The team of Public Relations and Public Information Disclosure Bureau of Universitas Indonesia (PR and PID UI) along with representatives of the PR study program of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences held a comparative study at the Bandung Institute of Technology (Institut Teknologi Bandung, ITB), last Tuesday (12/7). The meeting, held at the ITB Public Relations Office, discussed the structure, roles, and strategies of each public relations in overcoming challenges that arise in the field.
According to the Head of UI PR and PID Bureau, Dra. Amelita Lusia, M.Si. CPR, the essence of this visit is for the UI Public Relations Team to obtain a comparative study related to public relations tasks. “Through this visit, we hope to learn from other friends regarding new things that might be adopted in carrying out public relations tasks,” said Dra. Amelita.
At the beginning of the meeting, the Head of Bureau of Communication and Public Relations of ITB, Dr. Naomi Haswanto, M.Sn., explained the organizational structure of the Bureau of Public Relations in ITB. Like UI which consists of two campuses (UI Depok Campus and UI Salemba Campus), ITB is also developed in several campuses, namely ITB Ganesha Campus, ITB Jatinangor Campus, and ITB Cirebon Campus. Therefore, there needs to be a strategy in managing matters related to administration and public relations in this multicampus.
Unlike UI, which has a PR team in each faculty, ITB’s PR is centralized at one point. This is so that there is a commonality of information shared with the community. Meanwhile, regarding faculty news sources, the Head of Section in each faculty is responsible for this. The Heads of Section are assisted by 50 student reporters spread across all faculties.
Based on the data presented by Dr. Naomi, ITB has 12 faculties and schools with 130 study programs filled with 24,000 students. This number is one-third of the number of students at UI because ITB focuses more on science. Interestingly, lecturers at ITB are not under the umbrella of study programs or faculties, but under 110 expertise groups. This system allows lecturers to teach across study programs as a form of inter-faculty relations.
In addition to inter-faculty relations, ITB also builds cooperation with external parties, both with national and international campuses, government, and industry. Responsible for handling this cooperation is the ITB Partnership Bureau, which includes the International Relations Office (IRO). Unlike UI, the Bureau of Partnership at ITB is separate from the Bureau of Communication and Public Relations.
“Currently, we continue to develop communication media favored by the younger generation, such as Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, and so on. We are also developing ITB Talks which is a forum to exchange ideas between the Rector, Vice Rectors, ITB officials and students to jointly create innovations for the advancement of the campus. ITB Talks is equipped with Sign Language Interpreters to facilitate friends with hearing disabilities,” said Dr. Naomi closing her presentation.
Author: Sasa
