OutHadi the Box

Baru saja saya membaca harian Kompas yang terbit hari ini: “Harian Kompas kembali memberikan penghargaan kepada lima cendekiawan berdedikasi”. Salah satu penghargaan diberikan kepada Prof. Bambang Hidayat, Kepala Observatorium Bosscha ITB di Lembang selama 31 tahun. Kemudian dari artikel yang saya baca di harian Kompas tersebut ada komentar dari pembaca “.…bertahun-tahun hanya satu-satunya profesor di jurusan Astronomi ITB. Pengkaderan yang buruk dari Bambang Hidayat…“.

Saya rasa di luar kemampuan beliau dalam bidang akademik yang memang boleh dibanggakan, beliau  gagal dalam mendidik dan mengkader dosen-dosen muda di jurusan astronomi ITB untuk menjadi profesor seperti beliau. Setahu saya, sampai beliau pensiun tahun 2004, tidak ada lagi profesor selain beliau yang di jurusan astronomi ITB, padahal banyak dosen-dosen muda yang cukup potensial. Jika pada waktu itu tidak layak, tentu perlu dibantu dan didorong untuk mencapai syarat-syarat menjadi profesor.

Tulisan ini mungkin bisa menjadi refleksi bahwa tujuan menjadi seorang dosen tidaklah semata-mata menjadi peneliti, tetapi juga sebagai pendidik. Bukan saja mendidik mahasiswa, tetapi juga melakukan kaderisasi dalam bidang ilmu.

KPI atau Key Performance Indicator adalah alat yang digunakan untuk pengukuran kuantitatif, yang digunakan sebagai alat penentu keberhasilan suatu organisasi. Sebagai contoh, dalam bisnis, persentase pendapatan yang berasal dari pelanggan dapat merupakan sebuah Key Performance Indicator. Di sekolah menengah, tingkat kelulusan siswa dapat dipakai sebagai Key Performance Indicator. Di universitas, jumlah publikasi ilmiah, perbandingan jumlah dosen yang mempunyai PhD dengan mahasiswa dapat digunakan sebagai Key Performance Indicator.

Dalam tingkat individual, dalam kehidupan, juga ada cara mengukur kemampuan seseorang dengan apa yang disebut sebagai:
- Intelligence Quotient (IQ), yang digunakan untuk memecahkan masalah logis.
- Emotional Quotient (EQ), yang digunakan untuk menilai situasi disekeliling kita untuk berperilaku secara tepat.
- Spiritual Quotioent (SQ), yang memungkinkan kita untuk mempertimbangkan dan bertanya apakah kita ingin berada dalam suatu keadaan atau situasi yang akan kita hadapi, secara spiritual.

Ketika kita menghadapi kesulitan, IQ bersandar pada kekuatan kita mengatasi masalah dengan kemampuan analitis; EQ bersandar pada kekuatan dan keberanian emosional kita serta kepercayaan diri; sedangkan SQ bersandar pada “kekuatan yang tidak terbatas”. Bagi orang yang beragama, kekuatan ini dapat disebut sebagai “keimanan”. Konsep SQ diperkenalkan oleh Dana Zohar dan Ian Marshall sebagai salah satu dimensi baru kecerdasan manusia, yang mereka klaim sebagai kecerdasan tertinggi yang dimiliki manusia.

Berdasarkan keterangan di atas, melihat KPI-KPI yang ada dalam organisasi kita, apakah kita pernah berpikir “Apakah pekerjaan yang telah saya jalani telah memenuhi kebutuhan spiritual saya?”, “Apakah hubungan saya dengan orang-orang dalam organisasi dimana saya bekerja telah telah memberikan kebahagiaan kepada saya dan juga kepada mereka?” Pertanyaan-pertanyaan tersebut tidak dapat dijawab dengan hanya mengandalkan IQ dan EQ saja. Kita perlu SQ yang tinggi untuk menjawab pertanyaan-pertanyaan tersebut, karena SQ yang tinggi diperlukan untuk mencapai kebahagiaan, ketenangan, harga diri yang baik, dan hubungan harmonis di antara manusia.

Apakah kita pernah memikirkan hal di atas untuk kehidupan organisasi kita?

