodology/biostatistics to education survey methodology/educational measurement.
Educational Supplies
For the upcoming summer and second annual session of PSI, PSI will be launching two additional programs for government professionals in Pyongyang and the Rajin-Sonbong Free Trade Zone in addition to returning to teach university students at the PUST campus. The PUST program will last for four weeks, and like last year, we will offer statistics and survey methodology courses on two “tracks”: one track that is more mathematical and focused on theory and the other track that is focused on applied and interdisciplinary approaches to quantitative methods. An exciting change for PSI 2013 is that half of our student body, many of whom are returning students, will be eligible to choose from higher-level courses to continue their studies in survey methodology and quantitative methods. The government professional programs are a new development for PSI this year, and the PSI team is excited about the potential these programs hold. These programs will engage professionals from various ministries of DPRK government and are designed to be subject specific with applied methods that professionals can immediately put to use in their work. Currently, topics for the professional programs vary from business survey methodology/marketing statistics to health survey methodology/biostatistics to education survey methodology/educational measurement.
Faculty
The PSI talented team is excited to announce the faculty who have been selected for the 2013 session of PSI and are looking forward to working with this incredibly talented tea. Gary Shapiro, former Chair of ASA’s Statistics Without Borders and former Supervisory Mathematical Statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau, led the faculty review team in a thorough review of nearly sixty highly qualified candidates from diverse professional and academic backgrounds and concluded the selection process in March 2013. Faculty selected to participate in PSI 2013 hail from all over the world, including the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, and the United States. Faculty backgrounds include medicine, public health, international affairs, consulting, and marketing, just to name a few. The PSI team is proud to present the 2013 PSI Faculty and Staff profiles
Grants
Through the efforts of the PSI grant team, the ISR Foundation submitted its first proposal of the year to the Ploughshares Fund. Ploughshares Fund has supported DPRK projects in the past, including projects related to media and policy-maker outreach and education in DPRK issues, engagements, and diplomacy initiatives and Track Two engagement with DPRK officials. The PSI grant team expects to hear back from the Ploughshares Fund in June.
In March and April, the PSI grant team will respond to open solicitations for grant proposals from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Compton Foundation, and the Prudential Foundation. The team is also exploring non-US funding, including foundations in Germany, Australia, Poland, France, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Canada. Health grants are also a priority area with research on the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization, and the Gates Foundation for sources of funding for PSI programs of health statistics and survey projects. As always, the PSI grant team welcomes and appreciates ideas for sources of funding. Please contact yuchanna@gmail.com with any suggestions or leads.
Research & Development
The Research and Development team at PSI has been working to coordinate research teams by two functions: foundational and capacity-building research aimed at furthering the work of PSI and applied research with more immediate and practical benefits in DPRK. The capacity building research will span disciplines and methodologies reflecting the expertise of PSI researchers and is intended to provide a context (historical, structural, etc.) for PSI organization in the future. Some topics of interest to PSI researchers include the following:
DPRK Conference Oxford
Director Young is traveling to the University of Oxford to speak at a conference about PSI’s work in DPRK at a conference run by Engage Korea, an educational organization that aims to bring peace to the Korean peninsula through collaborative interdisciplinary dialogue about and analysis of DPRK-related events (for more information about Engage Korea, please visit www.engagekorea.org). The conference theme is “How Can the International Community Effectively Engage North Korea?” The conference will bring together over twenty five speakers and moderators who are knowledgeable about DPRK and who have a broad spectrum of expertise spanning natural and social sciences. Speakers at the conference will include James Hoare, who established the first diplomatic relations between the UK and DPRK, and Ambassador John Everard, who was the previous British Ambassador to DPRK from 2006–2008. In addition to speaking on the day of the conference on a panel themed “Capacity Building in DPRK–An Alternative Means of Diplomacy?,” Director Young will also provide a special briefing to the speakers the night before the conference and briefings at several other venues in the UK. He will speak to Fellows of the Royal Society, an organization that provides scientific advice to British government officials, and to members of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office on science diplomacy with DPRK. He also plans to give briefings to faculty and staff at several universities in the UK (e.g., Cambridge and the School of Oriental and African Studies), which could lead to educational partnerships that allow PSI students to study abroad in the UK. Overall, Director Young anticipates that the trip to the UK will productively expand PSI’s reach, catalyze its operational scope, and broaden its network of academic partners and supporters.
