Alumni possess strategic roles to enhance quality of a higher education institution so that each institution has an alumni association. To maintain relationship among alumni, Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY) organized ‘Alumni Award’ as a part of UMY’s 37 anniversary commemoration under the theme ‘One Step Beyond’.
Rector of UMY Dr. Ir. Gunawan Budiyanto stated that alumni are a benchmark to look at an educational process at UMY, whether or not it is good. “UMY has almost 30 thousand alumni. This alumni award is intended to seek alumni who have contributed to enhancing people’s welfare. The best alumni are selected by juries and the awards will be given at the celebration night of the 37th anniversary,” he told in an interview on Monday (26/2).
Gunawan informed that the relationship between alumni and UMY is great so that his party thought that they should be rewarded. “Many alumni gave UMY recommendations to develop UMY’s curriculum, facilities for students, scholarships, and jobs. They also helped promoting UMY. We expect that alumni could transfer knowledge while providing value for UMY. Indeed, alumni should boost their soft skills and hard skills because the skills are essential aspects to explore alumni’s potential,” emphasized Gunawan.
Gunawan declared that standards of UMY’s alumni should be reinforced. Since they study, students should be provided with a lot of opportunities to boost their ability. Students and alumni are encourage to create works whose benefits bring good impacts for society. Having works does not mean wearing a tie or having luxury goods, but it refers to having an awareness and care of social conditions. Hence, we have to be persistent with what we do. We do not need to be other people to create works, we need to be ourselves and devote ourselves for the betterment of our society. I also expected that the alumni award can annually be conducted and involve all alumni,” he ended.
In addition, alumni award nominees can be proposed through accessing an official website of the alumni award, alumni.umy.ac.id. Then, the winner will be announced on the celebration night of UMY’s anniversary in April 2018.
