I met Sheldon Nord (President of UPH…”ooh-pey-ah”) at 7:30 and chatted in the beautiful Imperial Aryaduta Hotel and Country Clubbefore the driver took us to the home of James Riady, founder and CEO of the Lippo Group and UPH.
I enjoyed a delicious breakfast with James, Sheldon, and Jonathan in James' sunlight sitting room looking out on his beautiful garden and inlet. 
James’s father, Mochtar (in his 70s) is still very active. James and his family comprise the “board” of UPH, along with SPH 
the K-12 sister entity. James leads Bible studies weekly in his home and for businessmen in an adjacent city. He also speaks in the UPH chapel regularly, and attends seminary for his own edification. He’s energetic and visionary. I’m reminded of Pat Robertson and of Michael Louis (in R.S.A.). The university has arisen in a only a decade and a half from nothing to 10,000 students, occupying prime real estate in their own 9 story building. James operates a series of hospitals (Siloam), and bookshops among other ventures. His generosity and passion for Christian education are the driving force for this remarkable institution. The facilities are simply put, the best. 65% of the students are Christian or Catholic/Christian. 20% are Buddhist, 14% are Muslim. With 700 FT (or semi-FT) faculty, they are the largest Christian institution in the country. Their founding Rector Oentoro was sadly afflicted with a stroke 4 years ago, at which time Jonathan Parapak was called on to step in as Rector alongside Sheldon as President. Jonathan was the founding CEO of InduSat the largest telecommunication company in Indonesia and member of government….a wonderful Christian with a sterling reputation for integrity. UPH has connections with Biola and Wheaton…3 of James’ children have attended these. Clyde Cook and Duane Litfin have given recent commencement addresses, and Stan Jones (Wheaton) has visited too. UPH has a second campus in Surabaya…a “small town” of only 12 million compared to Jakarta’s 17million! They intend to launch campuses in 3 more cities….and perhaps Singapore.
Among the concerns James expressed at breakfast are the need to hire qualified faculty…including especially those who can teach in English. In fact the goal is someday that ALL their classes will be offered in English. This reinforces the already very strong need expressed by so many other CCCU Affiliates for help in identifying such faculty among retirees and sabbaticants as well as recent graduate school graduates. The other need expressed was that they want to model Christian liberal arts to other institutions in their nation. We had a good discussion about what the “liberal” (or as I call them, the “liberating” ) arts really are. There is obviously a solid appreciation for how this is different from mere training and it seems to be their real desire to model this in whatever appropriately contextualized form it might take for their circumstances.
We also discussed the BKPTKI, the Indonesian CCCU, with 35 member Christian colleges/universities in Indonesia…spread across 4 islands including Celebes and Java and Borneo. While they vary in size from 11,000 to 600, they all share a desire to cooperate. I was fortunate that their planning committee was meeting together at lunch. So after a tour of the magnificent facilities I met with leaders from 6 of these schools. But first the tour…
The campus is brand-new and amazing.
It would be the envy of any American CCCU institution. Housed in multiple skyscrapers jointly shared with some commercial ventures including a wonderful bookstore (James’ chain), it has a 3 level library, classroom auditorium for 1000
….I observed a final exam being taken there by the 800 students in the New Testament course required of all students. The covered “play space” and beautiful track, were adjacent to the newest building for the Business School. 
The medical school is down the road adjacent to the Mochtar Riady Institute for Nano-technology 
that does world-class research in cancer and uses the Siloam Hospital for practica. 
Susan Tai is president.Meeting with the BKPTKI,
I heard a list of concerns and ideas they had prepared in an earlier committee gathering:Church relations, 2. Competency/quality control, 3. Management issues, 4. Tuition/pricing…they are all 95% tuition dependent.
Among the ideas offered were:
Exchange of professors and students (Retirees and Sabbaticants…who could teach AND give shared workshops to all BKPTKI members especially on faith learning integration and the liberating arts. 2. Workshopsand Seminars ….eg. on the use of technology, 3. “Accreditation” help…the idea of informal academic audit teams and even their role in certifying some third kind of CCCU “Associate Membership” was well received. (I urged the non-affiliates to consider joining CCCU) 4. BKPTKI hosting of “service learning projects” from CCCU schools, 5. Some scholarships for their students to earn graduate degrees in the US….even as UPH gives free tuition for MAs at UPH to students graduated from other BKPTKI schools. 6. Workshops on teaching for some of the 765 lecturers being trained by UPH to staff its new program of education for the poorer students in their own communities across the nation. 7. BKPTKI providing a “critical mass” for offering graduate degrees in Indonesia…perhaps hosted at UPH.
I very much appreciated the time these leaders invested in producing this list and believe some of them can be implemented soon.
Sinta and driver returned me to my hotel…and an hour later, she and Daniel Park and his wife Kathy fetched me again with a driver, and we were off to the heliport
for a wonderful birds-eye trip to downtown Jakarta…with a few extra turns over the city to let us see.We landed on the downtown branch of my hotel the Aryaduta, and another driver whisked us to the large shopping mall 
where I shopped for family and enjoyed the company of these three great young people. 
There’s nothing like hanging out with young people to keep one young. So it was a blessing to me…..I was grateful to them for taking their time to spend with me. After shopping the driver took us to a great Indonesian restaurant, then after satay, fish, Indonesian fried rice, and much much more, he whisked us again back to Lippo Karawaci where UPH is actually located….What an energizing day for me. I thank God for blessing me with such exciting opportunities, and pray I may contribute in some small way to so many good people here and elsewhere I have visited in their passionate pursuit of distinctively Christian higher education.
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