The 2019 ECPFA participants along with ITS Executive Board at ITS Rectorate Building

ITS Campus, ITS News – Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) through the Directorate of International Relations is more aggressively been preparing to confront global competition towards World Class University. This time through its new program, the 2019 Engineering Colleges Partnership Forum in Asia (ECPFA), involves three educational institutions at the same time, namely ITS, Kobe University from Japan, and National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) from Taiwan.

The activity that took place on August 5 – 8 was inaugurated directly in ITS Rectorate Building by ITS Vice Rector IV for Innovation, Cooperation, Alumni, and International Relations, Bambang Pramujati ST MSc Eng Ph.D. Through his speech, he was very grateful for the willingness of Kobe University and NCKU to attend this program. “Hopefully, there is a knowledge transfer from the ongoing activities and strengthen the cooperation between these educational institutions in the future,” he said.

Besides, ITS Director of International Relations, Dr. Maria Anityasari ST ME, said that the ECPFA program is a continuation of the cooperation and commitment from the consortium that had been held at NCKU in the previous year. There are six universities including ITS and NCKU as the host. This year, ITS was chosen as the host and managed to present 13 student participants and nine professors from each university.

ITS Vice Rector IV, Bambang Pramujati (right), accompanied by ITS Director of International Relations, Maria Anityasari, gave the opening speech at the 2019 ECPFA

For this year, ECPFA carried themes related to the city development and renewable energy namely Clean Energy and Clean City. The Forum was also enriched with visits directly to the Surabaya City Development Planning Board (Bappeko) and the Benowo Final Disposal Site (TPA).

According to Maria, it aims to see the integrated waste management process and its utilization as a renewable electricity energy source. “Participants are expected to be able to get new ideas about how Surabaya City become a clean and beautiful city,” said the Industrial Engineering lecturer.

ITS Director of International Relations, Dr. Maria Anityasari of ST ME, explained the material related to the 2019 ECPFA program

Furthermore, Maria also revealed, the program will present several separate agendas between students and professors. For the students themselves, there will be training in self-development, character-building sessions as a team, and collaboration between students from those three universities. Also, they will present the results of their research which will be responded directly by professors from Kobe University, NCKU, and ITS.

In her explanation, Maria said the role of the professors here was to collaborate and gave direct responses to the discussion results from the participants based on the results of their visit to Bappeko and TPA Benowo. Also, there will be a transfer knowledge where participants will make visits to the related departments and laboratories at ITS. “It aims to strengthen ITS relations with the two other universities in both academically and non-academically,” she added.

Some of the 2019 ECPFA participants came from three universities i.e. NCKU Taiwan, Kobe University Japan, and ITS

In the end, Maria said that the program was expected to be more open, strengthen, and improve the relations between ITS and the participating universities in the consortium as well as can provide a positive impact for ITS, Surabaya City, and Indonesia. “Hopefully this commitment can last further to the future,” she concluded. (lut/gayatri/ITS Public Relation)