NENITA D. Caralipio, a retired College of Education faculty member who served as principal of the UST Grade School and Education High School, passed away on Sept. 15. She was 85.
Her death was announced by UST in a Facebook post.
“Principal Caralipio taught generations of future elementary educators and helped nurture generations of pupils at the old Grade School,” the post read. “[W]e express our deepest gratitude for her decades of service to UST.”
Caralipio is an alumna of the UST Normal School, a now-defunct College of Education department that had offered a two-year course leading to an Elementary Teacher Certificate.
She returned to the Normal School in 1959 to teach, marking the start of a five-decade tenure at UST.
Caralipio became a subject coordinator and supervising teacher, and was named principal of the old UST Grade School in 1987, a position she held until the laboratory school’s closure in 2011.
She briefly served as the principal of the UST Education High School, a laboratory junior high school, from 2000 to 2001. Caralipio retired as a faculty member of the College of Education.
UST Communications Bureau Director Philippe Hernandez, who studied at the UST Grade School when Policarpio was principal, remembered the late administrator as a stellar mentor.
“Ma’am Caralipio was a steady force — strict, firm, gentle, jovial,” Hernandez told the Varsitarian. “Her hearty laughter is remarkable to those who had the chance to know her.”
“She mentored generations of UST Grade School faculty, several of whom later on taught in college and held administrative positions,” he added.
Caralipio continued to earn recognition from UST even after her retirement, receiving the International Publication Award in 2016 and the Outstanding Alumna Award of the College of Education in 2017.
In 2019, the College of Education launched the “Nenita Caralipio Honorary Lecture,” an annual forum featuring various educators held during the founding anniversary of the college.
That year, she was also conferred the Gawad Tanglaw of the Seat of Wisdom for her work as principal of the UST Grade School for 25 years.
