Tag: July 16, 2010

A KNOWN German philosopher named Martin Heidegger once said “Freedom is only to be found where there is burden to be shouldered.”

Cornelio “Jun” Carmona could have reasoned out otherwise. After all, he was armed with a law degree and many experiences in rhetoric. But it was behind prison bars where he learned to walk along limits with faith, and to take a second look at the things around him.

The newly-paroled man is now working as a legal adviser in one of the offices housed in the South Wing of the House of Representatives, where he begins to build stronger connections and foundations for his second chance in freedom.

An active voice

NO MASTER’S, no teaching load.

The UST administration has begun to strictly enforce a Commission on Higher Education (Ched) memorandum requiring a master’s degree for all college teachers.

The Office of the Academic Affairs and Research has issued a waiver requiring non-tenured faculty members without master’s degrees to renounce their right to tenureship despite a provision in the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that could lead to tenureship after five semesters.

Four professors from the College of Fine Arts and Design were terminated because they refused to sign the waiver, according to a letter from the UST Faculty Union (USTFU) to Academic Affairs chief Clarita Carillo, a copy of which was obtained by the Varsitarian.

THE NEW “little president” and the person in charge of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III’s legal concerns are both Thomasians.

Lawyers Paquito “Jojo” Ochoa Jr. and Eduardo de Mesa have been appointed cabinet members of Aquino administration, occupying the posts of executive secretary and chief presidential legal counsel, respectively.

Ochoa graduated from the Faculty of Arts and Letters in 1981 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. He later finished law at the Ateneo de Manila University.

RECTOR Fr. Rolando de la Rosa, O.P., has received his second Outstanding Manilan Award, sharing honors with President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III and nine other individuals in ceremonies for the 439th founding anniversary of the City of Manila last June 24 at the Manila Hotel.

“This award was not given for my person. This is a recognition of the University’s contribution to the progress of Manila,” De la Rosa said in an interview.

The award was given to De la Rosa for his contribution in values formation.

De la Rosa first received the Outstanding Manilan Award in the field of education in 1995. He first served as UST Rector from 1990 to 1998, and became chairman of the Commission on Higher Education from 2004 to 2005.

THE THOMASIAN community continues to grow in number despite the general decline in private school enrollment although the number of freshmen enrollees decreased this semester.

As of June 19, a total of 41,653 students have enrolled in the University, up from last year’s 40,651, which translates to a 2.46 percent increase.

However, the number of freshmen enrollees dropped to 12,627 from the previous year’s 13,324, or a decline of 5.23 percent.

In the last five years, only this semester has seen a decrease in freshmen enrollees.

STUDENTS at the Faculty of Arts and Letters are now required to speak in English during class discussions, serving as “guinea pigs” before the launch of a University-wide English proficiency campaign.

“[Competence in English] is one of the main complaints of many of the employers [of our] University graduates. There is a survey [among employers] in the country and abroad, and one of the setbacks of our graduates is [that] they are very competent in their profession, but they are not very articulate, especially in the English language,” Rector Fr. Rolando De la Rosa, O.P., said.

The “experiment” was started in Artlets because many of its courses require communication in English, he said.

TWO NEW academic departments have emerged following the split of the Department of Humanities, in a bid to “professionalize” the University’s Philosophy and Letters programs.

The newly established Department of Philosophy is headed by Professor Alfredo Co while the Department of Literature is directed by former Department of Humanities chairwoman Joyce Arriola.

“It’s very important to split the humanities department into two in order to develop both programs in the undergraduate and the graduate courses,” Arriola said.

Co, meanwhile, said UST created a philosophy department when the Commission on Higher Education (Ched) renewed the “center of excellence” status of the program in 2007.

THE UST Health Service has implemented a computerization program to make it easier to update and retrieve medical records.

The project, powered by Santo Tomas e-Service Providers (Steps), will cover medical records of students, faculty, support staff, and dependents.

“The computerization program aims to have a more efficient medical recording system which will contribute to a better health care delivery system for the members of the Thomasian community,” said Dr. Maria Salve Olalia, director of the Health Service.

Olalia said data would be recorded following the “SOAP” format: subjective or what the patient feels, objective or doctor’s findings, assessment or diagnosis, and plan or treatment.

UST BECAME the second top-performing school in the June 2010 Pharmacy licensure examinations, with 89 percent of examinees passing the test.

Leading 241 new Thomasian pharmacists is Sannie Tan Ho who ranked fourth with his 90.28- percent score. Thessa Mia Rivera tied with Cedrix Cuaderno from University of the Philippines-Manila in the seventh place with a score of 89.58 percent, while David Creony Javier ranked eighth with an 89.48 mark.

“I was expecting a much higher passing rate and more Thomasians in the top 10 since [in this batch], there were two magna cum laudes and eight cum laudes who took the exam,” said Dean Priscilla Torres of the Faculty of Pharmacy.

ASPIRING Thomasian lawyers will have to maintain a higher average grade to avoid a probationary status starting next school year, as UST strives to improve its lackluster performance in the bar exams.

Civil Law Dean Nilo Divina said the faculty would increase its quotient point index (QPI) average for sophomore and junior students to 81 percent from 79 percent.