25 Singaporean Students Explore Malang's Cultural Heritage

Malang, E Java (Antara) - As many as 25 students from the Republic Polytechnic in Singapore accompanied by Muhammadiyah University of Malang (UMM) students are on a two-week exploration tour to Malang and Batu, East Java, on September 7-20. UMM Rector Assistant on Foreign Cooperation Soeparto elaborated that this joint collaboration named "Learning Express Program (LEx)" is aimed to unfurl new opportunities for them to explore and learn each other's cultures and to gain an insight into all aspects of life and culture in Malang and Batu. "To support this activity, UMM is ready to provide the best facilities to the students involved in this program. Thus, the program can prove to be useful when they return to their countries," Soeparto affirmed. Before this team was assigned to the field, UMM provided training to the 25 Singaporean students in the areas of Cross Cultural Understanding (CCU) and a short course on Indonesian language for familiarizing them to the basic terms used in daily conversation. LEx team leader Soh Kim Fai explained that LEx is a multinational and multidisciplinary program to help the student bridge the gap with the real life environment. The students are expected to establish familiarity and cooperation in creating and finding inspiration. "This recent group is the second batch. Meanwhile, the first batch came in March, this year, and they have managed to create several innovations. One of them was their success in creating a cutting device for East Java's traditional candy, Tingting Jahe," Fai revealed. Fai is optimistic that LEx, during this period, can come up with many more ideas and creative innovations that can lead to a breakthrough in development. "UMM's reputation in international cooperation coupled with a conducive situation in Malang is one of the reasons to find more inspirations. I believe that this partnership will be very productive," he added. Apart from visiting UMM, the students also plan to visit Malang State Polytechnic College (Polinema) and Malang Town Polytechnic College. In these colleges, the foreign students will share their knowledge in engineering in order to work together and carry out research under the guidance of lecturers from the three universities. (*)