BANDUNG, unpas.ac.id – Dean of Faculty of Art and Literature Universitas Pasundan, Dr. Hj. Senny Suzanna Alwasilah, S.S., M.Pd will leave to the United States at the end of July 2021. She received a scholarship from the United States Fulbright Institution through AMINEF (American-Indonesian Exchange Foundation) at Indiana University, Bloomington City.
Invited as Visiting Scholar, Dr. Hj. Senny will become a guest scholar for as long as three months to hold a fall-semester joint research at School Education together with other professors with similar interests.
Although the correspondence process with the destination university has been carried out since last year, the depart which was originally planned in September 2020 had to be postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic that hit the whole world.
“We have been communicating and corresponding with the related university since last year. However, due to Covid-19 pandemic, it had to be postponed,” she said on Monday, 26 July 2021.
Her arrival to Bloomington, the United States this time can be called as a ‘home-returning’, because thirty years ago, she had lived in this city for four years, and had given to two children.
Her first child was named after “Indiana”, as a recall of her college, Indiana University, while her second child was named after “Autum” because she was born in the fall season. Three other children were born in Bandung.
In 2001, she also has returned to the same city, accompanying her husband to attend the invitation sent from Indiana University to receive an award for outstanding alumnus. The award giving was coincided with the incident of Nine-Eleven, when huge tragedy hit the world, along with the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City as a result of being hit by two airplanes. At that time the name Osama Bin Laden was widely discussed.
There were so many interesting and horrifying experiences during the incident, so she wrote her story and experiences through a feature in Pikiran Rakyat entitled “WTC Runtuh, Impian pun Luluh”.
Dr. Hj. Senny, whom on her thesis and dissertation, studies about writing learning in the university, is still consistent to carry out similar researches. Some of them have already been published in the indexed Journal Scopus and SINTA, as well as in several national and international journals.
She was also entrusted to be a reviewer in the International Journal of Learning (IJLTER) indexed by Scopus. Her departure to America this time is for doing research with the theme of writing learning in the digital era, Academic Writing 2.0: Teaching Writing Using Blended Learning Setting, Multimodal Writing, and Media Literacy.
She, as an author of “Pokoknya Menulis” competes to other teachers from various universities in Indonesia, successfully passed the scholarship and become the representative of West Java to get it.
Getting her departure useful to Indiana University, apart from doing research, mother of five received an assignment from the Rector to hold a collaboration with Indiana University in the form of joint research, seminars and students/teachers exchange.
Ending the interview done in Unpas Campus IV Setiabudhi, she hoped that her departure to America would be beneficial for the advancement of the Faculty of Arts and Literature in particular and Universitas Pasundan in general.
“I hope with my departure to the United States, it could give better result, especially for the advancement of FISS in particular, and Universitas Pasundan in general,” she ended. (Rico B)*