HUMAS USU - The Rector of the University of Sumatera Utara (USU), Prof Dr Muryanto Amin, SSos, MSi, officially launched the Enhancing Quality Education for International University Recognition (EQUITY) 2025 program at the Student Arena on Wednesday (3/9/2025), attended by lecturers within the USU environment.

In his presentation, Prof Mury said that USU continues to provide support to lecturers to create quality and impactful research for the community. This research will make USU's ranking in international ranking institutions even better.

"There are currently 1,797 USU lecturers who have conducted research in various fields, both social sciences and humanities and exact sciences. Of that number, almost half have served as research chairs," said Prof Mury.

The Rector also said that a strategy for managing the three pillars of higher education is needed to achieve internationalization targets. Namely, in the field of education by creating excellent graduates through a research and community service-based curriculum.

"Meanwhile, in the field of research, by fostering a culture of innovation and creating an academic reputation by producing quality output. For community service, we encourage lecturers to create something that can genuinely solve problems in the community and be significantly impactful," he said.

Prof Mury explained that the current standardization of lecturer research in Indonesia is still based on Scopus. This means lecturers are required to produce research that appears in Scopus-indexed articles, and currently, 54 percent of the lecturers who have conducted research have Scopus accounts throughout 2021-2025.

In response to the challenges of internationalization, Prof Mury said that the university will provide training, mentorship, and appreciation for lecturers who are able to get their articles into Scopus-indexed journals. Thus, he hopes there will be enthusiasm and spirit among USU lecturers to write internationally reputable articles.

USU is also continuously increasing international collaboration, both in research and community service. Prof Mury detailed that there are currently 1,637 international collaborative research projects that have been created, with the largest number produced in 2024, totaling 428 international collaborative research projects.

Ministerial Regulation No. 39 of 2025, which has just been ratified, is a reference for the current development of higher education, according to Prof Mury. One of the points in the regulation is the high demand for universities to achieve global standards and continue to increase international competitiveness.

"Universities must also strive to gain global recognition through ranking and accreditation bodies with a strict audit system. All of this is done so that USU can further improve its international standard quality," he said.

Closing his presentation, the USU Rector was optimistic that USU would be able to improve its ranking in the future. With the right strategy and cooperation from all parties both inside and outside the campus, USU will achieve the desired internationalization targets.

"Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, let's work together for USU and give our best as a form of our collective effort. Currently, we have successfully obtained international accreditation for 28 study programs and are consistently improving our international ranking. Let's improve it together; if there are still shortcomings, let's fix them together. The support of the entire USU academic community is very much needed for the improvement of the quality of the three pillars at the University of Sumatera Utara," he concluded.