The spotlight is on Dr. Changmi Jung, Johns Hopkins University, United States.

The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School is one of nine schools serving 30,500 students at Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876. The university takes its name from 19th-century Maryland philanthropist Johns Hopkins, an entrepreneur with Quaker roots who believed in improving public health and education. Today, Johns Hopkins has 10 campuses delivering over 400 programs in Baltimore and other parts of Maryland and one campus in Washington, D.C.

The Carey Business School has 2,800 students and 118 faculty in both Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Its full-time MBA program prepares students with analytical and leadership skills for STEM-focused industries. Its Master of Science programs include business analytics and information systems.

Dr. Changmi Jung is Academic Program Director of Information Systems, a program designed to intersect business and technology. She has a master’s degree in Information Systems Management as well as a PhD in Healthcare Information Systems, both from Carnegie Mellon University. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in Statistics from Ewha Womans University, a private women's research university in Seoul, South Korea, her country of birth.

Jung joined the Carey Business School in 2014 and set about developing a data management syllabus. Today she uses Oracle Academy resources for the teaching of databases and SQL programming.

Oracle Academy: In what context are you teaching databases and SQL to business students?

Changmi Jung: My class is attended by people from all areas of the business school. They come from non-technical majors such as healthcare, finance, and economics or they may be majoring in business analytics or information systems. My introduction to database management is a core requirement for Information Systems students and Oracle resources are a major staple of the course.

Oracle Academy: How did you come to select Oracle Academy?

Changmi Jung: When I joined Carey in 2014, there was no course covering databases or SQL. It was a surprise, since at Carnegie Mellon these subjects were core, as were courses in database design and implementation. Understanding data is fundamental to every single job today. So, I pushed for it. It took a few years, but finally we had a data management syllabus. This was before we joined Oracle Academy as a member.

In South Korea, I worked for a multinational electronics company using SQL daily. At Carnegie Mellon University, I was a teaching assistant to the faculty who swore by Oracle as the most popular database management tool in industries. I began using it — in the days when the software was shipped on 7 or 8 CDs! Later on, around 2020, I started teaching Database Management at Carey Business School and I used virtual machines (VMs) to create an Oracle database, which students then downloaded to their PCs. However, at 8GB, the VM-based database was too heavy for many of them, and I began looking for a cloud resource to facilitate things. To me, no one can compete with a database-specialized company when it comes to structure and standardization in databases, and thus, I wanted to find a better resolution within the Oracle framework.

It was in 2022 that I joined Oracle Academy.

Oracle Academy: How many are enrolled in your data management course?

Changmi Jung: I started with 30, but the course swiftly became popular. Last semester we stood at 204 students! I’m the only Oracle Academy teacher but I have brilliant teaching assistants to help me, people who took my course the previous year. There are 50-60 students in each classroom.

Oracle Academy: What resources are you using?

Changmi Jung: I am using the Oracle Academy Cloud Program and also the materials available on the Oracle Academy Member Hub are an excellent set of resources for instructors, especially for new course development or updating the existing courses to add more examples and questions.

Basically, students create a database with Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing (ATP). Next, they download and install SQL Developer on their computers, make a connection to ATP, and then create tables in the database.

I am currently preparing a new syllabus — Advanced Data Management — for which I will use more of the Oracle Academy resources. Oracle Academy has a great course design and the sequence of the courses and content structures are excellent.

Meanwhile, as mentioned, for students who already have significant SQL skills and for whom the introductory course is too basic, I ransack the Member Hub. I go through all the instructor resources and tweak them into homework assignments for those who might be bored.

Oracle Academy resources are highly practical — they contain examples and very well-structured questions, which I often use in my quizzes or final exams. Before Oracle Academy I used an old Oracle textbook with the City Jail Database example, useful for creating Entity Relationship Diagrams. But Oracle Academy offers much more than text primers; currently I give students a real-world exercise that involves building an ERD for a healthcare system.

Oracle Academy: What jobs are your business students aiming at?

Changmi Jung: I would say students taking my course have diverse career paths. Some want to become data analysts or data scientists; some want to work on consulting in related fields, and some of them want to work in non-technical jobs but need to understand data. Some students in the Information Systems program have computer science or mathematics or statistics or other engineering degrees as their undergraduate major, and are already strong in terms of programming. So, they will apply for machine learning developer positions.

Part of my task as academic program director is to liaise with industry and help to place students with tech giants and well-established organizations that mostly use Oracle technologies.

But, some have no technical background whatsoever. They come from business administration major, marketing, or liberal arts backgrounds; they are aiming to pivot their specialty into an IT manager role, bridging technology and business, as they are interested in the interpretation and implication of the technology advances and application in the business. These are the ones most interested in learning the fundamentals of data management.

Oracle Academy: That’s great. Do you have a roadmap for working with Oracle Academy?

Changmi Jung: For sure, Oracle Academy and the Oracle Academy Cloud Program are becoming more and more useful, and it will always be my go-to resource. My current introductory course is well set, but for the Advanced Database Management, currently under development for the next spring semester, I will be introducing more of the database journey to students, with a lot more complexity in SQL. So, yes, I will be using Oracle Academy heavily in building new courses, especially in the era of artificial intelligence, which Carey is prioritizing.

Oracle Academy: And lastly, what do you do outside of teaching?

Changmi Jung: One great family pleasure is to go hiking in nearby Patapsco Valley State Park. We have a Border Collie that we acquired as a companion to our daughter, who is energetic and sporty and wanted a dog that could run for three hours with her. Border Collies are notorious for being super smart and energetic, so it works out well. The rest of us go at our own speed! We adopted our dog, Hazel, in January, 2019, one year before the COVID lockdown. By the time Hazel became mature enough and well-trained, we started enjoying the nature hikes with her, so when the gyms and fitness centers were closed during the lockdown, the hikes became a family tradition.

Apart from that I love movies, particularly sci-fi movies.

Thank you, Dr. Changmi Jung, for your passion for Oracle Academy and for preparing your students to make a positive impact.