Tag: July 18, 2014

THE STUDENTS’ Code is on its way to enactment, with only minor revisions left after a 10-year delay, and could land on the Rector’s desk as early as August this academic year.

Central Student Council (CSC) President Ina Vergara said the Office for Student Affairs (OSA) has approved the charter. The charter is ready for submission to the Office of the Vice Rector for Academic Affairs (OVRAA) and UST Faculty Union (USTFU) following several meetings with OSA, which yielded only slight changes in the code’s terminologies.

“Actually, medyo kinakabahan kami pero sa bilis, the way OSA handles it, okay na [ito] this year. From the past years, ‘dun maraming problems. Ngayon, rewording na lang,” Vergara said in an interview.

UST dominated the recent licensure examinations for Nursing, Pharmacy and Architecture, with several Thomasians landing in the top 10.

UST was named second top-performing school in the May Nursing board exams after posting a 99.55 percent passing rate, results from the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) showed. A total of 446 Thomasians passed out of 448 examinees, higher than last year's 99.04 percent or 411 passers out of 415 examinees.

Topnotcher Ma. Margaret Sanchez bested 11,225 newly registered nurses with a score of 86 percent.

Twenty-two other Thomasians made it to the top 10, including Ariel Bitong Jr. (85.4 percent) at second place and Dominique Rosali Cesa (85.2) at third place.

NO THOMASIANS were involved in the recent hazing incident that claimed the life of a sophomore taking up hotel and restaurant management at the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde last June 28.

On June 30, UST released a statement on its Facebook page disproving the claims of three fraternity neophytes who said UST students led the initiation that killed Guillo Cesar Servando.

“A quick but thorough verification of UST’s automated records revealed that Mr. Trex Garcia and Mr. Hans Tamaring are not UST students,” UST said in reaction to a newspaper report identifying the two as UST students.

The University expressed grief over the incident and offered prayers for the family and friends of Servando.

HEED the “whispers of the Holy Spirit.”

In his homily during the annual Misa de Apertura, which officially opens the new academic year, Antipolo Auxiliary Bishop Francisco de Leon advised Thomasians to read the Bible every day and have a deep prayer life to become sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s calls and to resist the evils of the world.

"If it (prayer) becomes your habit, you (will) become more sensitive to the whispers of the Holy Spirit, making it easier to avoid temptations from the devil," De Leon, chairman of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) Episcopal Commission on Catechesis and Catholic Education, said last July 7.

THE FACULTY of Arts and Letters (Artlets) is boosting its faculty profile in a bid to meet standards set by the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) and accreditation bodies.

Artlets Dean Michael Anthony Vasco said the faculty hired 26 new instructors to comply with the CHEd ruling of a master’s degree as the minimum qualification for faculty members.

The improvement of the faculty profile also has an impact on UST’s ranking in the yearly survey by the British consultancy Quacquerelli Symonds, and the faculty’s application for the Level IV status, the highest level of accreditation granted by the Philippine Association of Colleges and Universities Commission on Accreditation (PACUCOA).

THE COMMISSION on Elections of the College of Education will conduct a second round of special polls to install a local student council president, a post still vacant since the February 2014 elections, and a new external vice president.

“We will be having special elections for [the] presidency [with the] same process as the first special elections, but now, we’ve prepared getting-to-know and team building activities, so that the class presidents would know each other and be able to choose wisely,” Johanna Camille Liwanagan, Education Comelec chairperson, told the Varsitarian in an email.

The special poll will take place on July 28. The 240 class presidents in the college will choose from among themselves who will take the position.

THE STUDENT Organizations Coordinating Council (SOCC) has selected five Thomasians to serve as vice presidents (VP) this academic year.

Fourth year Accountancy student Justin Arrojado was appointed VP for audit and logistics. Jao Dela Fuente, a second-year student from the College of Business Administration is VP for marketing, while Third-year College of Fine Arts and Design student, Carl Castro is the VP for corporate communications, fifth-year Engineering student Rona Ortega is the VP for service assurance, while Jonathan Rosales, a fourth- year Medical Technology student, is the VP for organizational affairs.

SOCC scouted for officers from the different faculties and colleges through an online campaign that started last June 12.

ARCHITECTURE Dean John Joseph Fernandez represented the Philippines in the recent Architects Regional Council of Asia—Committee of Architecture Education (ACAE) meeting last June 24 in Malaysia, which discussed the architecture education and issues on licensing, cross-border studies and design competitions.

In an interview with the Varsitarian, Fernandez said Philippine architectural education was shifting from traditional teacher-centered teaching to outcome-based education, citing an upcoming 2015 Commission on Higher Education memorandum which Fernandez helped draft as a member of the drafting committee.

TEACHING and nonteaching employees of higher education institutions (HEIs) who will lose their jobs during the K to 12 transition period in 2016 will be compensated through a proposed P29-billion stabilization fund, government officials said.

In a meeting with the House Committee on Higher and Technical Education (CHTE) last June 24, the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd), along with the Department of Education (DepEd), Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said the compensation would be distributed during a two-year period.

COMPUTER courses in the Faculty of Engineering are finally under a separate institute, a year after college administrators lobbied for the spin off.

The Institute of Information and Computer Studies (ICS) is still led by Engineering Dean Philippina Marcelo, but officials have been named to new administrative positions, namely: Alex Santos, former assistant dean-in charge, as director; Rev. Fr. Hermel Pama, O.P., regent; and Jerralyn Padua faculty secretary.

The new institute will house three programs, namely: Information Technology, Information Systems, and Computer Science.

Each department will have its own chair, namely: Perla Cosme for Computer Science, Mia Eleazar for Information Technology, and Mylene Domingo for Information Systems.