Alumni & Voices

Sugijanto Soegijoko

Professor Dr. Sugijanto Soegijoko received Masters degrees from both the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, along with a doctorate from Massachusets Institute of Technology in urban planning.

My Fulbright want permitted me to spend one year as a visiting professor at the University of Cincinnati’s School of Design during 1987 and 1988. I taught a graduate seminar on development issues and also supervised a studio program on how to implement those concepts at the local level. In addition, I made presentations at my campus and elsewhere on architecture in developing countries.

Among my students were city planners from a number of other countries, including India, Korea, Turkey and China. All participants seemed equally intrigued with the ways we in Indonesia are working to cultural elements central to the Indonesian way of life to the demands of modern urban planning. They were also interested in learning about our efforts to get local communities involved in preserving and reusing structures that have historical and cultural value.

My year in Cincinnati allowed me to complete and present two papers: One was entitled ‘Revisiting Indonesia’s National Urban Development Strategy.’ The other was called ‘Design Elements in the Curriculum of a School of Design.’ It so happened that just five days after my return from the United States I was appointed Dean of Civil Engineering and Planning at ITB in Bandung, so I was immediately able to transfer some of this learning into a broad academic setting.

Then when I was soon thereafter appointed Deputy Minister for Regional Planning at BAPPENAS, our national development planning agency, these topics were once again the subject of widespread discussion. To me it’s apparent that the research and writing I was able to accomplish during my Fulbright year has had a kind of ripple effect here at home.

This article appears from the book of U.S Indonesian Fulbright Program – Forty Years of Scholarships and Mutual Understanding 1952 – 1992 (pages 37 – 42 ) published in 1992.

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