High quality education requires lecturers that are also of high quality. Currently learning activity should be directed to be student centered learning (SCL) or student-focused learning and is no longer focusing solely on lecturers. Consequently lecturers are required to master a variety of learning methods that support this approach. In addition, teaching staffs are also expected to guide students in preparing their research papers, thesis and dissertation with proper language. Moreover, because lecturers’ task is not only to teach but also to conduct research, mastery of lecturers’ capacity in conducting research and publication in scientific journals will also be necessary. Faculty of Law, Universitas Indonesia (FHUI) also considers that dissemination of opinions and ideas to wider community is essential.
In order to meet those purposes above, during these last three years FHUI has organized a number of activities aimed to increase capacity of lecturers. The activities included: (1) in the field of research: Normative Legal Research Methods training, training methods of empirical legal research, research management, socio-legal research training, and so forth; (2) in the field of publication: writing training in international journals, popular scholarly writing training; (3) in the field of learning methods: e-learning training, vibrant teaching training, interesting presentation training, and so on; (4) in the field of lecture material: upgrading training for criminal law lecturers, upgrading training for international law lecturers, upgrading training for administrative law lecturers and others (these upgrading trainings were also joined by other university lecturers).
Faculty of Law also formed a partnership agreement with Maastrich University for problem based learning training as well as an agreement with Erasmus University for learning methods training. Some time in the future there will also be held training on proofreading in Indonesian language, which is very important in order to guide students in writing their final research.
In addition to organizing various capacity building in the form of trainings, FHUI also actively sends lecturers to various seminars, workshops, conferences, symposia and other scholarly meetings, both at home country and abroad. There is a policy in the form of financial support for all lecturers whose abstracts are accepted at Asian Law Institute Conference (ASLI) for FHUI is one of the founders of ASLI along with 12 other Faculty of Laws in Asia. Financial support was also given to each FHUI lecturer whose abstracts are accepted at numerous conferences in various countries as well as in the home country, with approximately 50 millions per year. To support the publication, the financial support provided for the research, translation, editing, until to the final delivery. In this year 2016 we also conducted accelerated program of scholarly publications by sending several lecturers who almost complete their research papers to conduct research and discussion / consultation with professors in other countries. In October and November there were four lecturers sent to Leiden, London and Melbourne for two weeks.
In addition to those efforts above, FHUI strives to improve its lecturers’ education therefore more teaching staffs obtain Master degree and Doctorate. Currently, a number of lecturers are studying in the Netherlands, Australia, and the United States and in Master Program of FHUI itself.
One of the things that should be improved is scholarly publication, either in the form of articles in journals or books. Lecturers in FHUI received financial support to write both in Indonesian and English, printing expense, as well as incentives for their published articles or books. In addition, through Djokosoetono Research Center (DRC), it is also provided grant for writing text books for which the funds sponsored by the family of Prof. Djokosoetono.
Since a few years ago FHUI has two full English language journals namely Indonesian Law Review (ILREV) and Indonesian Journal of International Law (IJIL). Today both of the journals have already indexed in an international journal, Hein online. In September 2016, ILREV already registered for indexed in Scopus, while IJIL is to follow soon. To improve lecturers’ publication in both of the journals, Writing Colloquium has been held three times and in 2017 it will be held again. Through the event lecturers from FHUI as well as from other universities currently studying in various countries would deliver a presentation of their articles which then will be published in both journals above.
With the increasing quality of lecturers both in terms of teaching, research and publications, we hope quality of students will be improved as well. This is to ensure that FHUI alumni will become more qualified graduates in the future.
Depok, October 25, 2016
(Prof. Dr.Topo Santoso, SH, M.H.)
