Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang

One of dancing performaces from participants in opening ceremonial of Muhammadiyah Education Award 2012.

University of Muhammadiyah Malang (UMM) on Saturday was busy with Muhammadiyah students from diverse regions. No less than 4.000 students and supervisors took part to enliven annual agenda hold by Elementary and Secondary Education Regional Assembly (Majelis Dikdasmen PWM) of East Java. The agenda called as Muhammadiyah Education (ME) Award 2012.

“Muhammadiyah Education is a transformation from annual event of Olympiad and Conference (Olycon) hold by PWM of East Java. It has been held for seven years,” stated the Head of Majelis Dikdasmen of PWM of East Java Dr. Biyanto. Began from this year, Olycon was changed its name into ME Award. This was intended to focus on the Olympiad only. While the conference, will be held in different time and place.

The event was opened by the Head of PWM of East Java Prof. Dr. Thohir Luth and it was closed by the General Chief of PP Muhammadiyah Prof. Dr. Din Syamsuddin. In addition, the Head of PP Muhammadiyah and the former Head of PWM of East Java Prof. Dr. Syafiq Mughni also came to deliver his speech.     

“Education is a soft process but it has spectacular power,” said Syafiq. So that, this sort of events should be an event to build competitive character for Muhammadiyah students, establish friendship, and create networking.

The same statement was disclosed by Thohir Luth. For him, ME Award was important to improve Muhammadiyah seriousness to prepare its cadres to be a pioneer in many fields; science, art, society, nation, etc. “This annual event is also be a holistic media of education for the cadres who has broad mastery on the fields,” affirmed Thohir.     

For this year, ME Award took the theme of “Building Your Futuere Miracle from Creativity”. Categories that competed were science, Mathematics, Physics, business plan, website and magazine design, al-Islam and Muhammadiyah in Arabic and English. “Begin from this year, there are two new categories; robotic competition and indie film,” said Biyanto. The total participants were 2650.

Din stated, PWM of East Java was a pioneer to organize this Educational Olympiad. This event lifted up Muhammadiyah image in society. Through ME Award, society knew the achievements of Muhammadiyah students.  

“Muhammadiyah education is not only enough by creating national even international achievements but also it needs to develop personality education or called as al-Akhlak al-Karimah. Through this, outstanding at all once well-mannered students will be created. This human resource (SDM) is very important to help nation’s development,” he stated.

It was different from previous year concept, for this time, winners would be given by a medal—from bronze, silver up to gold. Besides, there was also cash money from sponsor. Furthermore, the winners would be delegated to participate in national even global competition.

The most interesting, robot and film competition was participated by elementary school (SD) students. Their works were awesome and the works defeated their senior’s work in junior (SMP) even senior high school (SMA). This contest welcomed gloriously by the audience. The robot that was prepared moved by following music for 10 minutes with various interesting attraction.  

For instance, in robot contest, there were three categories that competed; Maze Solving, Line Tracer, and Robot Theater. It was followed by 11 mixed teams from SD, SMP, and SMA. Meanwhile, from indie film, there were 12 students of SD and SMP submitted their works and students of SMA submitted only 9 works.

Meanwhile, indie film contest was shown in theater Dome UMM. One by one, the film was played. Though it was created by students of SD-SMA level, quality of story ideas and its editing process was not defeated by professional film. “For beginners, those films are good enough. Next year, I do believe this competition will invite more participants and the creativity will be better and more innovative,” said Abdul Malik, one of indie film jury.