AFTER nearly six decades of service, Dean Emeritus Lilian Sison formally retired from the University this year, bringing to a close a career that helped shape UST’s academic and administrative landscape.
As she concluded her Thomasian journey, Sison’s reflections during her November 2023 conferment as Dean Emeritus offered a window into the leadership challenges that defined much of her career.
The University conferred the title of “Dean Emeritus” on Sison in November 2023, an honor bestowed on deans who had served a minimum of nine years in an academic unit.
In her acceptance speech, she reflected on the experiences that shaped her character and values over nearly six decades of service.
“I traveled far and wide—practically more than 100 trips outside the country… the sum of these experiences shaped my character, the values I espoused, and my disposition in life,” she said in 2023.
Faculty development
Long before becoming one of the University’s senior administrators, Sison began her career as a laboratory instructor in the Department of Chemistry and became active in professional organizations that trained public high school and college chemistry teachers.
She was appointed assistant to the rector for academic affairs and research in the 1990s, a period she recalled as one when UST had yet to establish itself as a leading research university.
At the time, only about 60% of the University’s faculty held master’s degrees, while few possessed a doctorate, a minimum requirement in universities overseas.
Sison said UST had talented faculty members like the poet Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta and philosopher Emerita Quito, but lacked sustained institutional excellence.
“I called them flashes of brilliance and not really a product of sustained excellence in the university. Classrooms were overflowing with students, and the faculty’s full preoccupation was teaching. UST then was not associated with quality education,” she said.
Recognizing faculty development as key to strengthening research productivity, Sison said her office embarked on a long-term effort to transform the University’s academic profile.
“The mandate of my office became crystal clear: embark on a massive academic development program and take UST out of its reputation of being the leader of second-rate institutions,” she said.
Her office encouraged faculty members to pursue graduate studies through scholarships at overseas partner universities, reduced class sizes, expanded research incentives, introduced policy reforms and improved campus infrastructure, including internet connectivity, to support research.
Despite skepticism over the cost of the initiatives, Sison maintained that investing in faculty development was essential.
“If I will make an accounting of the money infused by the University on faculty development, I’m sure it will run into hundreds of millions,” she said.
“But this approach on focusing on the acquisition of higher degrees by the faculty is essential for human capital development, especially in creating research universities and in stimulating faculty development,” she added.
Internationalization, Grad School
During her 2023 speech, Sison also recalled that UST’s limited number of accredited programs made it difficult to secure government support for higher education initiatives.
“We are often at the end of the queue for such opportunities (government funding),” she said, explaining why the University turned to overseas partnerships.
She recounted traveling to Perth to negotiate a memorandum of understanding on library technology between UST and an Australian university. Although the proposal was initially rejected, the agreement was secured a week later.
Those international partnerships eventually contributed to improvements in the University’s technological and academic infrastructure and helped pave the way for UST’s inclusion in Asiaweek magazine’s 1997 list of Asia’s best universities.
As Graduate School dean from 2000 to 2013, Sison continued expanding international collaborations across Europe and Asia.
“Internationalization at UST was born in the Graduate School, kaya siguro nila ako ginawang director [of International Relations and Programs],” she said.
She later co-founded the Office of International Relations and Programs, which she led until her retirement this year.
Beyond the University, Sison became involved in interreligious dialogue and humanitarian work through Religions for Peace, supporting programs for women and children displaced by conflict through the Graduate School’s psychotrauma clinic.
Sison urged the University to continue investing in the Graduate School and faculty development, arguing that research capacity and output should remain the foundation of any effort to vertically integrate academic programs.
“So I hope that the University will continue to take care of the Graduate School and give it the dignity it deserves. It is the Graduate School that makes UST a university,” she said. Bernadette E. Alpas
