Starting by Wednesday, July 31, 2019 until the next nine days, the International Program (IP) of Communication Department will sent 13 students, Mr. Herman Felani Tanjung, MA (lecturer), and 2 staff to conduct an academic tour and doing ‘Travel Writing Projects’ at many variety important locations in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. This Travel Writing Project is part of a routine program that is held every year. This visiting program for Asean countries, which are often known as Passage To Asean (P2A) Program, is the second time that held by the UII’s Communication Department, since 2018. Students will also visit three campuses in Southeast Asia: University of Economics and Law (Vietnam), Svay Rieng University (SRU) Cambodia, Thammasat University (Thailand). P2A is a network of Asean universities and institution of higher education.

All the student will learn a lot of things under supervision Mr. Herman Felani Tandjung, MA, lecturer of film and culture studies, Yudi Winarto, and Marjito Iskandar T. G. as profesional supervisor from Audio Visual Laboratory of Communication Department.  The IP students of Communication Department UII, under supervision of Mr. Tandjung, will travel to several locations and sharpen their view and sensitivity to capture the social reality there. According to Ida Nuraini Dewi K. N., Secretary of International Program of Communication Department, in addition to capturing social reality, communication students are expected to be able to probe, analyze, compare and record the history, cultural diversity, religiosity, and many things that will appear behind these tourist sites. Ida also said that, “the most important thing and different than other P2A Program, is student will learn about character building that is consist of problem solving, decision making, and teamwork beside learn to implement their communication skill (such as speaking, writing, photography, video, etc).

Lecturers, staff, and students will also conduct comparative visits on many campuses at three countries. There is a hope that Communication IP students, beside applying their knowledge so far in the classroom, they also will have new perspectives that emerge from these trips.

P2A in principle has the spirit of providing opportunities for students, lecturers, and staff of Communication Department to reach global and international studies and comparisons. The processes that are passed in P2A enable them to get a lot of new perspectives that are insightful for the future of communication studies. Not only that, both student and lecturer of Communication Department are ultimately expected to be able to improve their abilities such as social analysis skills, journalism, reportage, writing, photography, and brainstorming creative ideas in simultaneously.

The previous P2A, the committee of P2A designed P2A with the concept of Photography Workshop and Competition entitled: “P2A 2018 – Workshop and Photography Competition: Humanature”, to capture moment in various destination at Indonesia,  Malaysia and Thailand. Students from three campuses in the three countries were encouraged to collaborated, competed, and sharpen their photography skills in the tourist locations. They also capture iconic, unique, and interesting things into an aesthetic and meaningful photo work. In the end, P2A at that time gave awards to students who had the best photo works in collaboration with Nikon Malaysia, P2A, UII, and Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM).