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Improving education abroad
Teacher's legacy inspires Indonesian scholar at SED

By Hope Green

Agung Suprastayasa will not soon forget a young American woman he met in the early 1990s in his homeland of Indonesia. Kelly Stephens spent nine years there striving to improve education, in particular the teaching of English.

Agung Suprastayasa with his wife, Dayu, and daughter, Stita. Photo by Vernon Doucette

Before Stephens' death in a volcanic explosion in 1993, Agung (SED'01) worked with her at an English language center in Bali. Six years later he entered Boston University's School of Education on a scholarship named in her honor.

"I had always wanted to get experience studying and working abroad in an English-speaking country," he says. "Finding out about the Stephens scholarship inspired me. When Kelly and I worked together, I thought, here is someone from another country who cares so much about bettering our people. She inspired me to do the same. Through Kelly, I discovered the ripple effect, that once you have better teachers, you'll have a better system."

Agung (it is traditional for Indonesians to go by their first names) is the third student to complete graduate studies at SED thanks to the Kelly Elizabeth Stephens Memorial Scholarship Fund, which covered all of his school and living expenses. Kelly's parents, Robert and Dorothy Stephens, established the endowment in 1995 to enable Indonesian students to continue the educational development work their daughter had begun.

When Agung started at BU, he already knew that he wanted to play a more significant role in planning, designing, and evaluating teacher training programs in Bali. But his two years at Boston University, which included an internship at Dorchester High School, broadened his vision.

"I discovered the many other things I could do for communities to advance our educational system," he says. "I was very impressed with all my professors did to help other schools in the Boston community."

Now back in Indonesia, Agung plans to visit primary schools to mentor administrators on how to develop and motivate their teachers. He wants to help create a model for schools that will facilitate teacher training. And one day he hopes to establish a foundation that would support the education of poor children in his country.

Prior to attending BU, Agung spent the first nine years of his career as an English teacher at the Bali Hotel and Tourism Training Institute, a government-owned college that trains students to become tourism industry professionals. In addition to his core teaching duties at the college, he developed and maintained Bali's Language Self-Study Center. There Agung met Stephens, a teacher from Marblehead, Mass.

Stephens began her work in Indonesia during the mid-1980s, training English language teachers in a refugee camp on the island of Galang. Later she worked in Jakarta and Bandung for the British Council, a United Kingdom outreach organization, setting up and supervising English language centers throughout Indonesia. She died in June 1993 in an eruption of Anak Krakatau, a small volcanic island off the west coast of Java, during an expedition with some friends. (Anak Krakatau means "child of Krakatau." The larger volcano erupted in 1883, setting off a tidal wave that killed 36,000 people.)

Although Stephens was not a BU alumna, her parents chose SED for the scholarship because they liked the school's focus on practical applications for teaching. Agung was drawn to SED for the same reason, and enrolled in its International Educational Development Program (IEDP).

The Indonesian government has been attempting to reform the nation's infrastructure, including education, since the end of the Suharto regime in 1998. For decades until then, the country had a centralized public school system with antiquated rote teaching methods. Agung was fortunate to have attended somewhat better schools in Bali. There he went on to attend Udayana University, earning a bachelor's degree in English language teaching and education.

In villages scattered across Indonesia's more than 13,000 islands, qualified teachers are in short supply. According to an April news story in the Indonesian Observer, about six million children ages 7 to 15 cannot attend school due to a shortage of buildings and the national monetary crisis. And in a survey taken last year, 62 percent of the country's junior high schools were found to be in poor condition.

Under pressure from the World Bank, Indonesia is now decentralizing many government functions, including the public schools. But the current economy and political conflicts are slowing the pace of change. "The teaching materials are too uniform," Agung says. "Students in a remote village find it inappropriate when the material, for example, is written for someone who lives in the city of Jakarta."

Last year Agung conducted research on the progress of decentralization in his country. His master's thesis explores issues of preserving indigenous culture in Bali, even though outside corporations run much of the tourism industry there. It also proposes ideas for involving more of the local population in tourism.

It was no small sacrifice for Agung to study so far from home: during his entire time as a graduate student he saw his wife and small daughter, now two years old, for a total of four months.

"I had a very interesting experience and a very beneficial one," says Agung. "Now I am looking forward to spending time with my daughter every day."

The Kelly Elizabeth Stephens Memorial Scholarship fund recently received a $90,000 donation from General Electric, its first corporate sponsor.

8 June 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations