The University of Utah will follow up its agreement with the Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ) Authority to set up college programs in Songdo City in September next year.

IFEZ Authority Commissioner Lee Jong-cheol met with Michael Hardman, the university’s senior vice president for academic affairs at the Sheraton Incheon Hotel in late April to discuss the establishment of the American school at the Songdo global campus.

The university has agreed tol launch its own education, natural sciences and social sciences undergraduate and graduate programs there.

The school in Salt Lake City, Utah, is known for its bioengineering, mathematics, chemistry and computer science departments. According to Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the University of Utah is ranked 79th.

The State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook opened a computer science department and a graduate school of technology and society in March in the IFEZ. Currently 200 students have enrolled.

Other universities are likely to follow the two American schools, including Belgium’s Ghent University, Alfred University, the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, North Carolina State University, George Mason, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, Boston University and a number of Korean universities, such as Seoul National University, Yonsei University, Incheon University and Gacheon University.