UNAIR NEWS – A proudest achievement has been made by the Student Executive Board of the Faculty of Pharmacy (BEM FF) Universitas Airlangga (UNAIR). Its representative team has been a winner in the International Program Competition for Student Organizations (INTEGRATION) 2022. UNAIR NEWS editorial team had the chance to interview the head of BEM FF, Farhan Rizqi Windianto, for further information.
The BEM FF initiation program is titled Airlangga Short Course Learning in Pharmaceutical Natural Product Uses or short for ASCLEPIUS. ASCLEPIUS will be held as webinars and a short course in four days. ASCLEPIUS aims to educate participants on making nature-based products.
“This collaboration between BEM FF and Airlangga Global Engagement (AGE) UNAIR presented a topic of pharmaceutical products from natural ingredients such as herbal medicine (jamu), aromatherapy, and cosmetics,” said Farhan.
When asked why they chose to focus on the natural chemical product, the class of 2019 student explained that using nature-based products is a characteristic of Indonesian people. The use of herbal potion as treatment has been done for generations. Other products such as aromatherapy and natural cosmetics have also been utilized.
Quoted from National Literacy Movement, herbal plants such as turmeric, sand ginger, galangal, and others are used as a traditional potion. According to Best Present Guide, other than herbal plants, rose, aloe vera, and ylang-ylang flower could be utilized for face and body treatments.
“With these three topics, we hoped to introduce more Indonesian products globally,” Farhan mentioned.
The process of winning this competition is certainly not instant. From the beginning, the initiator team of ASCLEPIUS had focused on the proposal writing activities. The supervising lecturer constantly accompanies the proposal writing, especially regarding the objectives concept and event substance.
According to Farhan, this ASCLEPIUS could increase UNAIR’s exposure in international communities, especially for the Faculty of Pharmacy. This ASCLEPIUS could also improve UNAIR’s student inbound, contributing to UNAIR’s ranking in QS Worl University Rankings 2023.
INTEGRATION is a competition for designing an international program made by Airlangga Global Engagement (AGE) which was opened for UNAIR student organizations. In total, ten student organizations under UNAIR won the INTEGRATION.
Author: Deanita Nurkhalisa
Editor: Binti Q. Masruroh
