Today I had an excellent visit to Ubaya's third campus, located in the mountain town of Trawas. After an hour and a half's drive we arrived at this scenic facility that hosts training sessions for businesses in addition to serving the student and faculty populations at Ubaya's two Surabaya campuses.
The Trawas campus is the newest Ubaya location and includes meeting rooms, sleeping accommodation for 250 people, a man-made pond stocked with fish, a few campsites, many beautiful gardens, and a gazebo with panoramic views of the nearby mountain and surrounding countryside. Student groups and academic departments come for retreats, training, and group-building weekends complete with a ropes course supported by bamboo poles.
The reason I went for a visit, though, is that Ubaya Trawas is also home to two research projects of the university's Center for Environmental Studies. Every toilet on the site is specially designed to facilitate a study assessing the feasibility of using "yellow water" for fertilizer and "brown water" as compost. Also, one of the cabins is partially powered by solar panels on a nearby roof. I was accompanied for the day by my two colleagues from Ubaya's International Village and by one of the Center for Environmental Studies' researchers. Trawas staff members were gracious hosts, providing a tour of the grounds and a delicious lunch of Indonesian food.
Most of the buildings were constructed with specially ordered materials and decorative elements from all across Indonesia.
I look at this darling picture of you with new-found colleagues and just bust out all over with love and pride - you're our own Greg Mortenson building bridges to this largest Muslim population in the world! Hurray!
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