BANDUNG, itb.ac.id – Institut Teknologi Bandung Rector, Prof. Reini Wirahadikusumah, Ph.D., graduated 34 ITB Engineer Professional study program graduates in the Second Period Graduation, Academic Year 2019/2020, Tuesday (5/5/2020). The graduation that contains the engineer’s oath was conducted through a video teleconference, which attended by the Rector and the graduates.

The engineer’s oath declaration was led by the Vice-Rector of Finance, Planning, and Development of ITB, Ir. Muhamad Abduh, MT., Ph.D. According to the Director of Non-Regular Education ITB, Prof. Dr. Andri Dian Nugraha, S.Si., M.Si., the online graduation ceremony was attended by 34 students who graduated the ITB Engineer Professional study program, with consists of 22 graduates of April 2020 period and 12 graduates of October 2019 period. “On behalf of the Director of Non-Regular Education ITB, I give my congratulation and success to all of the graduates for completing their studies,”  he stated on video teleconference.

As the Rector of ITB, Prof. Reini Wirahadikusumah also expressed her congratulations to the graduates for achieving their engineering degree from ITB. According to Prof. Reini, a professional engineer degree is a form of recognition of the graduates’ competency. Following the degree achieved, all of the graduates are now bounded with the professional engineer’s code of ethics. In Indonesia, the professional engineer’s code of ethics is defined by four basic rules and seven attitudes, or “Catur Karsa, Sapta Dharma”. One of the professional engineer’s attitudes is “prioritize safety, health, and welfare of the community”.

As related to that professional attitude, Prof. Reini conveyed that the COVID-19 pandemic might as well gives a very valuable lesson. In the early stage, the virus was rapidly spread due to our lack of acknowledgment, how our daily activities would cause its transmission. The lesson is that every action that we make might cause serious risk on our environment, without us knowing and understanding how the risk arises.

“So, to execute “prioritize safety, health, and welfare of the community” attitude, it acquires anticipatory capabilities, not limited to reactive capabilities. A professional engineer shouldn’t only be able to design, but he also needed to anticipate the effect of his designs towards the safety, health, and welfare of the community,” she stated.

Meanwhile, Chairman of the Indonesian Engineers Association (PII), Dr. Ir. Heru Dewanto, M.Sc.Eng., IPU., ASEAN Eng., welcomed the professional engineer graduates in the professional world of work in his speech. He said that the professional world of work has various challenges, in which we can’t only choose, but we need to get chosen to enhance our carrier. “The higher our education, the more opportunity will be available. Hopefully, the engineering certificate achieved can be your protection in difficult times,” he said.

Dr. Heru Dewanto added that in the past five years, the development narration in Indonesia is all about infrastructure. There is no greater pride for engineers in Indonesia who contribute to a major factor in improving infrastructure. It will be an honor for the engineers for being patriots of development in all lines. “The engineers have demonstrated, solve problems, make the impossible possible, and create something hadn’t existed. However, future challenges are the mission for the engineers to always create something better. The future challenges will not be easier, instead, they might be more difficult since we need to guess how the world will work after this COVID-19 pandemic,” he stated.

He continued by stating that college, in this case, ITB, has the same mission with PPI, which is to create distinguish human resources. This is because the key to global competency, economic development, and innovation is the enhancement of human resource quality. “The collaboration between colleges and PPI became relevant. The famously known triple helix is implemented in this case,” he explained.

Reporter: Adi Permana
Translator: Wendy Anastasia Yeoda