Greg M. Kim-Ju, Ph.D.

Bio

After completing my undergraduate studies in psychology at St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN, I served as a community education volunteer for the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic. For nearly a year and a half I lived in a small town called Quebrada Honda where I was involved with literacy, ESL, and youth programs. After the Peace Corps, I lived in South Korea for two years to learn the Korean language and culture. Living in the capital, Seoul, I attended the Yonsei Language Institute and taught English at YLBM Language Institute. Having lived abroad for several years and seeing firsthand cultural variations in human behavior, I decided to pursue my interests in culture and psychology in graduate school at Boston College.

I focused on the relationship between ethnic composition and ethnic self-awareness for European Americans and Asian Americans for my master’s thesis. As a recipient of a Fulbright grant, I turned my attention to the ways in which young adults in South Korea grapple with their ethnic and national identities for my dissertation. After receiving my Ph.D. (2002) in cultural psychology from Boston College, I served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Asian American Studies at University of Massachusetts Boston (2002/2003). In this position, I put together community profiles that included population, housing, social and economic data on different ethnic and racial groups in Massachusetts. At CSUS since fall 2003, I have been teaching cross-cultural and multicultural psychology courses and conducting research on culture, ethnicity, and identity.

Last updated: 01/19/2011