SINGARAJA. The department of English Education of Undiksha just finished conducting its second Professional Development. It was conducted on Saturday, 29 November 2014. This time, two young great talents joined the session and shared their inspiring experience on Hotel Industry and Tourism Management. This topic was chosen as EED offers elective course subjects concentrating on Tourism. Although the school expects to produce teachers, opportunities to the Tourism industry is wide open. Many of EED graduates are working in this sector and have proven to be successful.

Gede Suteja is one of EED’s successful alumni. He contacted Head of Department of EED that he is willing to share his interesting stories on Hotel, particularly viewed from the management perspective. He previously had contacted the department but it seemed that the plan couldn’t be realized that time. Now, the department is fortunate as the interim staff are carrying out several new ideas; one of them is Professional Development (PD). The first PD has been conducted two weeks earlier, on 08 November 2014 and was said a big success. Working together with the students’ association proved to be full of energy and the same team was working hand in hand again for this 2nd PD.

With Made Handijaya Dewantara, the department did a personal contact at first. Head of Department has seen Made Handi as one of active young brilliant persons from the North Bali since they were separated in two wide continents – Europe and Australia. Made Handi was then very happy to come to the department – although he is not an alumni – to inspire and motivate the students while sharing his stories of visiting more than 15 different countries in the world.

The department realized that running an event like this need extra works and efforts. Beside working together with EED students’ association, a collaboration was done to the Diploma 3 of English of Undiksha. This department is known to focus its teachings to Hotel and Tourism industries so the PD would be a significant relevance to the department. Actually, a collaboration had been initiated during the first PD on CCU, and this one was to strengthen that link. EED believes that by working together with relevant units and people, the event would bring benefits to its maximum level to all parties.

“We are happy to do a collaboration with EED,” said Suta Paramarta, S.Pd., M.Hum, the Head of D3 of English. “This second time will be very much important to us. Thank you for inviting us again,” he added.

The event started. Moderated by Made Hery Santosa, PhD, the Head of English Education Department, the two speakers shared their struggles, their success, their ups and downs, their challenges, their solutions to problems, their inspiring stories of many different places – Maldives, Bangkok, Dortmund, Paris, Barcelona, Bali – from multiple perspectives – Asian, European, and international contexts.

The participants were very attentive and felt this event is very much beneficial. There is good evaluation though about the talk, which is very fine and important to know. Some of the quoted thoughts from the participants are:

Here is the video of the session.

The event is free of charge, both to the speakers and participants. Prior to this, many said that bureaucracy and money are always problems. But then, EED always believes that out there, there are still many good people who are willing to share without thinking much of money. The first and second PDs have evidenced this. We do hope that future series of PD will always bring about the best benefits to those who really need them. All the best! Thank you to all kind colleagues, friends, students that we cannot mention one by one. More sessions to come, see you next time! (Made Hery Santosa)

Video Credit: Dwi Tahamata