Seminar Beasiswa Studi Lanjut Luar Negeri is one of the annual programs in FOLT Departement UKM Bahasa Asing “SAFEL”. “Brace Yourself. Be Globally Minded To Achieve Your Infinite Dream” was chosen as the theme of this seminar. The purpose of this seminar is to provide information about the scholarship for anyone who was looking for a scholarship or had a plan to continue their study abroad or in Indonesia. This year SAFEL discussed the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) scholarship which focuses on scholarships in Germany. Apart from Germany, DAAD also collaborates with several universities in the Asia Pacific.
The scholarship seminar was held on Sunday, August 9, 2020, via Google Meet. In previous years, Seminar Beasiswa Studi Lanjut Luar Negeri was held offline. However this year, it was held differently. The seminar was held online due to the Covid-19 pandemic which made it impossible to hold it offline. Initially, registration will be opened for 2 weeks. However, with great interest, participant quota can be fulfilled in just 3 hours. So that the registration, which was originally going to be carried out for 2 weeks, only became 1 day. The initial target of participants was 100 people and within 3 hours 200 people had registered. This scholarship seminar was open to the public. So, the participants were not only students from Yogyakarta State University. After filling in the registration form, participants were given a Whatsapp group link on the last page of the form. The WhatsApp group was created to make it easier to provide information about the seminar from the committee to the participants.
The scholarship seminar was opened with remarks from the chief committee and the Chief of SAFEL. Furthermore, the material about DAAD was presented by Jan Budweg M.A., M.HEd. He is a Lecturer of DAAD at Yogyakarta State University. He explained what was needed to get a DAAD scholarship. One of the requirements to get a DAAD scholarship is to have German language proficiency level B1. Then for those who want to continue S2, they must have work experiences that are in line with their major for at least 2 years. He also explained that DAAD provides scholarships for almost all majors. At the end of his presentation, he showed the DAAD’s database.
After the presentation, a question and answer session was held. Aulia Nisa Azahro as MC and moderator helped run the question and answer session. There are 3 question and answer sessions with each session consisted of 3 questioners. However, due to time constraints, only 2 sessions were held. The seminar was closed by the moderator by reading the conclusions from this seminar. This year is the first time an online seminar has been held by SAFEL. So, there are many obstacles that must be faced by the scholarship seminar committee. We hope that this seminar is useful for the participants. Last but not least, we hope that this pandemic will end as soon as possible so that next year’s seminar can be held offline without any obstacles. —AinunRP.
