UNAI is Towards an Excellent Adventist University within the Southern-Asia Pacific Division (SSD) in 2020

Abstract

This paper reviews some historical events and progress achieved by UNAI, or its previous names, since its beginning in 1949 and what should be done to achieve its current vision, i.e. to be an excellent university in the fields of Teaching, Research and Community Service in Southern Asia-Pacific Division (SSD) region, based on the Philosophy of Adventist Education, by the year 2020. Originally, Universitas Advent Indonesia was started as a training school which was intended to train gospel workers for the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In 1942, the World War II forced the Church organization to temporarily close the school. After the war the school was reopened in 1948 with a new name, “Indonesian Union Seminary” (IUS) and teacher training was then added. One year later, on August 19, 1949, the school was promoted to a junior college level, a two year program beyond Senior High School. It was the year 1949 considered as the birth date of UNAI, which is now already 66 years old, which makes UNAI become the oldest Adventist higher education in Indonesia. Since its first graduation in 1951, where 5 students of two year diploma in Education were graduated, there have been 10253 students graduated by UNAI. With the current students enrollment of 2000, and with 14 study programs, UNAI is expected to graduate averagely around 500 students every year within the next four years. Although the current number of study programs remains the same, but it is expected that after the next eighth decade the total number of graduate almost doubled than now. Prior to become an excellent Adventist University in 2020, UNAI has to work hard to push its faculty staff to do quality researches and publish them in international journal level, to reduce the problem of student drop out, and some other current problems.