Faculty from both institutions share their thoughts

Over the past two years, several faculty members from the psychology departments at the College of the Holy Cross and Sanata Dharma University (USD) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, have begun to forge a collaboration that promises to benefit members of our respective academic communities in significant ways.

The project started in 2006, when Rev. P. Wiryono Priyotamtomo, S.J., president of USD, and Rev. A. Budi Susanto, S.J., an anthropologist at USD, imagined ways in which the psychology department at their institution could become more visible in the international network of Jesuit institutions of higher learning. Both men had been International Visiting Jesuit Scholars at Holy Cross and both knew that Holy Cross had some natural connections to Indonesia. Our campus has several faculty members whose scholarly work centers on Indonesia. The College had organized several exhibits on the arts of Indonesia, hosted a visiting fellow in Balinese performing arts for the past nine years, and was exploring the possibility of establishing a study abroad program in Indonesia. It seemed logical to move our institutional connections in even broader directions.

Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J., president of Holy Cross, was quick to support the collaboration. In the summer of 2007, Amy Wolfson, professor of psychology, and I departed for two weeks at USD. We were accompanied by Susan Rodgers, professor of anthropology and our guide and translator. We offered workshops on teaching courses in methodology as well as on our respective content areas, developmental psychology and abnormal psychology. We discussed possibilities for collaborative research, and were particularly eager to see if there were opportunities for our students to work together on projects. In both of our subfields of psychology, having an opportunity to look at issues from a cross-cultural perspective offers rich tests of theoretical ideas about human behavior. It was exciting to think about the possibilities for exploring research questions from this vantage point.

Some of our time was spent discussing opportunities for additional graduate work for our colleagues in Indonesia. Most of the USD department members are ‘dosens’ (lecturers) who have master’s level training, but who are eager to complete their doctoral work. We had extensive talks about the process of preparing applications for Ph.D. programs in the U.S., Australia, and other locations.

One of the unique aspects of our trip was the opportunity to learn more about the disaster relief work that our USD colleagues had done in Bantul, a region hit particularly hard by the earthquake of 2006. The USD faculty were impressive in both the compassion and knowledge they brought to the interventions they formulated. Amy and I decided that it was essential to get the word out to the research community about the important work they were doing.

This past summer, Amy, Susan, Alison Ludden, assistant professor of psychology, and I, along with other members of the psychology department, had the opportunity to continue our collaboration by hosting four of our USD colleagues at Holy Cross. Sylvia Murtisari, dosen at USD, offers some reflections on that experience below. As we work to get our ideas for teaching and research off the ground, it is interesting to think about how international collaborations such as ours get started. Were it not for our common ground as Jesuit institutions and the prior personal connections that various key individuals had developed, this rewarding partnership would likely not have materialized.

Sylvia Carolina Maria Yuniati Murtisari, Dosen, Sanata Dharma University

I felt happy when I visited the College of the Holy Cross. It was my first experience visiting the U.S. I went to Holy Cross with two of my colleagues, Agnes Etikawati and Aquilina Arini. Agung Santoso, who is studying at the University of Georgia, also joined us. The aim of our journey was to attend a collaborative workshop between psychology faculty from Holy Cross and USD from June 30 to July 10, 2008. During the two weeks, the workshops focused on course development and future collaborative research studies. We also took exploratory trips to other psychology departments, research labs, and clinical treatment settings. In addition, my colleagues presented findings from our psychosocial program on disaster relief following the 2006 earthquake in Yogyakarta. We also presented our new work on the prevention of trauma in the Mount Merapi Volcano region in central Java. Throughout the second week, we met to discuss career development and were given advice from our colleagues at Holy Cross on graduate school requirements and how to select appropriate doctoral programs.

An important part of our activities was the mentoring Holy Cross faculty offered us on specific research projects, including assistance with literature reviews and suggestions for data analysis on our Merapi project. This activity was important for me because it cultivated an eagerness to do research and gave me optimism about applying to Ph.D. programs in the U.S.

We experienced many benefits from our visit to Holy Cross. We have a wider perspective on academic activities and feel pushed to be good academics in our university. We learned how to enhance ourselves in research skills and publications. In the U.S., scholarship is well supported by the academic system, whereas in Indonesia, we have many teaching and administrative responsibilities that take time away from research. Yet, now I have the spirit to set international academic standards for myself.

In the future, I hope to publish articles in international psychology journals. I hope this collaboration will help me and all of my colleagues learn more about conducting research and teaching. Although it brings challenges and responsibilities, I see a bright future in our continuing association.

For additional information, please see the Holy Cross Magazine article titled “Face to Face.”