Emancipated Impact for Indonesia

Emancipated Impact for Indonesia

CONNECTING INDONESIA STUDENTS TO GOVERNMENT FUNDED OPPORTUNITIES WITH KAMPUS MERDEKA

by Nurrizky Imani, Vincent Junition Ungu, Elan Yudhoprakoso, Fajar Kenichi Kusumah Putra University Innovation Fellows Universitas Gadjah Mada

As students, we never imagined that the lessons we learned in the University Innovation Fellows program would have such a profound effect on our fellow students. Ever since the very first training session, our Universitas Gadjah Mada team has been functioning below its potential. Due to everyone’s busy schedules outside of UIF, we regularly fell behind the target. Because of everyone’s varied schedules, we occasionally had to catch up on last week’s work. We even sometimes wondered if we’d be able to sustain the impact beyond the UIF leadership period as we neared the end of the training. It turned out, we underestimated how much it would grow.

During the most recent training, we developed an ambitious plan to establish three strategic priorities on campus. We thought it was too ambitious and the fact that Nurrizky, one of our Fellows, was leading the UIF UGM in a different time zone 12 hours while on exchange at the University of Pennsylvania. In the end we developed three priorities:

1. Creating a space for students to obtain industry internships.

2. Providing students with mentoring opportunities for preparing them for international experience through exchange students.

3. Creating an environment where students can learn about product engineering jobs and opportunities.

Our strategic objectives were determined by what we had learned as product engineering students in technology. We discovered a missing piece of the puzzle in our community regarding how students have strong technical skills but insufficient work experience. This has become an endless loop from which students cannot escape. On the other hand, we discovered that the Indonesian Ministry of Education is pushing a massive program called “Kampus Merdeka,” which translates to “Emancipated Campus,” to encourage students to learn off-campus via internship and exchange program. This allowed us to test our first strategic objective, “Mentoring Kampus Merdeka: Internship,” in which we established a mentorship program to assist students in obtaining their first internship. This mentoring program instructs mentees on how to compose a personal branding and interview. During the implementation, we were able to identify nine mentors with various business and engineering responsibilities. In addition, 42 individuals signed up to be mentors, and 18 students were selected as their mentees. With only one month of mentoring, we provide the students with learning activities and modules that give them a comprehensive understanding of each interview process. This Mentoring assists mentees in obtaining their initial internship. After 5 months, 75% of our mentees were offered internships. Our first endeavor has inspired us to make a second significant contribution.

On our second priority called “Mentoring Kampus Merdeka: Exchange”, we assisted students in applying for the Indonesia International Student Mobility Awards (IISMA). This mentoring program provided students with the opportunity to study at partner universities outside of Indonesia, including the University of Pennsylvania, Melbourne University, UC Davis, and more than 50 other institutions. UIF UGM created a mentorship program that assists students with the review of their essays and each step of the activity, such as the interview and test administration.

We were able to attract up to 30 mentees and assist 20 students during the second round of applications for this mentorship. We were ultimately able to help 10 students be accepted in the program. It was remarkable that ten students were able to gain international experience in world class universities. This simple, cost-free but powerful mentorship has helped students have their best college experience. The impact of UIF UGM has led to unimaginable opportunities for students in our campus, and this has led them to a new journey of learning opportunities. This impact was not something that we expected in the first time and this led us to be excited with our next impact both on campus and also in other communities. You can check our impact on Instagram @uif.ugm.

spaces

Work on a class project, create a business, build a prototype with paper and glue, talk about life. Each year, members of our community create and reimagine places for students and faculty to learn and grow together.

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT

Mariam El Madhoun, Zein Zebib

I [Zein] participated in a design sprint to design a space in AUB. My team and I ended up getting the winning design and we are now working at AUB to implement our designs. At my university, there is a department called the Interdisciplinary Design Practice Program (IDPP) that has a collaborative class (225) and a headquarters (HQ) — those are the spaces we are designing. We are designing the spaces to look more efficient and attract attention towards the IDPP among AUB students. Moreover, we even included a mini prototype of one of our strategic priorities from UIF: we are going to add an “AUBe the change” box that allows students to write their suggestions to the IDPP. It allows students to send their voices to changemakers at AUB. Mariam joined our team after the sprint to implement the designs.

ROWAN UNIVERSITY

Aatish Gupta

I work at Studio 231, a makerspace at Rowan that was started by a former UIF cohort. I have used what I learned from my UIF training to run design thinking, low resolution prototyping, and high resolution prototyping workshops there. I have also led workshops like intro to app development, intro to arduino, and intro to 3D printing, using the same skills. These activities help to encourage I&E among a variety of students at Rowan, of all majors.

TOBB UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS AND TECHNOLOGY

Ekin Al, Ömer Bahadır Orhan, Aleyna Ece Yalavaç

During the 6-week online training, we had the chance to meet with many students, academicians and university staff. The first main problem we focused on as a result of these interviews was that the students felt that they lacked a space of their own. Almost all areas reserved for students’ use in the main campus are also used by students to study. This limits the space where students can socialize and share their ideas with each other, apart from cafes and restaurants. In order to meet this requirement, we decided to establish an innovation and design station (I&D Station) within our school. In this Station, which will be open to everyone within the university, we aim to gather students to discuss their ideas, to make projects, to support these projects with our school’s enterprise center Garaj, to pave the way for interdisciplinary studies, to organize various inspiration meetings and hackathons... In short, we expect this field to be a starting point in our university in the light of innovation and design-oriented thinking.

TOHOKU UNIVERSITY

Atsushi Aoyama, Watcharawut Masawat, Haruka Minemura, Bungo Tanaka

The I-River is a room for innovation, a place for prototyping, a place for people to connect, and a place for information to come together. The concept is a sustainable innovation cycle. Innovation is likened to the flow of water on earth, with the iriver as the source of innovation, and the waves of innovation flowing into society. The water of innovation that flows into society eventually sublimates in society, and the innovation born in society becomes clouds, which again flow into the iriver, the source. This is a sustainable cycle of innovation in which the innovation we create becomes a stream that affects society, and we receive the benefits of the innovations created in society, which in turn becomes a new stream of innovation. Many people have already gathered in this room, and the members have held workshops, rented it out to people who want to use it, and held ceremonies. Not only students, but also teachers have been invited, and the Vice President has visited. We will continue to hold effective workshops and attractive events in this room, with the aim of inviting more people and making this room a place where people want to come to Tohoku University because of it.