World-Class Excellence: The Department of Administrative Sciences at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Hasanuddin, Strengthens the Implementation of its Double Degree Programme Through a Guest Lecture at Rikkyo University, Tokyo

Tokyo, Japan – The Department of Administrative Sciences, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (FISIP), Hasanuddin University (Unhas) continues to consolidate its position on the global higher education stage through concrete steps to improve the quality of its cross-national curriculum. These quality-enhancement efforts were realised through an in-person academic monitoring visit by the department’s leadership, alongside the delivery of an international guest lecture at the Graduate School of Social Design Studies (GSSDS), Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan. This important visit was specifically aimed at strengthening, overseeing and evaluating the curricular synergy of the Double Degree Programme, which is currently being jointly delivered by the Master’s Programme in Public Administration (MAP) at FISIP Unhas and the GSSDS at Rikkyo University. During this academic working visit, the Head of the MAP Programme at FISIP Unhas, Prof. Dr Gita Susanti, M.Si., together with a lecturer from the Department of Administrative Sciences, Andi Ahmad Yani, M.Si., MPA, M.Sc., Ph.D. (Cand.), were officially received by the leadership of GSSDS Rikkyo University: the Dean, Prof. Yukiko Kuramoto, Ph.D., and Prof. Ako Muto, a senior academic at the university. This bilateral meeting focused on the technical monitoring of students’ teaching and learning processes, the alignment of advanced-level curricula, and the optimisation of academic administration to ensure the Double Degree Programme is implemented to the highest standards. The meeting also opened up prospects for the expansion of long-term academic collaboration between these two leading institutions in Indonesia and Japan. As a representative of the Department of Administrative Sciences at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Hasanuddin, Andi Ahmad Yani contributed to enriching the international academic landscape by delivering a guest lecture in the Master’s Programme in Social Design and Administrative Science (MSDA) at Rikkyo University. The guest lecture, titled “Walking on the Bright Side of Crisis: A Positive Public Administration (PPA) Approach to Community-Based GBV Services”, was received with great enthusiasm by dozens of postgraduate students from various countries, including Nigeria, Myanmar, Russia, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia. This forum served as a productive platform for academic discussion among master’s students from both countries, enabling them to analyse contemporary issues in public administration. The guest lecture covered the latest theoretical perspectives on the resilience of governance and community-based public services in the face of global social crises, drawing on a case study of domestic violence response adapted from the speaker’s collaborative research with Monash University in 2021. Andi Ahmad Yani encouraged the participants to view public policy solutions through an innovative, solution-oriented and self-reliant framework by optimising the active participation of the most marginalised members of society, a model considered highly adaptable amidst various constraints imposed by formal regulations and government budgets. The presentation of this empirical case study sparked great interest among the international students, leading to an interactive discussion on comparisons of social protection policy implementation in their respective home countries. The Head of the MAP Programme at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Hasanuddin, Prof. Dr Gita Susanti, M.Si., expressed her gratitude and pride at the smooth running of this series of international cooperation programmes. She emphasised that the implementation of this cooperation—in the form of sending teaching delegations and direct curriculum supervision—represents an absolute commitment by the Department of Administrative Sciences at the University of Hasanuddin to providing a global-standard learning ecosystem for the entire academic community. Through the success of the ongoing Double Degree Programme with Rikkyo University, the department hopes to continue producing Master’s graduates in Public Administration who are not only theoretically proficient but also possess sharp analytical acumen and strong international competitiveness, thereby supporting Unhas’s grand vision of becoming a World Class University.