Entrepreneurship at UMC

The idea of whipping up entrepreneurship spirit among the students has been brimming for some time here, and people have been gearing up to realize it. A task force was set to draw up a curriculum for the entrepreneurial courses for all Study Programs.

But I guess this is where we have to be a little bit cautious here.

I personally would say that entrepreneurship, defined in its strictest sense, culminates in gaining profit. Now, that is most suitable with students from Management and Accounting study programs, but leaves a big question when applied to English, Information Technology and Industrial Engineering. It is obvious that those disciplines call for some other kind of entrepreneurship, something not confined to mere planning, selling, and gaining profits.

Somebody suggested that entrepreneurship concept can be extended to include things like social entrepreneur, language entrepreneur, humanistic entrepreneur or some other kinds of entrepreneurship that embrace wider dimensions. But then I’d say this somewhat blurs the focus. To me, entrepreneurship is originally about opening up job opportunities and making profit, which is in line with Ciputra’s formulation of his entrepreneurship concept. So it’s about starting a business, running it well and making money, that’s it.

Someone else thinks that the act of producing simple merchandise and selling them to Ma Chungers instills a fighting spirit and toughness in the students. Fine. But if entrepreneurship is to be expanded to include those other dimensions of humanity, surely selling is not the only act that can develop entrepreneurial spirit among the students. This is not a one-size-fits-all thing.

So, why not having them do humanitarian acts, or voluntary development programs for the local communities, where students dedicate their services to the people by drawing on their academic skills?

Entrepreneurship is a very good idea, and Ma Chung deserves big appreciation for quickly drumming up its best human resources to establish a comprehensive curriculum for sustainable entrepreneurship courses. However, it really needs to seriously ponder on the issues above to generate a sound curriculum relevant to each study program. As I suggested in the meeting, intensive talks with the heads of the other study programs should be given a high priority in order to draw up relevant curriculum for each discipline.

Evaluating Teachers' Performances: Smile :)

The results of students’ evaluation on their lecturers’ teaching performances have been here, right on my PC. I immediately ran a cursory look at my colleagues’ and my own ratings. Well, in general there seems to be a slight increase from the last semester. This is good. Ma Chung lecturers used to be miserable in teaching, but I think they heed to the feedback given thru the Direktorat Penjaminan Mutu and have been making real efforts to make their teaching styles enjoyable and informative.

My scores: 68.7 and 78 for Bahasa Inggris I in Management Study Program, 96 for Translation, and 86 for Grammar I. Good enough, not yet excellent but those figures really made me relieved, contented, and proud.


But whoa, whoa, wait wait . . . .

Something is a bit unsettling here.

Are the high scores from English Department students caused by my closeness to them, or because I have really performed well? Were the students somehow more generous in their rating because they began seeing my lighter side? I do loosen up a bit with these students. I visited some of their Friendster pages, and gave them some light, amusing comments. I cracked jokes more often in the classes. I recount amusing stories. The contents and teaching style, nevertheless, remain the same. I do not make any significant changes in the way I deliver my structured materials.

So, did these students rate me favorably because I really have done a good job of teaching them, or because they simply like me more?

If it were for the latter reason, I should not be very happy with that. That kind of judgment destroys the validity of the measurement that I have been developing with great efforts. If you like the teacher personally, then you’d be urged to score him high almost in every aspect, regardless of his actual teaching performances.

Which explains why my score for the Management class is much lower. The class is big, with 40 students being crammed into a classroom. I snapped in one or two of the sessions because they were too noisy. I never throw jokes or witty comments to them. In fact, I very rarely smile.

Thus, as a result, they may like me less than the English Department students do, and when they hardly like the teacher, they will presumably give me low scores for every teaching component.

Assessment is always an exciting task, and part of the reason is because it is somehow intricate. With suspicion hanging thick in the air, I think the best thing for me to do as Manager of Direktorat Penjaminan Mutu is to assign a very low weight to teaching performance in the whole evaluation scheme of the lecturers.

Universitas Ma Chung Bertaraf Internasional

“Universitas Ma Chung Bertaraf Internasional”

WHAT???!!!

“S” is for shocked, startled, surprised, snaps, sssshhh . . .

I was flabbergasted to see that writing on the ballyhoo right at the corner of Puncak Esberg Street. Do they know what that means? Do they know what it implies? Do they ever realize how much hard work we have to put in to attain that international standard?

But first things first is a very simple question: do they know what “international” means?

I have been observing very closely how Ma Chung lecturers and students demonstrate their English proficiency. I talk to some of them in English, attend Forkomil where English is compulsory, analyze my colleagues’ written e-mails, and I came to a rough estimation about their English proficiency. On average, they may be at the low-intermediate level. I have to check my estimation against the descriptions set by Council European of Framework or Interagency Language Roundtable, but anyway, I think I am optimistic enough that Ma Chung can start a major undertaking of heading toward English-speaking campus. And that’s probably a step toward becoming an international campus.

I have been interviewing lecturers from Industrial Engineering, Information Technology, and Accountancy, and can start sketching out a profile of their needs for development of English proficiency. I will write about this in a more detailed fashion in a separate posting; for now, suffice it to say that despite Ma Chung’s occasional chaos in its management style, its lecturers and students have the potential and the right attitude toward English. That’s a good sign, already. All they need to have is a very able, fully functional and responsive language center. Which is what I am developing now. Which is why the Ubaya Rector’s Decree of my reappointment as the Director of Ubaya Language Center is dated exactly the same as the Letter of Instruction from Ma Chung Rector assigning me to develop a Ma Chung language center!

Why MA CHUNG AI WO??

Just a small note about why I chose "Ma Chung Ai Wo" as the name of this blog. "Ma Chung" is obviously after Ma Chung, the name of the university. "Ai" is "Love", or "Cinta Kasih" in Indonesian. "Love", in any language it is conveyed, is believed to induce a positive vibration to the surrounding. Thus, the word "Love" in the title should radiate positive feelings, positive vibration to me as the sole writer, and to you the readers. It brings about understanding, joy, acceptance and hopes.

I could have named it differently, but in doing so I may have to come up with different names and different wordings which may not sound as positive as the word "Love".

So be it. The story behind the naming of this blog. I surely hope the contents of this blog live up to the name it carries.

Gimme A Break: Why LPPM Hardly Appeals to Lecturers

During the Quality Assurance Convention I, LPPM (Center for Research and Community Development) said that one of its problems is lecturers' low participation rate in research activities. The next two days the center offered a number of training programs in research methodology and social devotion activities. Well, while appreciating the incessant efforts of the center, I think it has missed the core of the problem. It's not that Ma Chung lecturers have low motivation or interest or good prowess in conducting good research, but it's the heavy work load of teaching and other tasks which so far have kept them from actively doing research. With an average of 14 sks (credit hours), they are busy preparing for classes, checking students' works almost after every session, giving scores, attending meetings, guiding students in the mentoring programs, and a few other tasks. What they need to have in order to focus on research is a month free of teaching classes and other non-research activities, during which they can concentrate solely on writing a research proposal or running their on-going research.

I believe that good proposals, groundbreaking research can only be conducted when lecturers exert their energy, mind, attention, and time to develop seminal proposals and then set out to conduct good research.

Smart, motivated, skillful lecturers are what we have had in hands. Their undivided attention to research is what we urgently need. An incubation period for research is what we should have.

Maintaining Quality: To Be or Not To Be

Quality Assurance is everyone’s business. The responsibility of maintaining and improving quality does not rest with the Quality Assurance Department only. Rather, it should be the concern of each department and study program.

Thus, to make sure that you deliver services with good qualities to our stakeholders—be it students, their parents, members of the Foundation, or simply guests dropping by to Ma Chung—you need a coordinator, whose main task is to coordinate a regular monitoring and self-evaluation of his or her own Directorate or Study Program. Conducted in the spirit of objectivity and high motivation for continuous improvement , the self-monitoring and evaluation should generate lists of things that need attention, problems that begin growing, and scheduled activities that need preparation. The awareness of this will in turn prompt efforts to solve the problems, to increase effectiveness or efficiency, and to gear up for incoming scheduled programs.


It is this conviction which encouraged me to stage Konvensi Penjaminan Mutu I (The First Convention of Quality Assurance) last Friday, 31 October 2008. At least, I seemed to be able to raise my colleagues’ awareness of the benefits of this convention: (1) they share with each other how their respective directorate or study program has been dealing with problems and striving to improve their qualities, (2) they are informed of whether some problems of another directorate concern their directorates or study program; (3) they see opportunities to strengthen the coordination between their own directorates and the others.


One day after the convention, I went through all Monitoring and Evaluation reports, giving each of them a few suggestions and comments for the next Monevin round, and then I sent back those reports to the directorates and study program.


I hope I have initiated a regular activity and event that will have a long-lasting positive impact on Ma Chung’s endeavour to deliver high-quality education.