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Indonesia

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Population: 240,271,522 (July 2009 est.)

Government type: republic; Chief of State and Head of Government: President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (since Oct. 20, 2004)

Economic Overview

Department of Economics

Cassing

James H. Cassing

Professor,
Department of Economics,
School of Arts and Sciences
office: 412-648-8746
jcassing@pitt.edu
Faculty Bio
Web site

For assistance in reaching this faculty member, contact
Sharon Blake
office: 412-624-4364
cell: 412-277-6926
blake@pitt.edu

Areas of Expertise

International trade theory and policy, trade theory, economics of deregulation and policy reform

Background

Cassing has expertise in international trade theory and policy as well as international finance and development. He has advised governments on policy reform packages in Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, and Southern Africa. He is the author of Capital, Technology, and Labor in the New Global Economy (Aei Pr, 1989) and a contributing author for Trade Disputes and the Dispute Settlement Understanding of the WTO: An Interdisciplinary Assessment (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Cassing also serves on the editorial board of The Journal of International Trade and Economic Development.

school of education

McClure

Maureen McClure
Associate professor, Department of Administrative and Policy Studies, School of education
office: 412-648-7114
home: 412-826-9227
mmcclure@pitt.edu
Faculty Bio

For assistance in reaching this faculty member, contact:
Patricia Lomando White
office: 412-624-9101
cell: 412-215-9932
laer@pitt.edu

Areas of Expertise

Educational strategy and finance in decentrazlized, crisis-driven, and chronically weak regional economies; peer learning networks for professional development; Internet-based interagency coordination

Background
McClure’s international research focuses on professional development networks that help create “safe places for children to learn,” as well as use of the Internet and field-based strategies to enhance the educational process in unstable political and economic regions.

Currently, she heads a University team for the U.S. State Department’s Agency for International Development’s five-year Decentralized Basic Education (DBE2) project in Indonesia. Pitt’s team has established a consortium of 15 university rectors from across Indonesia (Central, East, and West Java, Papua, South Sulawesi, North Sumatera, and Aceh). The project focuses on sharing education innovations in decentralized environments.

McClure also is director of the Global Information Networks in Education (GINIE) project, which focuses on using the Internet to generate and share educational strategy innovations in regions with complex conditions. In addition, McClure’s work on education and human security issues with Pitt’s Ford Center for Human Security includes the development of cost-effective policies to prevent the recruitment of child soldiers during conflicts.

school of law

Douglas M. Branson
W. Edward Sell Professor of Business Law
Office: 412-624-3437
Home: 412-621-5336
branson@pitt.edu
Faculty Bio

For assistance in reaching this faculty member, contact:
Patricia Lomando White
office: 412-624-9101
cell: 412-215-9932
laer@pitt.edu

Areas of Expertise

Corporate law and securities regulation

Background

Branson is considered to be one of the top corporate law experts in the United States. He has been a USAID consultant to the Ministries of Justice in Indonesia advising on corporate law, capital markets law, corporate governance, and securitization issues.

Branson’s reputation as one of the country’s most productive and thoughtful business law scholars has earned him an especially influential role in framing the highly prestigious American Law Institute’s recommendations for corporate governance. In addition, he is considered to be the world’s leading expert on the corporate law aspects of Alaska native corporations. Branson books include the treatise Corporate Governance (Lexis Law Pub. 1993, with annual supplements), Understanding Corporate Law (Lexis Nexis, 3rd ed. 2009), No Seat at the Table: How Corporate Governance and Law Keep Women Out of the Boardroom (New York University Press, 2006), and The Last Male Bastion – Gender and the CEO Suite at America’s Public Companies (Routledge, 2009).

Department of Music

Andrew Weintraub

Professor,
Department of Music,
School of Arts and Sciences
office: 412-624-4184
cell: 412-606-4135
anwein@pitt.edu
Faculty Bio

For assistance in reaching this faculty member, contact
Sharon Blake
office: 412-624-4364
cell: 412-277-6926
blake@pitt.edu

Areas of Expertise

Music and culture of Indonesia, particularly Sudanese music, dance, and theater; popular music; music of ethnic communities of Hawaii

Background

Weintraub is an ethnomusicologist whose specialty is the music and culture of Indonesia. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in ethnomusicology and is the director of the University Gamelan Ensemble, a group of musicians who play the gamelan—a large set of metal-keyed instruments, gongs, and drums. Weintraub has traveled the mountains of West Java with professional puppeteers and their accompanying musicians. He wrote about those experiences in Power Plays: Wayang Golek Puppet Theater of West Java (Ohio University Press, 2004). Weintraub is working on two other books—a history of Indonesian popular music and an edited volume on Islam and popular culture in Indonesia and Malaysia. He has performed gamelan music across the United States and in Canada, Asia, and Europe.

School of Education

Weidman

John C. Weidman

Professor of education and sociology
Chair, Department of Administrative and Policy Studies
School of Education
office: 412-648-1772
cell: 412-680-1684
weidman@pitt.edu
Faculty bio

For assistance in reaching this Pitt faculty member, contact Patricia Lomando White
office: 412-624-9101
cell: 412-215-9932
laer@pitt.edu

Areas of expertise

Comparative higher-education reform; postsecondary education and development; higher- education policy; quality assurance and accreditation in higher education

Weidman was educated at Princeton University and the University of Chicago. He has written extensively on higher-education reform in countries undergoing the transition from command to market economies. He has consulted for the Asian Development Bank, assessing outcomes from a project designed to improve capacity in several universities, most located on the outer islands of Indonesia. He is currently working with University of Pittsburgh colleagues on a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development on decentralized basic education, including the reform of teacher education in certain Indonesian provinces.