STUDENTS of three big programs — communication, journalism and tourism — will hold classes at the Buenaventura Garcia Paredes, O.P. (BGPOP) Building once face-to-face classes resume, officials said.
The Department of Communication and Media Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Letters will occupy the 11th floor while the College of Tourism and Hospitality Management will occupy the sixth to eighth floors, UST Facilities and Management Office Asst. Director Albert Surla told the Varsitarian.
The floors were vacated due to the UST Senior High School’s transfer to the Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, O.P. Building across the main campus on España Street.
Prof. Marilu Madrunio, the Artlets dean, said broadcast facilities at the 12th floor of the BGPOP Building would boost the communication and journalism programs, both Centers of Development of the Commission on Higher Education.
“At the BGPOP, there are the newsroom needed by our journalism students for the course broadcast journalism and the studio needed by our communication students in the course TV production. They need these facilities to develop the needed competencies required by their programs before they go into the field,” Madrunio told the Varsitarian.
Madrunio also said the transfer of communication and journalism programs would help decongest the St. Raymund de Peñafort Building, which Artlets students share with the College of Commerce and Business Administration.
“[O]ur student total is almost 3,500 [and] we only have 28 classrooms to accommodate all of them. I believe that this is a welcome development… as this also means that we will have more classrooms available to the other 11 programs that we manage,” Madrunio added.
The BGPOP Building’s multipurpose rooms and lodging facilities in the fourth and fifth floors had served as training venues for CTHM students.
Food laboratory facilities will remain at the Albertus Magnus building, CTHM Dean Gezzez Giezi Granado told the Varsitarian.
The UST Educational Technology Center earlier relocated to the new Frassati Building, leaving the 12th floor of BGPOP to the Communications Bureau.
