THE CIVIL Engineering department has maintained last year’s board exam performance while Electronics Engineering plunged to a “surprising” 11-percent passing rate this year.
UST recorded an 83.96-percent passing rate in the recent licensure exam for civil engineers, a little higher than last year’s 82.56 percent. Because of this, the University’s Civil Engineering program emerged as the second top-performing school in the country.
The national passing rate, meanwhile, dropped to 40.57 percent from last year’s 43.70 percent.
Six Thomasians entered the top 10. They were Teofilo de Guzman Jr. at third place (95.60 percent), John Paul de Pedro and Jeffrey delos Santos at sixth (94.40 percent), Aaron Jonathan Alcantara and Rodora Cunanan Cadiz at seventh (94.3 percent), and Judy Anne Manalang at eighth (94.2 percent).
“The Civil Engineering program of UST is on ‘firm grounds,’ considering that the passing rate is always high,” said Faculty of Engineering Dean Josefin de Alban.
But De Alban said he had expected a better performance from this year’s Thomasian examinees.
“We were expecting [to get the top three spots], because this batch has five cum laudes,” he said.
Meanwhile, UST Electronics Engineering’s passing rate this year plummeted to 11.11 percent from last year’s 73.27 percent. Only 14 of the 126 Thomasian examinees passed this year’s exam.
Last year, the University was the top-performing school in Electronics Engineering for the “50 or more examinees” category. However, this year, no school got the top rank because of their poorer performances.
The national passing for Electronics Engineering went down to 21.76 percent from last year’s 36.27 percent.
“The outcome of the ECE (now Electronics Engineering) board exam surprised us. After [many years of having a high number of board passers], only 11 percent passed [this year],” De Alban said.
“There have been issues relating to the results of the ECE board exam, but as long as I’m the dean, we don’t like to attack [matters like those],” De Alban added, declining to elaborate.
He also said the Faculty will form a committee to conduct a formal review to determine how graduates can “go back and begin their prominence” in all fields of engineering.
“Talagang babawi kami kasi ‘yung nangyari hindi expected ‘yun eh,” he said.
Facebook helps
De Alban pointed to the important role of the faculty in helping students hurdle licensure exams. He said Facebook also helps teachers in personally knowing their students.
“In Facebook, [the faculty members] are able to motivate [their students] in every way [they] can,” said Civil Engineering department head Rodelio Tiburcio.
This approach allows the faculty to help the students “in times [when] they have problems with [academic] preparations,” he said.
Congrats to UST for the high percentage of passers on the recent CE board exams. However, I was disheartened by the dismal performance of the Electronic Engineering. Please correct me if I am wrong, UST was the first to offer electronic engineering and used to dominate this field; the late Conrado Cancio, UST ’68 EE, topped the 1st ECE though he didnt have an ECE degree.