The da Vinci Grant Program
The da Vinci Grant Program (DVG) supports highly promising graduate and advanced undergraduate students who are committed to innovative research in science and technology and related disciplines. The program aims to invest not only in creative research relevant to DPRK but also in the students as future scholars and leaders of DPRK and the global research community.
Successful research proposals detail a creative plan for interdisciplinary research with pragmatic applications. In applying, students demonstrate how the research project fits into their projected plans for study or work at PUST and beyond.
Students work closely with select PSI (international) and PUST (on-campus) faculty for one year to research and author papers to present at PSI 2013. Faculty advisers will help direct students’ research and writing. In some cases, students may coauthor papers with advisers with the students as the lead authors.
The students who have the three best proposals will receive additional funding to attend and present their research in a renowned international conference on survey methods and statistics in the US, Europe, or Asia (e.g., Joint Statistical Meetings, European Survey Research Association, International Statistical Institute, or American Association for Public Opinion Research). The funding will cover travel to and registration for the conference. The PSI team has secured spots for these students at the 2013 Joint Statistical Meetings.
Criteria for proposal selection include the validity and feasibility of the research proposal, the candidates’ academic and other preparation, the innovative and creative incorporation of survey methodology and statistics with other disciplines, the relevance and benefit of the proposals to DPRK, the candidates’ English proficiency, and the candidates’ demonstration of how the projects align with their academic and professional profiles.
By: Asaph Young Chun
Asaph Young Chun, PSI Director and Program Chair of Statistics without Borders of American Statistical Association, and Yena Lee, PSI Associate Director and Da Vinci Grant Program Director
The Pyongyang Summer Institute in Survey Science and Quantitative Methodology (PSI) aims to engage the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) in the spirit of science diplomacy. By promoting people-to-people contact with DPRK students, scholars, and professionals, PSI fosters sustainable international collaboration over survey methodology and statistical science. Science, an empirical and data-driven field, promises great potential for such collaboration..
Modern examples demonstrate science diplomacy’s potential to surmount geopolitical differences. The Shanghai Communiqué President Nixon signed in 1972 included science as one of the key areas for future cooperation between Washington and Beijing. This document has created the foundation for the fairly trusting, collaborative relationship across the Pacific as many observe today.
Forty years after the historical Shanghai Communiqué, the Pyongyang Summer Institute launched in 2012 to engage DPRK in a similar manner. Founded jointly by the International Strategy and Reconciliation Foundation (ISR), a Washington-based non-governmental organization, and Statistics Without Borders, an outreach arm of the American Statistical Association, PSI began at the only private and international university in DPRK, the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST).
These partners designed PSI to meet established benchmarks of successful science diplomacy. Such benchmarks come from precedent like the past four decades of science collaboration initiated by the Nixon-Kissinger administration with Beijing and over half a century of science cooperation John F. Kennedy started off with Tokyo
In 1961 (see further details in Turekian & Neureiter, 2012). Notable characteristics of PSI’s science diplomacy include a narrowed focus on the vehicle of education in statistics and survey methodology for university students and professionals in DPRK.
PSI standards are modeled after the 65-year-old University of Michigan Summer Institute in Survey Research Techniques, yet still tailored to DPRK’s needs. PSI also welcomes the guidance of scholars with decades of experience in science diplomacy, such as Advisory Board Members Peter Agre, Nobel Laureate in chemistry, and Norman Neureiter, the first Science and Technology Adviser in 2000 to the U.S. Secretary of State.
Bearing in mind lessons from PSI’s 2012 launch year, PSI’s international faculty and staff continue this vision for PSI 2013. This summer, PSI will conduct classes in survey statistics and methodology to hundreds of PUST students. It will also lead intensive workshops of applied survey methods for DPRK professionals of business, trade, public health, education, and statistics in Pyongyang and for business professionals in the Rajin-Sonbong Free Trade Zone.
