Following years of academic exchange activity and friendship, the College of Social Science at Ritsumeikan University and the Department of Sociology at Chung-Ang University agreed to establish the dual-degree program and are currently adjusting details of the program with a proposed launch in 2009. Once the program commences, graduate students in each department can apply for the program which requires that they complete a certain amount of credits and training in the partner school, which will permit them to receive the dual degree upon their graduation.

The department encourages our graduate students to have wide international scholarly experience. In order to promote academic exchanges among graduate students, the department co-hosts a variety of international symposiums.
In 2007, the department co-hosted joint symposiums with Ritsumeikan University (Japan) and with Tohoku University (Japan). Moreover, it co-hosted various academic exchange programs with Peking University (China), Tsinghua University (China), and Chinese Academy of Social Science (China) in 2008. We are one of the most active sociology departments in Korea as far as building international networks and are planning to keep supporting graduate students’ international exchange programs.

The Department of Sociology at Chung-Ang University is a partner institute of <The Global Network on Inequality>, a program supported by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. It is a program for Princeton doctoral students who want to explore the issues of inequality in overseas institutes. As a partner institute, the department welcomes students from Princeton who are interested in questions of inequality in Korea and East Asia. We are well connected with other sociology departments in East Asia through international exchange programs; hence we serve as a hub connecting to a wider international research network in East Asia.

The department is also a proud partner institute of the Ritsumeikan University’s <Distinctive University Education Assistance Program (Good Practice Program in short) >. The <Good Practice Program> is a 5-year educational program funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan to support international programs. The College of Social Science at Ritsumeikan University won the fund in 2008 and appointed the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University in Great Britain and the Department of Sociology at Chung-Ang University in Korea as its partner institutes. Under Ritsumeikan’s <Good Practice Program>, the three institutes will develop a new curriculum which includes integrative classes and joint field research in which students from the three institutes can freely participate.