My teaching at KoreaTech led to a genuine research puzzle: I noticed that students returning from mandatory military service, which interrupts their studies for approximately two years, performed differently than expected. Rather than relying on anecdotal observation, I conducted a data-driven study with my MS student Raad Shariat and a colleague Soonuk Seol. This resulted in two peer-reviewed publications:

The effect of academic breaks on undergraduate academic performance, International Journal of Electrical Engineering & Education, 2020. Analysing academic records of 653 undergraduate students who entered KoreaTech between 1998 and 2013, supplemented by a survey of 101 currently enrolled students, we examined how academic breaks of varying lengths affect student GPA. We found that the effects are not uniformly negative — students with average or lower GPAs sometimes benefited from the break.

Effects of gender and military leave on the academic performance of undergraduate engineering students, IEEE Transactions on Education, 2023. This follow-up expanded the dataset to 1,039 undergraduate students in the School of Electrical, Electronics, and Communication Engineering, and examined how mandatory military service specifically affects academic performance and whether the effects differ by gender - since only male students take military leave in South Korea. Among other findings, we showed that there is no difference in academic performance between male and female students who chose to pursue degrees in electrical/electronics or telecommunication engineering.

The research started from a simple observation in my own classroom and ended up in IEEE Transactions on Education. The findings are still relevant, I now teach officers who have been away from formal study for years, and understanding how breaks affect learning helps me calibrate expectations early in the course.