In March, PSI welcomes scores of newly joined faculty and staff committed to statistical science diplomacy with DPRK and encourages the steady contribution of PSI’s institutional partners in developing synergy across the Atlantic. We welcome the reader’s support and constructive criticism to help make PSI’s science diplomacy sustainable through core values shared by the PSI family: respecting different cultures, building relationships over time, and patiently working through reconciliation.
Curriculum
For the upcoming summer and second annual session of PSI, PSI will be launching two additional programs for government professionals in Pyongyang and the Rajin-Sonbong Free Trade Zone in addition to returning to teach university students at the PUST campus. The PUST program will last for four weeks, and like last year, we will offer statistics and survey methodology courses on two “tracks”: one track that is more mathematical and focused on theory and the other track that is focused on applied and interdisciplinary approaches to quantitative methods. An exciting change for PSI 2013 is that half of our student body, many of whom are returning students, will be eligible to choose from higher-level courses to continue their studies in survey methodology and quantitative methods. The government professional programs are a new development for PSI this year, and the PSI team is excited about the potential these programs hold. These programs will engage professionals from various ministries of DPRK government and are designed to be subject specific with applied methods that professionals can immediately put to use in their work. Currently, topics for the professional programs vary from business survey methodology/marketing statistics to health survey methodology/biostatistics to education survey methodology/educational measurement.
Educational Supplies
For the upcoming summer and second annual session of PSI, PSI will be launching two additional programs for government professionals in Pyongyang and the Rajin-Sonbong Free Trade Zone in addition to returning to teach university students at the PUST campus. The PUST program will last for four weeks, and like last year, we will offer statistics and survey methodology courses on two “tracks”: one track that is more mathematical and focused on theory and the other track that is focused on applied and interdisciplinary approaches to quantitative methods. An exciting change for PSI 2013 is that half of our student body, many of whom are returning students, will be eligible to choose from higher-level courses to continue their studies in survey methodology and quantitative methods. The government professional programs are a new development for PSI this year, and the PSI team is excited about the potential these programs hold. These programs will engage professionals from various ministries of DPRK government and are designed to be subject specific with applied methods that professionals can immediately put to use in their work. Currently, topics for the professional programs vary from business survey methodology/marketing statistics to health survey methodology/biostatistics to education survey methodology/educational measurement.
Faculty
The PSI talented team is excited to announce the faculty who have been selected for the 2013 session of PSI and are looking forward to working with this incredibly talented tea. Gary Shapiro, former Chair of ASA’s Statistics Without Borders and former Supervisory Mathematical Statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau, led the faculty review team in a thorough review of nearly sixty highly qualified candidates from diverse professional and academic backgrounds and concluded the selection process in March 2013. Faculty selected to participate in PSI 2013 hail from all over the world, including the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, and the United States. Faculty backgrounds include medicine, public health, international affairs, consulting, and marketing, just to name a few. The PSI team is proud to present the 2013 PSI Faculty and Staff profiles
Grants
Through the efforts of the PSI grant team, the ISR Foundation submitted its first proposal of the year to the Ploughshares Fund. Ploughshares Fund has supported DPRK projects in the past, including projects related to media and policy-maker outreach and education in DPRK issues, engagements, and diplomacy initiatives and Track Two engagement with DPRK officials. The PSI grant team expects to hear back from the Ploughshares Fund in June.
In March and April, the PSI grant team will respond to open solicitations for grant proposals from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Compton Foundation, and the Prudential Foundation. The team is also exploring non-US funding, including foundations in Germany, Australia, Poland, France, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Canada. Health grants are also a priority area with research on the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization, and the Gates Foundation for sources of funding for PSI programs of health statistics and survey projects. As always, the PSI grant team welcomes and appreciates ideas for sources of funding. Please contact yuchanna@gmail.com with any suggestions or leads.
