Political science Professor Dwight King soon will join the many NIU faculty members who have traveled abroad when he leaves for Indonesia this January.

King, who specializes in development, will hold the title of visiting scholar at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, one of the country’s top two universities. He will be assisting Gadjah Mada faculty and graduate students in a research assignment titled the “Indonesian Second University Development Project.” He added that an Indonesian NIU graduate and one of his former classmates from the University of Chicago are at the university.

The project, which is commissioned by the Midwest University Consortium for International Affairs, will be conducted at Gadjah Mada’s Center for Social Science Research and will examine “social changes in villages,” King said.

“They have sent me a comprehensive scope of work which covers a great deal. I suppose I’ll be doing a little bit of everything,” he said. He estimated his duties to include teaching workshops dealing with research methodology, overseeing research projects and analysis of research results and data.

This trip will mark King’s seventh trip to Indonesia since 1981, and he said he hopes the “firsthand experience” he brings back will help to enhance his lectures and classes at NIU. King will return to NIU sometime in March or April 1989, and said that although he will not be actively teaching, he plans to meet with students.

“Both Indonesian and American students are concerned about preparation and education for a career. But the Indonesian students are particularly concerned about finding a career after graduation because the rate of unemployment in that nation is very high,” King said.