Visiting Scholar Spotlight: Dalila Husna Yunardi
Oberlin Shansi would like to welcome Dalila Husna Yunardi, our visiting scholar for Fall 2019!
Dalila hails from Banda Aceh, Indonesia, where she teaches software engineering and computer science at Syiah Kuala University. However, you won’t any Computer Science courses on her schedule here at Oberlin. Instead, she’s focusing on classes in Rhetoric and Composition with the intention of improving her writing skills so her scientific papers can excel. In addition to exploring liberal arts curricula and pedagogies, Dalila applied to Oberlin Shansi with the intention of improving her writing for scientific journals, reports, and research proposals. Before coming to Shansi, Dalila and her co-workers were in the introductory stages of a research project that introduces technology into the daily lives of salt farmers near Banda Aceh.
Dalila has used her time at Oberlin to explore global perspectives on education and revisit the life of a student. In addition to her classes in Rhetoric, Dalila is learning Arabic and has joined the Gamelan ensemble. In October, she attended a software and technology symposium in New Orleans. At the symposium, she made professional connections and attended sessions that highlighted real-life examples of technology addressing social problems. Furthermore, the experience in New Orleans allowed Dalila the chance to explore the rich cultural, historic, and gastronomic diversity of the United States.
This semester, Dalila has spent time exploring different museums in Oberlin and Cleveland. She has been keeping up her hobbies of cross-stitch, reading, and baking, and one can often find her in the Oberlin Public Library. She’s caught onto an office-wide obsession with Trader Joe’s and looks forward to her next trips there. She and this year’s Returned Fellow, Eli Fisher, cook meals for students attending Oberlin’s Barefoot dialogues at Shansi House every other week. Other than cross-stitch projects and books from the Public Library’s book sale, Dalila is excited to bring back another skill she’s learned in the Oberlin classroom: workshopping. In her Rhetoric and Composition class, she learned how useful having peers read and give constructive criticism to work is, and wonders about the benefits of work shopping code with peers.
Dalila describes Oberlin with three primary adjectives: creative, quirky, and open-minded. She's enjoyed learning more about her own creative processes and is excited to continue this exploration throughout the semester.