UST General Santos (GenSan) has secured approval from the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) for the first five undergraduate degree programs to be offered at the Mindanao campus when it opens in Academic Year 2024 to 2025.
In a Facebook post a day after the inauguration of the GenSan campus, UST announced the program offerings in the branch, which is expected to accommodate 500 students in its inaugural year.
All pioneer programs in UST GenSan will be bachelor of science degrees:
- BS Accounting Information System
- BS Entrepreneurship
- BS Industrial Engineering
- BS Medical Technology
- BS Pharmacy
The programs will be housed under three academic units: the School of Health Sciences, the School of Business and Accountancy, and the School of Engineering and Information Technology.
UST has yet to announce the dates for admissions and details of the application process.
Former medical technology department chair Prof. Edilberto Manahan will head the School of Health Sciences, while former Commerce dean Assoc. Prof. Leonardo Canoy is set to lead the School of Business and Accountancy.
Professor Emeritus Maribel Nonato, the assistant to the Rector for UST GenSan, said the administration wanted to “innovate the programs” offered at the Mindanao campus to distinguish them from those offered at UST Manila.
“We are going to innovate the programs that’s why in some of the programs, we’re going to need to introduce already entrepreneurship as electives,” Nonato said during an event organized by UST alumni group Tomasinong Soccsksargen on April 10.
“Our plan is for those students who are interested in putting up their own business, we partner them with our innovation center at Santa Rosa and UST Manila,” she added.
Nonato told the Varsitarian during the inauguration ceremony that the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) had given the go signal for the Mindanao campus to market and promote its program offerings.
CHEd Region 12 Director Nelia Abilin said the establishment of the University in Mindanao opened up avenues for the development of the city’s workforce and region-focused research.
“Higher education institutions are not only centers of learning but also catalysts for regional progress,” Abilin said during her remarks at the campus inauguration. “We hope that the UST GenSan campus will be a hub for knowledge creation and research.”
Pioneer UST GenSan students will take their classes in the Main Building of the Mindanao campus, which can accommodate up to 5,000 students once fully operational. It is the first edifice on the 82.2-hectare campus.
The next structure set to rise at UST GenSan is the UST-Dr. Ricardo S. Po Sr. Integrated Innovation and Research Laboratories, which will break ground on April 25.
UST GenSan marked the first major expansion of the University outside of Manila and Luzon, and is the largest UST campus to date.
The GenSan campus is twice the size of the 40-hectare UST Santa Rosa, the research hub in Laguna where the first building was inaugurated last year, and four times the size of the 21-hectare main campus in Sampaloc, Manila.
