The Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) welcomed delegations from the Graduate School of Universitas Terbuka (UT) to discuss a potential collaboration and formalize a partnership agreement. The meeting was held on Thursday, October 10, 2024, in Meeting Room I, Soeharno TS Building, FEB UNS.

The UT delegation, led by Dr. Joko Rizkie Widokarti, S.E., M.M., Vice Director II for Non-Academic Affairs, was warmly welcomed by FEB UNS leadership, Head of the Master of Management program, Doctoral Program in Economics, and the Quality Assurance Unit.

The collaboration aims to establish institutional collaboration between the two entities in executing the Tridharma of Higher Education at the postgraduate level as specified in the proposed partnership agreement. This collaboration will cover education, research, and community service activities.

In education field, the initiatives will involve faculty member exchanges for guest lectures, expert sessions and teaching collaborations, curriculum design and review, development and assessment of instructional materials, creation of tutorial modules, implementation of the Merdeka Belajar Kampus Merdeka (MBKM) program, and practice sessions. As for research field, the collaboration will include collaborative studies, joint publications, journal reviews, co-authored books and references, and joint committees for international seminars. Meanwhile, community service collaboration will involve joint community engagement programs, shared content development for service initiatives, and joint publications of results.

In his opening remarks, Bhimo Rizky Samudro, S.E., M.Si., Ph.D., Dean of FEB UNS, extended a warm welcome to the UT delegation and introduced FEB leadership ranks in attendance. Dr. Bhimo emphasized the need of collaboration, particularly in supporting the international accreditation efforts of FEB UNS through research groups, specialized areas, and other academic activities.

Dr. Joko Rizkie Widokarti extended his gratitude for FEB UNS’s exceptional hospitality, noting the impressive scale of UT’s operations, this semester UT sees a total of 662,000 active student registrations out of a total of 1.4 million students. He further highlighted the challenges faced by the graduate program. “Thanks to FEB UNS for establishing a partnership with us, thus, hopefully we can solve the need for thesis supervisor, expert discussant, considering that the graduate study have approximately 2,000 students with only 70 lecturers across 11 study programs,” he explains.

Dr. Joko also shared that UT’s Graduate School has achieved the highest accreditation from LAMEMBA, further solidifying its commitment to partnerships like this one with FEB UNS.

The discussion, moderated by Dr. Lilik Wahyudi, S.E., M.Si., Head of the Master of Management Program, proceeded smoothly and concluded with an exchange of souvenirs and a group photo.