Fauzi Dewantara, an engineering consultant based in Indonesia, completed his master’s degree in Corrosion Control Engineering at the University of Manchester in 2024. What began as a pursuit of technical knowledge soon became a journey of personal growth, cultural exchange, and community leadership.
Through his studies and experiences in the UK, Fauzi not only expanded his professional horizons but also found a deeper purpose in building networks that support others, a mission that continues today through his work with the Manchester Alumni Network in Indonesia.
Read on to learn how studying in the UK helped him build a career in engineering.
My decision to study in the UK first came from my love of football, and how amazing it would be to study in one of the countries with a large football fanbase. And the University of Manchester is one of the two universities there that offers my major. It was a challenge to make the decision to go to the UK.
I have a family back home in Indonesia, so I have to do a long-distance relationship with my family.
But the community there was great. We would do mundane activities together, such as buying groceries and getting dinner. So, I don’t feel alone when trying to settle in. It’s also a huge experience for me to live in a flat with five other people from other countries, from Malaysia to India. I got to learn about their culture, how they work, how they are preparing their meals, how they study.
The biggest things that I’ve learned from my study in the UK goes beyond the classroom. It was my interactions with the people around me. It really helped me develop my soft skills, which enhanced my opportunity to get a job when I returned from the UK.
Not only the soft skills, connections are important for after studies. When I graduated in 2024 and got back to Indonesia, I had a couple of friends who graduated at the same time and went back at the same time. We were talking about what we are going to do after our studies, and we realised that we should create a network. “In Indonesia, we want to create a network of Manchester alumni.
First, we created a WhatsApp group, but then we wanted to make this more formal. We talked to the network alumni department at the University of Manchester. They were very supportive of the idea, they said that you can make the alumni society in Indonesia, tell us what you need from us, and we will support you 100%.
We started to connect with people that graduated in the previous years. With the first meeting in January 2025, we decided to go bigger and make it even more official. Manchester Alumni Network in Indonesia or ManID, we called it. And recently we held a programme called the Manchester Day of Action. I was chosen as the project leader for this Manchester Day of Action, to contribute to our society. This day is to help CSRs who have great ideas but need additional resources to execute it. Through this network, we were able to collect enough donations to renovate a home near Jakarta that is not suitable to live in. The network has around 50 people within the organisation structure, and around 500 people in the network.
