The University Staff Development program (UNISTAFF) at Institute for Socio-cultural Studies
(ISOS), University of Kassel, Witzenhausen, Germany is a training course that enables university
staff from developing countries to gain experiences and develop their potential as academics at their institutions. Held since 1995, they particularly cater for university staff from Central America, Southeast Asia and Eastern Africa.

Indonesia is one of the Southeast Asian countries that has been represented in UNISTAFF since the beginning of the program, and now has the largest number of alumni coming from a single country. At present there are 60 Indonesian scholars as alumni. They have developed and become important figures in their institutions or on a national level. Among the group, some occupy various positions within public and private universities ranging from coordinators of evaluation or research centres, person in charge of different types of committees and task forces, curricular and evaluation advisers as well as being academics directly involved in teaching, research and community services at their universities.

The seeds of a network had already been planted in the year 1999 when University of Gadjah Mada carried out a mini workshop about Higher Education Management. This activity was followed up in 2000 at the South East Asia Germany Alumni Network (SEAG) meeting in Bogor. A series of activities followed during the 2001-2004 period at different universities. In 2005 the alumni decided that a more formal network was necessary in order to ensure the sustainability of the UNISTAFF values and enable them to play a more significant role in the development of higher education in Indonesia. Thus the INDOSTAFF Alumni Network was established.

In a short period of time since the inception (2006) INDOSTAFF has managed to secure support
from the Directorate General of Higher Education (DGHE) at the Ministry of Education to carry out a national level training workshop for university staff from Eastern and Western parts of Indonesia. This workshop was modelled after UNISTAFF and attended by 40 participants from various universities. In addition, several UNISTAFF alumni together with alumni from the British Council Rectors Leadership program are also actively involved in the Leadership training program from the DGHE for the leaders of university in 60 Indonesian universities.

More recently, INDOSTAFF has successfully carried out a workshop on INDOSTAFF  rganization at Agrowisata Batu Malang on 11 – 14 February 2009 (http://unistaff2010.wordpress.com/).  The workshop was funded by DAAD and DGHE.

All these activities show that INDOSTAFF has strong potential to become an important player in higher education development in Indonesia. More information about activities conducted by INDOSTAFF can be found in other page of this web site (see activities page). INDOSTAFF members up to 2010 are alumni of UNISTAFF (University Staff Development Program) organized by ISOS University of Kassel in Witzenhausen Germany. Since 2010 members are from alumni of UNISTAFF, Unilead (University of Oldenburg Germany), and IDC (International Deans’ Course, Fachhochschule Osnabrück Germany )