Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs and Student Services of Cleveland State University (CSU), Dr. Oya Tukel, and the University of Pertamina had successfully completed their project in logistics engineering study through the Fulbright Specialist program from March 30 – April 13, 2019.

University of Pertamina is a newly established university in Jakarta, Indonesia with the vision of becoming a recognized global university within ten years.  Pertamina Foundation provides financial support for the university.  At the time of Dr. Tukel’s visit, the university was going through national accreditation, so the faculty and administrators were busy preparing documents and revising/improving their curriculum to meet the accreditation requirements. The university administrators were working very hard to move the university’s grade level from C to a B so that they can start offering graduate programs.

The project that Dr. Tukel and the university carried out was to have Dr. Tukel work with the faculty in Logistics Engineering department to revise the curriculum, help integrate experiential learning to their program and develop internship programs abroad, and develop a road map for the faculty to become more research active.  In order to better understand the Logistics program, Dr. Tukel held several meetings with the faculty teaching in the program, attended classes, and talked to students and members of student organizations.  Based on her observations and the information she collected, she then held seminars to explain the engaged learning programs that can be adoptable to the university’s situation.  Specifically, she talked about CSU engaged learning principles and how they make it work.  One of the main differences between the US schools and the schools in Indonesia is the funding sources for the programs.  Dr. Tukel provided examples of programs we run at CSU that are solely based on grants and donations.

The faculty at the University of Pertamina are well educated, mostly from schools in Europe and Asia, and eager to develop research agenda.  They mentioned that the most pressing issue is the time that they can devote to research, since they teach pretty much every day and all day.  Dr. Tukel talked to administration about creating summer research programs for faculty.  Currently, they have summer research internship program for their undergraduate students with a school in Taiwan.  She also attended two student presentations about the research they did with a faculty in Taiwan and was impressed with the quality of their work.  She believes the same type of program can be established for faculty with the help of funding from Pertamina Foundation.

In addition to it, they discussed a plan for summer 2020.  Ideas they had were a joint conference, a grant swap program that enables both university students to travel, foundation of a logistic research center that can house research activities.  They created an email group to continue the communications between the institutes.

“Overall, this was a very beneficial and productive visit and would not be possible without the Fulbright support”, Dr. Tukel said.