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Seven years living in South Korea helped shape Thom Gulino’s career aspirations
Thom Gulino was substitute teaching in Massachusetts when the opportunity of a lifetime crossed his desk.
Following his undergraduate degree in English from UMass Amherst, Gulino was looking for teaching jobs in the Bay State, scrolling job boards and biding his time with another part-time gig.
In a rush of adventure and spontaneity, he discovered that South Korea was actively recruiting English teachers. Having grown up and gone to college in Massachusetts, this would represent a massive departure for Gulino. But when else would he get to experience a new culture in this hyper-immersive way? It was too much to pass up.
He leapt at the opportunity, and the next seven years would play an integral role in shaping his career and personal aspirations.
Gulino, who is now an instructional designer at the Daniels College of Business, initially requested a placement in a small town, but thankfully he says, he landed in Daegu. The city of over 2.3 million people is the fourth largest in Korea and a bustling metropolis. His program sent about 500 teachers to Daegu, creating a community of expatriates for Gulino to lean on.
“Some of those people who I met that first weekend, I still talk to every week. And that was 13 years ago,” he said. “The experience bonded us really quickly.”
Unlike many of his friends, who left after a year, Gulino would spend seven years immersing himself in Korean cultures and traditions. He would become close to a local family, celebrating holidays and festivals with them, all while growing in his career.
He’d risen from English teacher to manager, overseeing a group of writers who worked on educational curriculum for English language learning. But the pull of home—his close-knit family and five younger siblings—became unavoidable.
“You can only save all your vacation every year for the one yearly trip home for so long,” he said. “It started to become a little more taxing.”
Food from the family ritual of Jesa, honoring ancestors during the Korean New Year.
He returned to New England, where the culture shock, surprisingly, was perhaps more difficult than when he moved abroad.
He was working at the University of New England (UNE) and living in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, a small town south of Portland that has a population around 10,000 people, a far cry from the stimulating metro of Daegu. Coming from a place where he could walk to anything, he now found the only walkable destination was the ocean. It got a bit old.
Gulino spent three-and-a-half years in Maine, developing fully online master’s programs and working closely with UNE’s clinical social work department. Along the way, he earned an online master’s degree in learning design and technology from Purdue. He set his sights on a career in curriculum design and the city of Denver.
Two of his closest friends from Korea lived in the Mile High City and it represented a middle ground between the fast-paced life abroad and the slower pace he found in Maine. And the local music scene didn’t hurt either.
“It didn’t take a lot to twist my arm and make it Denver,” he said.
Gulino joined the Daniels College of Business in 2023 as an instructional designer and is directly involved in much of the College’s course design. That means he works with faculty to help build their courses in the College’s learning management system and align assignments with learning objectives. He’s particularly proud of his effort in designing the University’s new affordable housing certificate, as it challenged him to learn and implement new technology.
His interests outside of work are admittedly eclectic, starting with his taste in music.
“I like everything from hip-hop to electronic music, to bluegrass. Tom Waits is my idol. I love Joanna Newsom, who plays the harp. I love going out to live shows, whether it’s in a grungy dive bar or at Red Rocks,” he said.
But Gulino is also a big reader and loves writing fiction, often in the realm of science fiction and with a touch of horror. When he writes, he does so with the screen in mind, penning things that he thinks would translate to TV or movies.
An undergraduate research project on Irish mythology, which took him to Ireland, has also influenced Gulino’s interests. After exhausting Anglo-Saxon, Irish, Norse, Greek and Roman mythology, he’s shifted his focus to other cultures. Occasionally, he finds himself wading through a 50-lecture series on Japanese mythology.
But travel has always been a part of his story. He went abroad to Oxford twice in college, added that trip to Ireland and landed in Korea for his first real job.
Now, it’s been years since Gulino has lived in Korea and he’s itching for a return.
“I’m really antsy to get out there probably within the next year,” he said. “It became a second home to me really. So given the funds, I will be flying out there.”