(From left) Field Office Manager READI Indonesia Ivonne Rawis, Mawardi Muhammad’s Program Scholarship & Applied Research Officer, and ITS Dean of FMKSD Prof. Dr. Basuki Widodo MSc

ITS Campus, ITS News – Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) Surabaya continues to improve the quality of its students in various ways. One of them is through cooperation with the Canadian government in the form of Risk Management scholarships, Economic Sustainability, and Actuarial Science Development in Indonesia (Readi) 2018 for students of the Faculty of Mathematics, Computation and Data Science (FMKSD).

This year, as many as 28 students including 10 from the Mathematics Department and the Department of Statistics, and eight Actuarial Departments. “The number increased compared to last year which only facilitated 18 people,” said the Dean of the FMKSD, Prof. Dr. Basuki Widodo MSc during the scholarship handover ceremony which took place in the Mathematics Meeting Room, ITS Campus, Tuesday (18/9).

The Professor that was inaugurated in 2008 explained that Readi was an actuarial competence development project in Indonesia that was fully funded by the Government of Canada. The aim of this program is to create more reliable actuaries from Indonesia. “We received direct recognition from the Financial Services Authority (OJK, ed.) That Indonesia is still lacks of experts in the actuarial field, mostly the experts in that field have been recruited from abroad,” he explained.

He added, besides ITS there were eight other universities in Indonesia that were part of the Readi project collaboration. As for the University of Waterloo, Canada acts as a research partner from the Canadian government.

Among the nine universities, according to Basuki, ITS is the only one who has succeeded in developing actuarial science to the point of being the Actuarial Department. For other universities, they are still in the initial development stage, namely in the form of study programs (Prodi) under other departments. “This makes ITS the only university in Indonesia that has an Actuarial Department,” commented this Mathematics lecturer.

Question and answer session with READI Scholarship recipients

According to Basuki, Canada itself is a country that pioneering the actuarial science. The magnitude of the actuarial market potential in the future, makes the Canadian government interested in developing this knowledge in Indonesia.

Basuki said, Indonesia has a huge opportunity as an actuarial power market, which can only be realized if there are many actuaries. “The reciprocity that expected by the Canadian government in this collaboration is long-term, namely when the actuarial ecosystem has been created in Indonesia,” he said.

The assistance provided to students in the form of education funds amounting to Rp 2.5 million per month, exemption of single tuition fees, Rp 1 million of money were given at the beginning of the semester, as well as assistance with actuarial test fees at the Indonesian Actuaries Association (PAI) for each pass examination . “This scholarship is given for one academic year, and will be extended if they pass the requirements in the next year evaluation,” Basuki explained again.

Basuki revealed, the selection process was carried out entirely by Readi. ITS only needs to give a list of a number of students with the highest cumulative achievement index (GPA) in their department. Then the Readi party will select it by their own method. “Those who currently receive Readi scholarships are the best of the best, because they have been selected from the start,” he said.

One of the scholarship recipients from the Actuarial Department, Wisnowan Hendy Saputra hopes to achieve more academic and non-academic achievements at ITS. “Later I also want to continue my education to a higher level without having to bother parents in terms of costs,” he said with a smile. (qi/ITS Public Relations Officer)

READI Scholarship Recipients