December 6, 2009

Globe-Trotting Academics Find New Career Paths

Globe-Trotting American Academics Find New Career Paths 1

Zoz Brooks

Mary Kathryn Thompson, who earned her Ph.D. from MIT, teaches engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, where she says she has had more opportunities than she would in the United States.

By Robin Wilson

As a bright young doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mary Kathryn Thompson was headed toward a job as an engineering professor at a top American university. But a conversation with a prominent professor at MIT changed that, virtually overnight.

The professor, Nam-Pyo Suh, who was from South Korea, had worked in science policy for the Reagan administration and had chaired the mechanical-engineering department at MIT. He told her he was leaving to be a dean