Events: Kritika Kultura Lecture Series presents Ied Sitepu
Kritika Kultura, the international refereed journal of language, literary, and cultural studies of the Department of English, Ateneo de Manila University, will host a lecture by Dr. Ied Sitepu titled “Graduates’ Competencies as Performance Indicator of Higher Education Institutions.” The lecture—which is co-organized by the Department of English (AdMU)—will be on Sept. 20, 2016, 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., at Faber Hall Function Room, Ateneo de Manila University. The lecture is open to the public. Sitepu’s abstract reads: “The readiness of higher education graduates to enter the labour market has been discussed both by industries and higher education institutions; both areas try to address the issue as to whether there are gaps between the competencies acquired by graduates during their study period and required by the labour market. If such gaps do exist, industries and higher education institutions would like to know how wide is this gap. Industries often criticize graduates of failing to relate the knowledge they have to the workplace situation or in other words, they cannot put their knowledge and skills into practice. Competencies and how to use them in workplaces are, in fact, considered more important in the recruitment process than the degree itself. It is therefore important to measure competencies of the graduates at a certain point of time after graduation to see the gap. This lecture will focus on the effectiveness of using a ‘tracer study’ as a tool to measure graduates’ competencies. Tracer study is a tool that can provide information for the development of graduates of higher educational institutions. Information about graduates that can be culled from a tracer study can help 1) identify their competence and skills; (2) see the relevance of their curriculum to the labour market, and (3) map the labour market signal and the graduate competencies needed by the employers. The study may also be used to describe the survival strategies employed by graduates as they transition from the area of higher education to the labour market; as well as, their performance in the workplaces. Results of the tracer study may provide information on how well higher educational institutions prepare students for the workplaces.” Dr. Ied Sitepu earned her doctoral degree in Higher Education from the University of Kassel, Germany, in 2011 and her master’s degree in English Language and Literature Teaching, from the Department of English, Ateneo de Manila University in 1995. She is currently Dean of the Faculty of Letters, Universitas Kristen Indonesia and teaches English Literature and Strategic Learning in Higher Education. Her research interests are: English as a foreign language in Indonesia; higher education in Indonesia; competencies of graduates; and tracer studies. She is a member of the Career Center Team of the Directorate of Students Affairs, the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education in Indonesia. She travels extensively throughout Indonesia to train universities in tracing their graduates for the purpose of higher education institution development. |
