I, Prof. Mohd Azraai Mohd Kassim (UTM Deputy Vice-Chancellor – Academic and Internationalization), Prof. Ahmad Kamal Idris (UTM Director of Marketing), Prof. Mohd Salleh Abu (UTM Dean of Faculty Education), Assoc. Prof. Mohd Zaki Kamsah (UTM Director of Undergraduate Studies) and Dr. Yusof Boon (UTM Head of Postgraduate Studies, Faculty of Education) pay an official visit to the Province of Riau Islands. The purpose of this visit is to pay a courtesy visit to Governor Ismeth Abdullah. It also to present a report on the academic achievement of UTM students from the Riau Islands that sponsored by the government of the Riau Islands.
Year: 2010
The beauty of a university
Richard Feynman, a Physics Nobel laureate, once said that, as a scientist, he enjoys the beauty of flowers with more in-depth than an artist. Artists or ordinary people enjoy and appreciate only the external aesthetic of the flower. As a scientist, he was more to enjoy the beauty of flowers – not just from the outer beauty of a flower – but much more in-depth, such as molecular structure, metabolism, biophysics, and the other scientific aspects.
Based on the above view, as a lecturer and researcher, I can analogize the university as “the flower of Richard Feynman.” The university is not only viewed from just the physical facilities but much more profound – namely the process of education and research in it. This process must be based on ‘scientific culture.’ The university should consider and implement this process to become a respected university. There are no points of scientific publications, patents, and the medals obtained from the exhibition if they were only showing ‘the external beauty’ of the university. It just like a flower that is only enjoyed by ordinary people who do not understand the intrinsic beauty of the flowers, as claimed by Richard Feynman.
Lecturer politician
What are you looking for in your career?
If you are a lecturer, of course, your ultimate goal is to get a professorship. If you’re a politician, certainly your goal is to become a leader; minister, president or prime minister.
Based on the above two terms; lecturer and politician, I created a new term called lecturer politician. This term is created in order to describe someone who has no intention to become an educator, albeit he is a lecturer. The lecturer politicians use their academic status (lecturer, associate professor or professor) as a vehicle in the pursuit of power, like a politician does. Their intention is not to be a good teacher and researcher, but to seek power and fame. Are these wrong intentions? The answer is actually no because everyone is free to dream about what they want to be in their future life. Usually, a lecturer politician is not interested in teaching.
I once read somewhere, that teaching and research are multiplicative, and not additive, factors in one’s stature as a scientist. This means that you are zero as a scientist if you cannot teach. Of course, it also means that you are zero as a scientist if you do not do research. Based on this consideration, a lecturer politician is not a scientist. Usually, they are just a “clever scholar” who merely quotes an opinion or ideas of other scholars. So, what is the contribution of lecturer politicians in the academic world?
This page was inspired by the real existing people called the lecturer politicians, but none of these descriptions refer to one single existing person. With the existence of people like this, one argues that there is must be something wrong with our university system, for example, academic promotion without considering the actual academic achievement.
My mother
Abu Huraira reported that a person came to Muhammad SAW and said: Who among the people is most deserving of a fine treatment from my hand? He said: Your mother. He again said: Then who (is the next one)? He said: Again, it is your mother (who deserves the best treatment from you). He said: Then who (is the next one)? He said: Again, it is your mother. He (again) said: Then who? Thereupon he said: Then it is your father.
This page is about my mother. My mother’s name is Sofiah Djamaris. In Sawahlunto, West Sumatera, she was born on October 10, 1933 (in the certificate and the passport were written born in 1934). She was retired as a senior lecturer at the State University of Padang (Universitas Negeri Padang) in 1999. Although my mother is not well recognized in the academic world, their children know she is intelligent. Her friends and teachers acknowledge that she is an intelligent student. She was the favorite pupil of Pak Jalal (father of Prof. Fasli Jalal, former Deputy Minister of Ministry of National Education, Indonesia) when studying at Diniyyah Putri, Padang Panjang, West Sumatra, in the 1950s. She obtained her first degree in Islamic Studies from Institut Agama Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga, Yogyakarta, in 1964. The late Prof. Muchtar Jahja supervised her thesis.
My mother comes from a village called Pamuatan, which is located in the Sijunjung district in West Sumatera province. She was the first person from the village who got a bachelor’s degree from the university. At that time, this was a remarkable achievement since her mother, who financed her study at the university, is illiterate.
“Galia” = intelligent adaptation
The man who speaks Minangkabau language fluently will understand what is meant by “Galia.” “Galia” can be interpreted as sly but with a positive meaning. Positive in the sense of clever in exploiting the situation around him. “Galia” people are very good at adapting to their environment. Therefore, this could explain why many Minang traders can successfully survive overseas with this “galia” principle. I found many successful Minang traders in Malaysia. If you go to Kuala Lumpur, please stop at Raja Alang street. You will find the Minang traders along this street.
“Different countries, different culture.” This principle is applied if you want to survive living overseas, especially in different cultures and religions. Something that we think is right, maybe not necessarily suitable for others. “Appreciating pluralism” and “intelligent adaptation” are perhaps the correct terms to describe this situation.
In conclusion, “Galia” or intelligent adaptation is essential for life in our society.
Father can not refuse a request from his child
My brothers
The above photo was taken in 1973 in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra. At that time my father was teaching at IKIP (Institut Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan) in Bukittinggi. Our house is located near to the Bung Hatta Palace and the Clock Tower (Jam Gadang).
Thief shouting thief
Thief shouting thief. This term describes a hypocrite. Recently I found an article about this in kompasiana.com:
http://edukasi.kompasiana.com/2010/02/04/profesor-plagiator-maling-teriak-maling/
This is a case of plagiarism by an Indonesian professor. Embarrassingly, this case was found in the university, an educational institution.
Based on the above case, the following questions arise: Why plagiarism was more pronounced in the field of social science? Why are there no original opinions presented by the local scholars? The answer is the local scholars never do original research. Most of the literature on Indonesia is written by scholars from the west. Please browse the ‘google scholar‘ in order to prove this statement. Many of the social science scholars in Indonesia are only cleverly quoting the opinions of others, especially from the opinion of western scholars.
In general, there are three things that motivate people to perform plagiarism and scientific fraud:
- The pressure to achieve a good career.
- Trying to answer the research questions effortlessly without needed to perform any experiments in the laboratory.
- Working in the field where the experiment has not always been reproducible. This may explain why scientific fraud occurs frequently in biological and biomedical fields because it is difficult to get data that can be reproducible because, in this area, the experiment results depend on many factors which are difficult to control.
Assessment of my teaching by students
What is the feeling of having successfully managed to teach? Surely the answer is exciting. I felt this feeling when I saw my assessment of my teaching last semester (Quantum Chemistry and Spectroscopy – SSC2463). This assessment was made by the students. The following is my score.
Overall Achievement Statistics:
Min of my score: 4.64335
Min score of faculty: 4.39
Min score of university: 4.35
My rank in UTM: P5
Note:
P1: Rank <= 20%
P2: 20% <rank <= 40%
P3: 40% <rank <= 60%
P4: 60% <rank 80%
Below are the comments from my students:
1. best belajar dengan Dr Hadi
2. Dr Hadi Nur baik…
3. bagus naikkan gaji naikkan pangkat
4. sila naikkan gaji pensyarah ini
My dad
This is the first post about my father, Nur Anas Djamil, written by me in this blog. As you can see in the above picture, you can guess my father’s occupation. Yes, my father was a teacher, more precisely a Professor in Islamology. He graduated from IAIN (Institut Agama Islam Negeri) Sunan Kalijaga, Yogyakarta in 1962. His thesis was supervised by the late Prof. Teungku Muhammad Hasbi Ash-Shiddieqy, a prolific writer. Before retiring as a professor at the University of Padang in 2001, he has served as dean of the Faculty of Literature and Art Teacher Training at this university from 1969 to 1971. He was Chairman of the Regional Board of Muhammadiyah of West Sumatera Province, Indonesia from 1995 to 2000.
As a lecturer and researcher, he has published several research articles that can be viewed via Google Books#1 and Google Books#2.
In Minangkabau society, a clan has a chief, called “Datuk”, who is appointed on the basis of matrilineal descent. My father was appointed “Datuk Rajo Mangkuto” by his clan. The following is the procession of inauguration of my father as Datuk Rajo Mangkuto in Balai Mansiro, Payakumbuh, West Sumatera in 2003.
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