Research & Development
The Research and Development team at PSI has been working to coordinate research teams by two functions: foundational and capacity-building research aimed at furthering the work of PSI and applied research with more immediate and practical benefits in DPRK. The capacity building research will span disciplines and methodologies reflecting the expertise of PSI researchers and is intended to provide a context (historical, structural, etc.) for PSI organization in the future. Some topics of interest to PSI researchers include the following:
- Past international projects in DPRK (health, language acquisition, education, development)
- Review of PSI’s organizational structures, successes, and challenges;
- Role of NGOs in DPRK, including but not limited to UN agencies; and
- Historically international relations among DPRK and other nations, specifically focusing on the role of these relations in developing DPRK policy.
DPRK Conference Oxford
Director Young is traveling to the University of Oxford to speak at a conference about PSI’s work in DPRK at a conference run by Engage Korea, an educational organization that aims to bring peace to the Korean peninsula through collaborative interdisciplinary dialogue about and analysis of DPRK-related events (for more information about Engage Korea, please visit www.engagekorea.org). The conference theme is “How Can the International Community Effectively Engage North Korea?” The conference will bring together over twenty five speakers and moderators who are knowledgeable about DPRK and who have a broad spectrum of expertise spanning natural and social sciences. Speakers at the conference will include James Hoare, who established the first diplomatic relations between the UK and DPRK, and Ambassador John Everard, who was the previous British Ambassador to DPRK from 2006–2008. In addition to speaking on the day of the conference on a panel themed “Capacity Building in DPRK–An Alternative Means of Diplomacy?,” Director Young will also provide a special briefing to the speakers the night before the conference and briefings at several other venues in the UK. He will speak to Fellows of the Royal Society, an organization that provides scientific advice to British government officials, and to members of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office on science diplomacy with DPRK. He also plans to give briefings to faculty and staff at several universities in the UK (e.g., Cambridge and the School of Oriental and African Studies), which could lead to educational partnerships that allow PSI students to study abroad in the UK. Overall, Director Young anticipates that the trip to the UK will productively expand PSI’s reach, catalyze its operational scope, and broaden its network of academic partners and supporters.
The da Vinci Grant Program
The da Vinci Grant Program (DVG) supports highly promising graduate and advanced undergraduate students who are committed to innovative research in science and technology and related disciplines. The program aims to invest not only in creative research relevant to DPRK but also in the students as future scholars and leaders of DPRK and the global research community.
Successful research proposals detail a creative plan for interdisciplinary research with pragmatic applications. In applying, students demonstrate how the research project fits into their projected plans for study or work at PUST and beyond.
Students work closely with select PSI (international) and PUST (on-campus) faculty for one year to research and author papers to present at PSI 2013. Faculty advisers will help direct students’ research and writing. In some cases, students may coauthor papers with advisers with the students as the lead authors.
The students who have the three best proposals will receive additional funding to attend and present their research in a renowned international conference on survey methods and statistics in the US, Europe, or Asia (e.g., Joint Statistical Meetings, European Survey Research Association, International Statistical Institute, or American Association for Public Opinion Research). The funding will cover travel to and registration for the conference. The PSI team has secured spots for these students at the 2013 Joint Statistical Meetings.
Criteria for proposal selection include the validity and feasibility of the research proposal, the candidates’ academic and other preparation, the innovative and creative incorporation of survey methodology and statistics with other disciplines, the relevance and benefit of the proposals to DPRK, the candidates’ English proficiency, and the candidates’ demonstration of how the projects align with their academic and professional profiles.
|
Project Topic |
Decision |
Award amount |
|
A national survey of public health |
First place |
$800 immediate research grant to conduct the proposed research. Later: Total $5,000 award for Principal Investigator to attend international conference to present research findings. |
|
A city-wide survey of public health |
Second place |
$700 immediate research grant to conduct the proposed research. Later: Up to $5,000 award for Principal Investigator to attend international conference to present research findings.
|
|
Evaluation of everyday average salt intake per person in DPRK
|
Third Place |
$600 immediate research grant to conduct the proposed research. Later: Up to $5,000 award for Principal Investigator to attend international conference to present research findings.
|
|
Survey for developing a new TV channel for university students |
Honorable mention |
$500 immediate research grant to implement the proposed research. |
|
Consumer survey to develop ice cream business
|
Honorable mention |
$500
immediate research grant to conduct the proposed research. |
|
Cloud computing |
Honorable mention |
$500
immediate research grant to conduct the proposed research. |