To align the perspectives of the structural officials who will be inaugurated, Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY) held an orientation in the Amphitheater of the E7 KH Ibrahim building on Saturday (26/8). In this orientation, Dr. Ir. Gunawan Budiyanto, M.P., delivered various directives and encouragement. “We need to activate the Muhammadiyah spirit in various forms of social welfare in life. Also, develop intellectual capacity to redefine life’s problems so that solutions can be found to help society,” he said.
To achieve this, Gunawan conveyed that every lecturer must strengthen their Islamic values. “Your Islamic values as a lecturer must be strengthened because at UMY, lecturers are role models for students. I am proud of my fellow lecturers who provide guidance to students after the Dhuhr prayer in the campus mosque. Because this creates a togetherness that is rarely found in the lecturer’s room. Strengthening the quality of our human resources (HR) is also necessary, therefore the university encourages lecturers to continue their education. All of this is to carry out UMY’s vision of being excellent in developing science and technology for the benefit of the people based on Islamic values,” explained Gunawan.
“I want to convey to you who will soon be inaugurated that being a structural official is not easy. You must often evaluate yourself to further advance yourself and the unit you lead, so that we can guarantee the quality of UMY. Some time ago we received the results of the ranking of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Indonesia, UMY is ranked 71 out of 3244 HEIs on the list. There are several components that are assessed, in terms of human resources we got a score of 1.43 with a ranking of 653. While for students it is 0.28 with a ranking of 50, and for accreditation we are ranked 17 with a score of 3.61. Then for research and publications we are ranked 48 with a score of 1.26. From the data above, we can see the points that we need to improve, for example in the student component. I think we need better documentation to know the achievements of students, because many of our students have achieved various achievements in various fields,” explained Gunawan.
In the orientation, Prof. Achmad Nurmandi, M.Sc., Vice Rector for Cooperation and International Affairs, stated that to continue to grow and develop, UMY needs to carry out reforms. “There are 3 things we are reforming: organization, governance, and culture. The first two points have been changed, leaving culture. This is what we change by reforming how we work,” he said.
UMY has determined a roadmap that will guide its work until 2040. To achieve the set targets, reforming the way of working is one way to achieve it according to Nurmandi. “We need to change our way of working to be outcome-based. This is so that our performance can be measured from the results we get from the input and processes that have been carried out. For this, we have set a baseline for each study program at UMY so that from there we can determine what needs to be improved,” explained Nurmandi.
“I want the study programs to make plans that are in line with the common targets. This also includes budget planning, because many study programs request funds for the development of supporting facilities. We cannot immediately and directly provide funds for this because our budget as a private university is very limited. Therefore, planning is needed. I also want existing study programs to innovate to generate additional funds. Learning from one of our foreign university partners in South Korea, they make their summer school program a source of funds. They even mobilize philanthropic activities consisting of alumni of the university, the results of which can even support 35 percent of their funding needs. Such innovations can be an idea for us,” Nurmandi explained again.
Nurmandi also conveyed that structural officials in study programs and faculties should build good relationships with cooperation partners from foreign universities. This is because it is necessary to accelerate UMY’s progress in internationalization.
