UST General Santos (GenSan) plans to position itself as a leading campus in agricultural technology (agri-tech) in five to 10 years, an administrator said.
Professor Emeritus Maribel Nonato, assistant to the rector for UST GenSan, said the Mindanao campus will first offer programs from the Manila campus in its initial year of operation.
Nonato listed five bachelors of science degrees: BS Accounting Information System, BS Entrepreneurship, BS Industrial Engineering, BS Medical Technology, and BS Pharmacy.
“Hopefully, within the next five or 10 years, we should have already opened the School of Agri-Tech to make the statement that this will be an agri-tech campus of UST,” Nonato told the Varsitarian.
“UST GenSan, we envision it to be the agri-tech campus of UST, and we all know that that is not our comfort zone. We know that our strength here in Manila is in medical and life sciences, but we are venturing into agri-tech because that’s the economic activity in Mindanao,” she added.
Nonato, during her Discurso de Apertura lecture last year, announced plans for an integrated agri-tech campus with a focus on innovation.
For example, chemistry, could be adapted in UST GenSan as “agri-chem.”
However, because of regulations of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd), UST GenSan is constrained from fully implementing the curriculum autonomy enjoyed by the Manila campus.
“What we tried to submit to the CHEd regional office was a slight innovation from the programs we offer here in Manila. However, since they said that right now, we cannot adopt the autonomy of Manila, we have to establish ourselves first, which is why they did not allow us to make changes,” Nonato said.
UST Manila was granted autonomous status, the highest recognition given by the CHEd to higher education institutions, in 2002. This autonomy enabled UST Manila to establish satellite campuses like UST GenSan and UST Santa Rosa in Laguna.
“I’ve already talked with my colleagues from other universities. They suggested not to have too many programs under agri-tech at the beginning and that we start with the basics first. Then, once the school’s operations have stabilized, that’s the time to innovate and offer others.”
Building manpower
To prepare for the transition to an agri-tech campus, Nonato outlined a plan focused on building UST GenSan’s manpower and stabilizing operations during the four years of the inaugural batch.
“We will communicate with universities that specialize in agri-tech to benchmark with them. Maybe potentially get their graduates and then I think we will really invest in educating them,” she said.
“We cannot recruit people here in Manila because we don’t have agriculture programs here in Manila, so we will really look for graduates from other universities where agriculture is their strength.”
Part of building manpower, according to Nonato, involves hiring faculty members with either a master’s or doctorate degree.
In preparation for the 2024-2025 academic year opening in August, UST GenSan hired at least 19 faculty members, all with advanced and graduate levels of education, she said.
“Because we established a branch there, we cannot ignore the needs of that area. We want to create an impact on why you (students) are there. You are building the manpower. The school would eventually generate the needed manpower and resources for the agriculture industry,” Nonato said.
