Welcoming the 100th anniversary of the independence of the Republic of Indonesia with a gift in the form of a demographic bonus obtained in the 2030-2040 period, the role of universities in preparing quality human resources is now very important. For this reason, it is necessary to strengthen capacity building in higher education. The Chemistry Department, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (FMIPA) Tanjungpura University (UNTAN) is trying to play a role in increasing capacity building. Through a program entitled "Increasing Human Resource Capacity in the Field of Research and Curriculum Development", the Department of Chemistry, FMIPA UNTAN succeeded in obtaining funding to implement the World Class Professor (WCP) Program - Scheme B from the Directorate General of Higher Education, Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia.
Dr. Gusrizal, S.Si., M.Si as Head of the Chemistry Masters Study Program and Responsible for the WCP Program explained that by increasing capacity building it is hoped that lecturers can continue to develop and adapt to changes to foster creativity and innovation which will lead to improving the quality of education. The focus of the WCP program is on research and curriculum development. Research activities can be used as a measure of the performance or quality of a lecturer, so that efforts to improve the quality of lecturers can be stimulated by increasing their ability to conduct research.
Meanwhile, in order to improve the quality of graduates, it is very important to develop an educational curriculum that can respond to the challenges and changes that occur over time. Therefore, lecturers need to have knowledge about curriculum preparation along with developing lecture materials in order to obtain quality learning outcomes and outcomes.
Prof. Dr. Sri Juari Santosa, M.Eng. was appointed as a World Class Professor (WCP) and partner in this program. He currently serves as Chair of the PhD Chemistry Program at the Department of Chemistry, FMIPA, Gadjah Mada University and has a very good reputation in terms of research and publications, recorded as having published 95 documents with citations of 707 and h-index = 15. Prof. Sri Juari is also known to have experience in building international networks with foreign universities, supervising students up to PhD level, preparing and developing the Chemistry Department curriculum and actively writing books and owning many intellectual property rights in the form of patents. It is hoped that his personal and managerial capacities can be transferred to lecturers through WCP activity programs that are systematically designed with realistic achievement targets.
Since the beginning of September 2020, twelve activities have been programmed with partners. The main activity in this program is joint publication of articles for publication in reputable international journals. From this activity, two scientific publications have been produced which have been submitted to international journal publishers. The two articles are entitled “Waste of Argentometric Determination of Chloride as a Source of Silver in the Synthesis of p-Hydroxybenzoic Acid-Capped Silver Nanoparticles” and “Composite of magnetite and Zn/Al layered double hydroxide as a magnetically separable adsorbent for effective removal of humic acid.”
Apart from that, there is a Workshop on Improving Lecturers' Capacity in Writing Reputable International Journal Articles, a Workshop on Curriculum Development and Competency Strengthening of Chemistry Study Program Graduates, a Seminar on Chemical Research Trends, a Seminar on Building International Collaborative Research Networks, and eight focussed group discussion activities as a follow-up to seminar activities and workshops.
The benefits of this WCP activity are not only felt by lecturers at Tanjungpura University, but are also gained by the lecturer and student community from various universities in Indonesia. Based on the data collected, it shows that participants in seminar and workshop activities which are open to the public come from various regions such as the islands of Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Papua and Nusa Tenggara. This has the impact of promoting the existence of Tanjungpura University among the community.
The success of implementing the WCP program for the Chemistry Department, FMIPA UNTAN certainly cannot be separated from joint work and active support. With the successful implementation of this program, Gusrizal as the program manager expressed his thanks to the Chancellor of UNTAN, the Dean of FMIPA UNTAN, resource persons and various parties involved for all the support for the successful implementation of this program.
Through the implementation of the World Class Professor Program, it is hoped that the quality of learning and research in the Chemistry Masters Study Program will increase. Currently, the Tanjungpura University FMIPA Chemistry Masters Study Program has been accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Higher Education with an accreditation rating of B. People who are interested in continuing their studies at the Masters level can browse information via the website http://chemistry.untan .ac.id/ or contact directly via telephone number 085750079543. The registration process for new student admissions has been opened and will close in July 2021.
Articles are also published on the Tanjungpura University Website.
