updated September 26, 2007
- In the fall of 1975, a group of scholars from institutions of higher learning with strong commitments to Indonesian studies formed the Inter-University Consortium of Advanced Indonesian Training Abroad (later changed to COTI, the Consortium for the Teaching of Indonesian). Under the leadership of Dr. John Wolff, Professor of Linguistics and Asian Studies at Cornell University, a program was formulated to offer advanced Indonesian in the summer of 1976 in Malang, East Java, at the Malang Teacher Training Institute (IKIP Malang). A program of total immersion enabled the students to make rapid progress in the study of the language and culture of Indonesia, and all of the participants reached the stage at which they could use the language with the ease and accuracy necessary for carrying out serious research in Indonesia. COTI in cooperation with IKIP Malang conducted three more such programs through the summer of 1979.
- For a five-year period between 1980-1984, Satya Wacana University in Salatiga, Central Java, hosted similar programs. In 1985, IKIP Malang again hosted the program, but this time under the aegis of a newly founded doctoral program in linguistics. For a period of two years (1993-94), the program was conducted in Ujung Pandang, South Sulawesi. Then in the three following years (1995-97) Universitas Sam Ratulangi in Manado, North Sulawesi, hosted the program.
- Until the tumultuous events of mid-May 1998 in Indonesia, plans had been made to conduct the program once again at the same university in Manado in the summer of 1998. However, inasmuchas the United States Department of State deemed it inadvisable to conduct the program in Indonesia during the summer of 1998, within a matter of days in late May 1998, arrangements were made with the National University of Malaysia, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), to host the 1998 program at its main campus in Bangi in the state of Selangor less than 30 kilometers south of Kuala Lumpur. To reflect the expanded mission of the program, the consortium voted in November 1998 to officially change the name of the consortium to COTIM (Consortium for the Teaching of Indonesian and Malay). Inasmuchas the conditions in Indonesia were still unstable, the 1999 program was conducted once again in Malaysia at UKM. Although the experience in Malaysia was a particularly successful one and UKM indicated its desire to host future programs, the COTIM consortium opted to return to Indonesia again to Universitas Sam Ratulangi in Manado (UNSRAT) in the summers of 2000 to 2007.
- The program will be held at the Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana (UKSW) starting in 2008.