PERTH – Friday, 14 September 2018. Ms Janelle May has been appointed the new Deputy Resident Director of the Australian Consortium for ‘In-Country’ Indonesian Studies (also known as ACICIS Study Indonesia), Australia’s oldest and most successful university collaboration facilitating student mobility into Indonesia.

Based in Jakarta, Ms May will assist ACICIS Resident Director, Dr Adrian Budiman in overseeing the management of the consortium’s activities across Indonesia, including the provision of academic and pastoral care support services for Australian and international students undertaking ACICIS study programs in Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Bogor, Bandung, Salatiga – and soon – Bali.

Dr Budiman welcomed Ms May’s appointment citing her long involvement with ACICIS – first as a student and then as a staff member – and her demonstrated commitment to the organisation’s mission to increase the number of Australian students studying in Indonesia. “Janelle brings with her a wealth of specialised institutional knowledge and experience drawn from five years working within ACICIS’ Australia-based operations. Her experience, paired with her deep understanding of Indonesian culture from an Australian perspective will be instrumental in delivering high quality services across all our programs.” said Dr Budiman. “I look forward to working together with her to grow ACICIS’ reputation and organisational capacity in Indonesia in the years ahead.”

Ms May commenced her career as a secondary Indonesian language teacher in Perth after graduating from Curtin University with a Bachelor of Arts in Indonesian and a Bachelor of Secondary Education in 2008. As part of a Master of Arts in Asian Studies, Ms May undertook a semester in Indonesia with ACICIS in 2012, and also spent time in Central Java undertaking fieldwork for her dissertation. Ms May joined the ACICIS Secretariat team in 2013. During her time in the Secretariat Ms May has coordinated the consortium’s secondary school tours program, overseen the design of several new in-country study programs, and been instrumental in managing the consortium’s New Colombo Plan application strategy – a strategy which has secured $11.4 million in Australian Government funding on behalf of consortium members since 2014.

Consortium Director, Mr Liam Prince, praised Ms May’s dedication to ACICIS and expressed excitement at the opportunities that her new Indonesia-based appointment presented for the organisation. “Janelle’s appointment to the Deputy Resident Directorship constitutes the biggest exercise in knowledge transfer between the two sides of ACICIS’ operations in some time,” Mr Prince said. “We’ll be very sorry to lose Janelle from the Secretariat but her move to Indonesia and the new role will undoubtedly be a net benefit for ACICIS,” he added. “I have extreme confidence in Janelle’s abilities, and am very excited to see her apply her unique set of skills and talents to ACICIS’ organisational development in Indonesia. I am just so pleased that she has accepted this new challenge.”

For her part, Ms May said she was thrilled to be taking on the role of Deputy Resident Director. “It’s an exciting time to be joining the ACICIS team in Indonesia,” said Ms May. “With the consortium delivering more programs and managing more students than ever before – thanks largely to the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan – we’re experiencing something of a golden age for study abroad to Indonesia”, Ms May observed. “I’m looking forward to working with Dr Budiman to ensure that ACICIS manages this growth in operational scale and complexity well, and in a way that continues to foster the best possible experience for our students studying in-country”.

Last year ACICIS placed 289 Australian and international students into study programs at Indonesian universities, and is on-track to exceed more than 400 students in 2018. It is the largest Indonesia-focussed learning abroad consortium in Australia and the largest single recipient of New Colombo Plan student mobility funding.

 

Click here for a PDF of the full media release.

 

For further media comment, please contact:

Meg McPherson
ACICIS Marketing & Student Recruitment Coordinator
m.mcpherson@acicis.edu.au
+61 8 6488 6675