“New studies show that money and social values are processed in the same brain region, providing insight into how we make choices”

Seorang Guru Besar/Profesor di Universitas Indonesia yang selalu menggunakan sepeda bukannya menggunakan mobil mewah ke kampus. Mana yang menjadi simbol status, mobil atau gelar?

Pernyataan dan foto di atas mempunyai makna yang dalam mengenai cara kita memandang harta dan juga status sosial. Saya melihat dunia (pendidikan) sekarang ini lebih mementingkan kebendaan dan status simbol dibandingkan dengan moral. Kadang-kadang kita lupa bahwa tujuan kita mendirikan universitas adalah untuk menghasilkan lulusan yang mempunyai ilmu dan juga bermoral. Kita lupa makna dari kata “pendidikan tinggi”, lupa dengan tujuan kita mendidik mahasiswa supaya mempunyai moral integrity yang baik. Kita lebih banyak menggunakan “cosmetics“, yang hanya membuat kita cantik dan gagah kalau dilihat dari “luar”.

Judul di atas sangat jelas pesannya. Pesan tersebut juga disampaikan oleh kolega saya, profesor dari Jepang, profesor senior yang akan pensiun 2 tahun lagi di Osaka University. Beliau mengamati bahwa telah terjadi pergeseran nilai-nilai dalam pendidikan tinggi. Sekarang universitas lebih cenderung untuk mencapai tujuan ’semu’ yang sifatnya hanya tujuan ‘kosmetik’, seperti ingin terkenal, ingin masuk ranking, yang untuk mencapai tujuan tersebut banyak meninggalkan nilai-nilai ‘hakiki’ pendidikan. Beliau mengatakan, ketika beliau dulu menyelesaikan PhD di Osaka University pada tahun 70-an, pembimbing beliau hanya mengatakan — “lakukanlah penelitian dengan cara yang baik (good work), karena ini lebih penting daripada hasil penelitian itu sendiri”. Dengan kata lain “proses” jauh lebih penting daripada “hasil”.

Saya menemukan laporan yang menarik, bagaimana cara menilai “proses” dalam pendidikan tinggi: “Criteria for Performance Excellence” yang diformulasikan oleh Baldrige National Quality Program Education, pemerintah Amerika Serikat. Silahkan lihat kriterianya di bawah ini. Salah satu kriteria yang penting adalah ‘ethics‘, faktor yang banyak dilupakan oleh pendidikan tinggi, baik di Indonesia maupun di Malaysia.

Please click the following picture to download the file [3.41 MB]

Yesterday, I’ve taken around by Dr. Handojo Djati Utomo, a lecturer at Singapore Polytechnic (SP), to look around the campus of SP, the oldest polytechnic in Singapore. He explained the involvement of SP in supporting Singapore to became a developed country. The above photos described the vision of SP: “A leading institution that prepares our students to be work ready, life ready and world ready“. In my opinion, this is a good example of the vision of an institution of higher education. A vision that is grounded to earth.

Indeed, there is nothing wrong with making whatever vision. But, by creating a grandiose vision – sometimes makes people feel ‘embarrassed’ to read it.

Do you know h-index? To find out what’s h-index, just click the link below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index

Easily, h is the number of articles greater than h that have at least h citations. For example, an h-index of 20 means that there are 20 items that have 20 citations or more.

Well, now you’ll understand that the h-index is an instrument to determine the quality of a scientist. Many argue that the h-index is not important, particularly those someone who claims himself to be a scientist, but do not have h-index value or possess a low value of h-index.

Prof. J. E. Hirsch, a physicist who proposed the h-index to evaluate the quality of scientists, wrote in his paper entitled “An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output“:

From inspection of the citation records of many physicists, I conclude:
(1) A value m ~ 1, i.e. an h-index of 20 after 20 years of scientific activity, characterizes a successful scientist. (2) A value m ~ 2, i.e. an h-index of 40 after 20 years of scientific activity, characterizes outstanding scientists, likely to be found only at the top universities or major research laboratories. (3) A value m ~ 3 or higher, i.e. an h-index of 60 after 20 years, or 90 after 30 years, characterizes truly unique individuals. The m-parameter ceases to be useful if a scientist does not maintain his/her level of productivity, while the h parameter remains useful as a measure of cumulative achievement that may continue to increase over time even long after the scientist has stopped publishing altogether. Based on typical h and m values found, I suggest that (with large error bars) for faculty at major research universities h ~ 10 to 12 might be a typical value for advancement to tenure (associate professor), and h ~ 18 for advancement to full professor. Fellowship in the American Physical Society might occur typically for h ~ 15 to 20. Membership in the US National Academy of Sciences may typically be associated with h ~ 45 and higher except in exceptional circumstances.

So, how do we evaluate our scientists? What are the criteria? In my opinion this is an important aspect to be considered, especially in giving the award in the field of science and technology.

Photograph with Chemistry Nobel laureate (1991), Prof. Richard R. Ernst, who possess h-index = 77. Please do not compared with me who only possess h-index = 8 (as of April 2010).

Assistant professor, associate professor and professor are teachers. So, the main aim of being a professor is to be a champion in the field of teaching and, of course, research. To me, this is the main task and the core business of a professor. I will be happy if I can manage to educate students who originally come with low academic record to be successful in the academic world. This is the challenge. This is a satisfaction as an educator.

I am sad to see students with low academic record who actually have the intention and spirit to continue their study can not be accepted as MSc or PhD students by most of the professors. This is because these professors assume that students can not contribute to their prestige as a professor.

So, what is the purpose to be a professor?

Sometimes we find people who recognized and regarded as an expert, and there are also people who claim they are expert.

This is my explanation on definition of expert. For me, the expert is “someone who has mastered in his field of expertise, so that he can provide very fast response (sometimes occurs without thinking – and may emerge from the unconscious) when he got stimuli associated with his expertise“.

For example, an experienced professor who teach ‘chemical thermodynamics’ will quickly answer students’ questions (with correct answers) about the areas of his expertise without thinking hard. This professor is categorized expert in ‘chemical thermodynamics teaching’.

“… The mission of the university and its commitment are to the present and future generations, safeguarding the prosperity and welfare of the world with the best in education and scientific research. Not just for ’superficial’ rankings. ”

The above statement is probably the ideal mission and goal of universities. However, sometimes that goal has been deviated because of pressure on the universities as ‘economic goods’ which must have the selling point in the market. This issue was raised by Prof. Wiranto Arismunandar (former rector of Institut Teknologi Bandung [ITB]) when giving a speech on the world rank of ITB held in ITB East Hall on May 10, 2008. My attention is attracted by the wisdom thinking of Prof. Wiranto. The following is the first paragraph of his paper which is translated from Indonesian:

Aspiration of ITB to be World Class University (WCU) is good, but it should not make us worry and panic, because this is not the most important thing. We should be worry if the ITB is useless and can’t serve the nation-building of Indonesia. The initiator of WCU ranking must have a certain plan and the various interests, and therefore, no need to worry about that. Business, student intake, political, social, economic, and various other interests, may be a few of the many reasons that underlie such interests. It should not make us anxious and vulnerable, trapped and shackled by the ranking’s issue. The most important is, ITB must be useful for the development of Indonesia and also participate in solving problems of this nation. ITB should make itself mainstay and become a national strength to overcome various challenges, in order to make the nation prosperous, respected and independent. ITB should be proud of and preserve the honor of Indonesian people. That is why we must be more serious in implementing our duties and obligations. Thus we can obtain better results and make continuous improvements. If later ITB achieve recognition as WCU, it will make us more motivated to give the best service to our beloved country. Do not be ambitious to reach a high rank, we will be ashamed if we do not serve the country and do not do anything for the development of Indonesia.

Prof. Akhmaloka, the new Rector of ITB period of 2010-2014, also voiced the same issue. His mission as ITB rector is to bring the ITB to produce something useful to society by utilizing the local uniqueness of Indonesia.

In conclusion, one suggests that it is more important to “earthing the university” rather than pursuing the prestige ranking, because it will provide tangible benefits for society and the country.

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. Artist or ordinary people just enjoy and appreciate only the external aesthetic of flower. As a scientist he was more to enjoy the beauty of flowers – not just from the external beauty of flower – but much deeper, 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 deeper – namely the process of education and research in it. This process must be based on the ’scientific culture’. The university should consider and implement this process in order to become a respected university. There are no points of scientific publications, patents and the medals obtained from the exhibition if they only showing ‘the external beauty’ of the university – just like a flower that is only enjoyed by ordinary people who do not understand the internal beauty of the flowers, as claimed by Richard Feynman.