A Conversation with Incoming Minerva Graduate Student Jerry Hyun Yang

This is part of a series of profiles introducing students from Minerva’s incoming Fall 2025 graduate class. If you would like to learn more about our programs, please visit our website.

Having studied English education at Seoul National University and after 15 years of English teaching experience, Jerry spent most of his life identifying as a humanities student with a strong passion for learning languages. That was until a year ago, when looking for a challenge, he made a sudden career change, and he currently works at a plastic surgery clinic in Seoul, where he is in charge of finance, accounting, and other tax-related responsibilities.

Driven by a desire for new opportunities, Jerry was drawn to Minerva because he wants to push himself to explore new areas of knowledge, particularly in STEM fields. He hopes that Minerva’s education will help him advance in this new area and potentially develop a career in it. He is eager to get a better sense of judgment and improved knowledge of statistics—not just learning how to crunch numbers, but also how to extract meaningful insights from them. He also looks forward to acquiring a better perspective on how to study and live in an AI-dominated society.

As a teacher and educator, Jerry always looks for opportunities to learn more about making classes interactive. He strongly believes in the philosophy of “practicing what you preach,” highlighting that teachers can truly master a subject only after having the chance to practice it themselves.

“Adapting technology to education is a strong interest of mine, which I discovered during the COVID-19 pandemic. During this period, all schools were required to teach online, presenting a new, exciting challenge: suddenly, all teachers had to be able to instruct classes online. As someone keen on technology, I thrived in this period: I introduced numerous new technologies in my class, and was in charge of running all systems set up for online learning. I learned a lot about EdTech, which helped me become more comfortable using various digital tools and technologies. On the side, I have also been training teachers to become more adaptable to the new learning environment.”

A few years ago, Jerry entered a Ph.D. program focused on business, statistics, and artificial intelligence. The topics were interesting to him, but the program was forced to pivot to online education during the pandemic, which meant all classes transformed into Zoom-like lectures. Jerry was so disheartened by the passive educational setting that he ended up quitting the program, however, he never gave up the idea of finding a similar program with a more interactive philosophy. When his manager, a Minerva MDA graduate, told him about Minerva, Jerry learned that the classes were intentionally modelled using innovative active learning pedagogy—different from both traditional university settings and pandemic online education—and realized that Minerva was exactly what he had been looking for.

“What sets Minerva apart is its emphasis on a student-centered and communication-based approach to learning. As a teacher, I have been trying hard to follow that philosophy, which I believe is extremely distinct from Korea’s approach, a very traditional country in terms of education. At home, classes are not interactive, and students are discouraged from participating and even asking questions. At Minerva, though, one is really expected to engage—and I am eager to be part of that interaction.”

Jerry highlights that he finds Minerva’s interactive educational approach nothing short of impressive compared to his previous experience in educational institutions in Korea.

“Minerva professors are actually trained to talk less, which was shocking to me, since in Korea, teachers are expected to lead the entire class and do most of the talking. As an educator myself, I am looking forward to experiencing the difference between a professor who works as a facilitator and not a lecturer. Last but not least, Minerva's international community vastly differs from Korea’s homogenous reality. I have always been drawn to meeting people from other cultures, so the chance to engage in that kind of cross-cultural exchange is something I am genuinely excited to explore.”

In Jerry’s eyes, making informed decisions based on numbers is important because, as a leader, one’s choices impact many lives.

“Any decision can have serious consequences, and one does not want to make the wrong one. People often assume that good decisions can be made on instinct, but I believe there are specific areas leaders need to master. That is why I want to learn to think analytically—to be able to make decisions by seeing the full picture and grounding them in something concrete.”