Puncochar Reports on Sabbatical in Indonesia
Judy Puncochar (Education) offered a progress report on her sabbatical in Indonesia. She is pictured with the U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, Robert Blake, whom she met at a reception at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta. The event honored newly appointed executive director Alan Feinstein of the American Indonesian Exchange Foundation. AMINEF is a binational foundation administering the Fulbright Program in Indonesia and helps to develop academic collaborations. More than 1,000 Americans have been supported to do research or teach in Indonesia since 1952 and more than 2,500 Indonesian have participated in graduate degree programs from American universities. Don Faust (Mathematics and Computer Science) also attended the reception.
Professor Chaedar Alwasilah is Puncochar’s colleague during her sabbatical. He is a faculty member at the Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, the country’s leading education university.
“Alwasilah is a Fulbright Scholar who could not travel to the U.S. because of illness,” wrote Puncochar in a recent email. “NMU granted my sabbatical to help him achieve his Fulbright research of furthering liberal arts in Indonesian higher education. I have been teaching four graduate classes, co-teaching one undergraduate class and writing two books. I am learning so much!”
Puncochar is scheduled to remain in Indonesia through Jan. 27. She said she plans to apply for a Fulbright for 2016-17 and continue her work training instructors within the Mata Kuliah Dasar Umum (translated to general basic education) and developing frameworks for curricula. The MKDU is a nationally mandated program of study conducted in all Indonesian undergraduate colleges and universities.