Partnerships for the Goals

UNESA gives direct input into national and regional sustainable development policy

UNESA SDGs Center · 20 October 2026

Universitas Negeri Surabaya (UNESA) gives direct input into government policy for sustainable development: in 2025 its Graduate School helped draft the Regional Innovation System roadmap of Mahakam Ulu Regency, a border region of East Kalimantan (Sekolah Pascasarjana, 2025), its planning students presented problem analyses and planning proposals to East Java's provincial spatial planning office (S1 Perencanaan Wilayah dan Kota, 2025), and its public administration researchers turned a study of urban kampung economies into a policy brief for city, provincial and national government (S1 Ilmu Administrasi Negara, 2026).

UNESA input into government policy for sustainable development, 2025 and 2026

Identifying problems and challenges

Universitas Negeri Surabaya (UNESA) identifies problems and challenges for government policy, hosting, on 10 February 2025, the signing of a cooperation between the Ministry of Social Affairs and 262 public and private universities of East Java to eliminate extreme poverty (SDG 1). The Minister of Social Affairs, Saifullah Yusuf, set the target of bringing extreme poverty to zero, and the Deputy Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology, Fauzan, said poverty reduction must be based on studies from many angles, which the universities are to provide. UNESA's Rector, Prof. Nurhasan, said university research and innovation can be used by the government as a basis for policy (Universitas Negeri Surabaya, 2025a).

On 19 May 2025 students of the Urban and Regional Planning programme presented their studio reports to the spatial planning division of East Java's housing, settlements and public works office (DPRKPCK Jatim). Each studio class set out the problems it had identified in its study area, its spatial and social analysis, and its proposed planning solutions, and the officials responded with technical and strategic input (S1 Perencanaan Wilayah dan Kota, 2025).

UNESA examines the problems of villages around it for the Ministry of Social Affairs. At a coordination meeting on 7 February 2025 at the UNESA rectorate with the ministry's Secretary General, Robben Rico, its Director General of Social Rehabilitation, Supomo, and the East Java Rectors' Forum, the ministry asked universities to study the problems of the villages around them and propose lasting solutions for its Desa Sejahtera (prosperous village) programme, given that East Java holds a large share of Indonesia's poor, and introduced Sekolah Rakyat as a way to break the cycle of poverty. Vice Rector Martadi committed UNESA to study the problems of surrounding villages and offer sustainable solutions (Universitas Negeri Surabaya, 2025b).

UNESA Global Engagement collaborated with the Tanjung Perak Class I Immigration Office to organize 'Immigration Goes to Campus,' a session addressing the safety and security of students participating in international mobility programs in April 2026. The activity raised awareness of risks associated with overseas study and internships, including transnational crime and human trafficking, and highlighted the importance of verifying international programmes and partners. The initiative supports SDG 4 (Quality Education) by promoting safer access to international learning opportunities and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) through cooperation between a university and a government agency. It is consistent with UNESA's institutional cooperation framework under Rector Regulation No. 13 of 2023 and Indonesia's Law No. 6 of 2011 on Immigration, as amended, which provides the legal framework for immigration services and oversight. The program demonstrates cross-sector collaboration to identify and address risks associated with international student mobility (Universitas Negeri Surabaya, 2026b).

Developing policies and strategies

Universitas Negeri Surabaya (UNESA) develops policies and strategies for government through its Graduate School, which in August 2025 began helping to draft the Peta Jalan Sistem Inovasi Daerah (Regional Innovation System roadmap) of Mahakam Ulu Regency, East Kalimantan, a remote, frontier and outermost (3T) region on the border with Sarawak, Malaysia. The four-month process started with a policy study and coordination, mapped local actors and potential through surveys and interviews, formulated innovation strategies in multi-stakeholder focus group discussions with government, academics, business and civil society, and ended with a public test and finalisation. The roadmap sets out the regency's innovation ecosystem, success indicators, short, medium and long-term action plans and a monitoring and evaluation system, to be integrated into the regency's development planning so that its innovation system is inclusive, adaptive and sustainable (Sekolah Pascasarjana, 2025).

Lecturers of the Public Administration programme (FISIPOL) wrote the policy brief Memperkuat Ekonomi Kampung: Integrasi Gotong Royong ke dalam Kebijakan Pembangunan Kota Berkelanjutan (strengthening kampung economies by building mutual help into sustainable city development policy), based on their study of Kampung Lawas Maspati in Surabaya and Kampung Warna-Warni Jodipan in Malang. They presented its recommendations at the Southeast Asian Urbanism Seminar 2.0 in Yogyakarta on 11 and 12 June 2025, and in August 2026 began disseminating the brief, written for kampung residents and for city, provincial and national government, as input for designing kampung development policy (S1 Ilmu Administrasi Negara, 2026).

Urban and Regional Planning students present their studio analyses to officials of East Java's provincial spatial planning office on 19 May 2025. (S1 Perencanaan Wilayah dan Kota, 2025)

UNESA gives the Ministry of Social Affairs research-based recommendations on Sekolah Rakyat. On 31 July 2026 the ministry's Secretary General, Robben Rico, met UNESA at its rectorate on the Lidah Wetan campus to turn their cooperation on Sekolah Rakyat into training, mentoring and evaluation. UNESA presented its academic team's study of how Sekolah Rakyat is run: character education was well integrated, and the Director of UNESA Smart Sustainability Campus, Pradini Puspitaningayu, set out the study's recommendations, a more contextual curriculum, a multi-entry multi-exit system, management of boarding life, child protection, mental health support for students and a quality assurance system, as the basis for developing Sekolah Rakyat. Vice Rector Martadi committed lecturers from several disciplines, Teacher Professional Education (PPG) students and UNESA's inclusive education team to the programme, which he described as a way to end extreme poverty through education (Universitas Negeri Surabaya, 2026a).