ASKI participated in government programs to promote Indonesian culture abroad, and in 1970 Sumarsam was invited to Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan, where he worked for seven months.
Inspired by Western academia, he pursued a master's degree in world music from Wesleyan University from 1974 to 1976.
He continued teaching and performing at various universities in the United States, and was made an artist-in-residence at Wesleyan in 1976.
From 1983 he began working on a Ph.D. from Cornell University in ethnomusicology and Southeast Asian Studies.
It was later revised and published as Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java.