THE FACULTY of Engineering successfully defended its title via a come-from-behind victory in the 35th edition of the Pautakan inter-collegiate quiz competition last Feb. 27, while the Faculty of Arts and Letters ruled the tournament's individual category.
Engineering scored 185 points, dominating the final round of the group competition and breezing past runners-up College of Science (180 points) and UST-Alfredo M.Velayo College of Accountancy (165 points).
"[The victory was] unexpected because it was totally a come-from-behind. We thought that all hope was lost, but then we got all the right answers from out of the blue. We were immediately uplifted,” said Engineering team captain Francisco Montalvo III.
Montalvo was also Pautakan 2011’s individual champion.
The Engineering team placed last in the easy and average round with only 40 and 45 points, respectively, gaining lead only in the difficult round by earning 100 points.
Engineering, which won both the group and individual categories in last year’s Pautakan, now has eight championship titles (1992, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2011, and 2012), matching the record of hall-of-famer Arts and Letters (1979, 1989, 2002 to 2006, and 2009).
Meanwhile, Arts and Letters' Louis Gerard del Rosario topped the individual tournament with 140 points, followed by Faculty of Pharmacy’s Tobias Manuel Maningat (110 points) and Engineering’s Divino Orlando Bibat (95 points).
"[Winning the individual category was] rewarding because I only placed third last year," Del Rosario said.
The fourteen participants were the faculties of Arts and Letters (4th, team; 1st, individual), Engineering (1st, team; 3rd, individual), Civil law (12th, team; 11th, individual), Medicine and Surgery (10th, team; 5th, individual), and Pharmacy (8th, team; 2nd, individual), and the colleges of Commerce and Business Administration (6th, team; 10th, individual), Tourism and Hotel Management (11th, team;13th, individual), Accountancy (3rd, team; 4th, individual) Education (9th, team; 8th, individual), Science (2nd, team; 10th, individual), Nursing (7th, team; 11th, individual), Rehabilitation Sciences(5th, team; 14th, individual), and Fine Arts and Design (13th, team; 8th, individual), and Conservatory of Music (14th, team; 12th, individual).
Resource persons for this year’s Pautakan were Selwyn Clyde Alojipan (Natural Sciences) and J. Neil Garcia (Humanities) from the University of the Philippines (UP)-Diliman, Oliva Koh (Physical Science) and Jerome Ong (History) from the UP-Manila, Jose Ramon Lorenzo (General Information and Current Events) from Quezon City Science High School, and Anita Ong (Mathematics) and Jose Victor Torres (UST History) from De La Salle University.
MYX channel's Chino Lui-Pio and Bianca Roque and Claude Despabiladeras were this year’s quiz masters. Gervie Kay S. Estella and Marnee A. Gamboa
