UNIVERSITY officials inaugurated the newly renovated office of the National Service Training Program (NSTP) at the Tan Yan Kee Student Center on March 13.
Vice Rector for Religious Affairs Fr. Pablo Tiong O.P. blessed the new office, which will house 26 NSTP facilitators, on the second floor of the building.
The renovation cost about P1 million and was completed over six months, according to the NSTP moderator, Assoc. Prof. Jose Ricarte Origenes.
“Since 2018, there were already plans to renovate the office…And then the pandemic came, so all the more, we saw the need to renovate it because we thought of how to better serve our students,” he told the Varsitarian.
The office renovation began in October 2023 and was completed in the second week of February.
UST NSTP has approximately 8,000 students this academic year.
According to Origenes, about 80 percent of the students were enrolled in the Civic Welfare Training Service (CWTS), while the others were in the Literacy Training Service (LTS).
UST freshmen are required to take any of the three National Service Training Program components: CWTS, LTS and the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.
UST NSTP was established under Republic Act 9163 or the NSTP Act of 2001, which seeks to promote civic consciousness, defense preparedness, and patriotism among the youth.