The Department of Chemistry Education of FMIPA UNY has added one professor, Prof. Dr Antuni Wiyarsi, M.Sc. Prof Antuni is the first professor in the field of Chemistry Education at Yogyakarta State University. The inauguration of Prof. Dr Antuni Wiyarsi, M.Sc. was held at UNY Auditorium on Saturday (31/12). With the inauguration of Prof Antuni, the Chemistry Education Department of FMIPA UNY has 12 professors in total.

At her inauguration, Prof Antuni delivered a scientific speech entitled ‘Context-Based Chemistry Learning for Strengthening Science Relevance and Transferable Skills’. She started her speech by saying that chemistry learning plays an important role in realising global science education goals. Unfortunately, chemistry is a subject that is not so popular for many students because most students feel that chemistry is less meaningful and not important for the future. The issue of chemistry relevance is a concern for education practitioners to overcome the challenges of the 21st century to support students' transferable skills. However, the results of research in Indonesia show that students' transferable skills in chemistry learning have not been developed properly such as chemical literacy, SHOM, collaboration skills, inquiry skills, problem solving, self-efficacy, learning independence, creative thinking skills, and argumentation skills. Given the importance of the concept of relevance in chemistry learning, especially in improving learning interest and learning quality, several new paradigms are applied in chemistry learning. Context-based chemistry learning is one of the learning paradigms developed to overcome these problems. One of the contexts that can be used in context-based learning is the socioscientific issue. Through the application of SSI context-based learning, it is proven to increase the relevance between chemistry subjects and students' lives.