UBAYA (Universitas Surabaya)

After spending most of the day at Universitas Surabaya meeting people and touring the campus, I've learned a lot. I didn't realize, for example, that UBAYA is a private university. Indonesia has around 2,000 institutions of higher learning and, with roughly 10,000 students, UBAYA is one of the larger among them. The school tries to distinguish itself from its many competitors by embracing diversity and internationalism. Tuition and fees are considerably higher at UBAYA than at nearby public universities but they feel they provide a higher quality education.

UBAYA has five faculties, or schools: Economics (which includes accounting and management), Pharmacy, Biotechnology, Engineering, and Law. Economics is the largest faculty; biotechnology is the smallest. The university also includes a graduate school, offering master's degrees in law and in management. They hope one day to be able to launch a Ph.D. program. Each faculty is housed in its own buildings: economics has three, engineering has at least six. Each divison also has one or two "gazebos", sheltered outdoor common areas with free wifi, where students congregate. The gazebo outside the accounting building is posted with signs admonishing students not to play cards there! (I read it myself and correctly translated the Bahasa.)

Spring semester starts next week so there were a lot of students on campus today submitting forms to request their courses. The faculty members are also preparing for the semester; on Saturday I will attend their "coordination meeting" where they decide who is going to teach what. I found this interesting and quite different from our approach in the U.S. Although lecturers have already been assigned to courses, none of them will teach all of one course for the entire semester. For example, under Microeconomics there are four lecturers listed, including me. The course will meet on Tuesdays from 9:45 until 11:25. On Saturday the four of us assigned to the course will sit down together to decide who will teach each week and (I think) what material each of us will cover. I hope they don't expect me to teach the first day...

The campus is fairly large and pretty well maintained; it also has a lot of greenery. Walkways connect the various buildings and each floor tends to have an outdoor hallway. All of the accounting lecturers share one large office, with individual cubicles. This seems to be typical as the same held for the management lecturers and the economics lecturers. I will have a cube in the accounting room since the international coordinator for the entire Economics School teaches accounting.

I will be spending a lot of time at the International Village and will also have an office there. Today the Village was hosting orientation for the dozen or so new international exchange students, most of whom are from Eurpoean countries. The Village was constructed in 2001 and created to foster international exchange and to reach out to the community. AMINEF (the American-Indonesian Education Foundation, Fulbright's Indonesian partner) has a small office in the International Village and the woman who works there was friendly, well-spoken, and eager to serve as a resource for me should I need it. Her main job is to help local high school students research schools in the U.S. and navigate the application process.

Pak Adi, the director of the International Village, and his assistant, Pak Reza, have both been immensely helpful and have shown me around and introduced me. (Note: Pak is a term of respect and is short for Bapak, or Father.) I met many, many lecturers throughout the Economics School today. Most of their names did not stick in my brain in the flurry of introductions so I hope that I can find them out somehow later. Everyone I met was welcoming and I am encouraged by their reception.

The Dean of the Economics School spent about half and hour with me and then joined us for lunch. He's an articulate man who spent time in Australia as an undergraduate and has both a masters degree and Ph.D. from Oxford. He also has a great sense of humor and reportedly has been in a rock band for several years, though I did not ask him about that. Earlier this morning I had been slightly worried that I did not bring a business suit to wear. Of course my concerns proved to be unwarranted; I was dressed quite appropriately compared to the other lecturers. The Dean showed up in jeans.