The president of an Indonesian university that suffered horrific losses in the tsunami and six of the school’s faculty members are graduates of the University of Kentucky.
On Jan. 26, UK faculty who are fund-raising for victims finally got word from an Indonesian official that all seven of the UK alumni are alive. Some, however, lost their homes and property, retired UK agriculture professor John Ragland said.
A UK agriculture faculty member left for Sumatra on Jan. 26 in hopes of determining how UK can help rebuild the student body and faculty and offer students the chance to study at UK.
“Short of a meteor striking the earth or a hydrogen bomb, this is as big as a disaster gets,” Ragland said. “The institution must be rebuilt, and I’m hoping faculty and UK alumni will respond to fellow alumni and the other victims.”
The University of Syiah Kuala was on its winter break Dec. 26 when the earthquake and tsunami struck.
Still, Ragland said, the losses among students, faculty and staff are staggering.
At this point, more than 5,000 students out of 18,000 are dead or missing. In addition, 247 faculty and staff are dead or missing, 144 children of faculty and staff are dead or missing, 202 homes of faculty and staff have been destroyed and one-third of the buildings and equipment on campus has been destroyed or is badly damaged.
The UK graduates included the university president, Abdi Wahab, an agronomy major, who received his master’s degree in 1984 and his doctorate in 1986 at UK.
The ties between the two schools date back to the 1980s when UK entered into a foreign aid contract to help develop and provide graduate training for eight Indonesian universities.
In all, 194 Indonesians received master’s and doctoral degrees at UK in agriculture in the 1980s.
Ragland said the U.S. government chose UK to train Indonesian agriculture students in the hopes of improving conditions in Indonesia.
Now Ragland and others hope donations from UK alumni and faculty will allow students at the University of Syiah Kuala to travel to UK and continue their studies in agriculture.
How the initiative will work hasn’t been decided yet. Mike Reed, the Agriculture College’s director of international programs, will determine the extent of the damage and how UK faculty and alumni can best help.
Augus Hudoyo, a UK Indonesian graduate student, has been receiving some news of the UK alumni from an official in charge of reconstruction in Banda Aceh.
Meanwhile, the UK College of Agriculture Development Office has established a Tsunami Relief Fund. The fund will be kept open for contributions until June 30.

Author