Berita

Perth, Australia—International experiences can be gained by the university students, among others, through organizing a trip abroad. Such an attempt was done by IPIEF students ranging from batch of 2015 to 2016 on 19^th – 23^rd March 2018. The primary purpose of this trip is to encourage student to be engaged with international exposure in order to realize IPIEF vision to be reputable international program on Islamic economics, banking and finance. There were several intended destinations at which the students should arrive in Perth: first, Consulate General of the Republic of Indonesia (KJRI); second, Murdoch University especially in School of Government and Business, and the third was University of Western Australia.

In Consulate General of Republic of Indonesia, the representative of IPIEF which consisted of a lecturer and roughly 15 IPIEF students, was warmly welcomed by the Commissioner General of KJRI. In this special occasion, IPIEF students had discussed an opportunity for Indonesian students to undertake the internship in KJRI as explained by Mira, A chairwoman of this academic trip, saying: “We were delighted to have a warm discussion with KJRI Perth, enabling us to ask a question pertaining to how to conduct internship in this office. And in fact, it is possible for Indonesian students to undertake their internship in KJRI, yet all costs and monthly expense will not be covered by KJRI implying living expenses are to be meet by ourselves.”

Moreover, they also had a discussion on Moslem community living in Australia. Mira explained the issue of products labelled with Halal in Australia is sensitive owing to the vast majority of the people is not Moslem. When one will eat the food, he/she has to carefully look at the detail of the product so as to avoid consuming non-halal ingredients.

The visit to Murdoch University was scheduled after visiting KJRI Perth. In this university, three IPIEF students were given a tremendous opportunity to share and discuss about the principles of Islamic economics with a lecturer from Murdoch university, Dr. Ariful Hoque. Those three students were Resty Tamara who explained the concept of Sukuk, Lawvia and Nun Maziyah who outline the term Mudharabah and Musyarakah, respectively. More importantly, Lawvia said when interviewed: “Dr. Ariful Hoque shown an enthusiastic response to our presentation, thus offering an opportunity to conduct further research on Islamic finance”. She added, highlighting: “We also had a historic moment with the students here in Murdoch as we were offered opportunity to teach the students at School of Art Indonesian language. It was unforgettable.”

And the last visit was to University of Western Australia where we might obtain detail explanation of ACICIS (Australian Consortium for ‘In-Country’ Indonesian Studies), a consortium of universities who attempt to conduct in-country study in Indonesia. We could also present what is IPIEF, subject offered by IPIEF and other related information. Hence, both parties are able to exchange the information about each institution, hoping the collaboration can be promoted.

This academic visit to Australia was under the supervision of Dr. Wahdi A Yudhi, senior lecturer at IPIEF. [Aw]