Tag: June 30, 2015

THE UNIVERSITY of Santo Tomas dropped two notches in the 2015 ranking of top Asian universities, but improved its score from last year, data from the London-based consultancy agency Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) showed.

UST went down to 143rd from 141st in 2014, but improved its score to 43.5 points from last year’s 42.4 points.

The University of the Philippines (UP) remained the top university in the country despite dropping to 70th from 63rd place last year.  UP got a score of 60.2 points, which was higher than last year’s 58.70 points.

READERS from all over the world will soon be able to access UST’s heritage library and archives online under a digital preservation and re-publication project sponsored by one of the country’s top banks.

Lumina Pandit II: A Continuum, a project of the UST Miguel de Benavides Library in partnership with the UnionBank of the Philippines, aims to refurbish, digitize, and arrange more than 30,000 historical books from the library’s collections dating from 1492 to 1900 using a digital collection management software “CONTENTdm.”

One million pages have been scanned and are being uploaded online.

The project was formally launched last May 26 at the UST Miguel de Benavides Library.

THE UNIVERSITY emerged as the top-performing school in the recent architecture board examinations, and third top-performing school in the off-season licensure examinations for teachers (LET) in the secondary level, while recording higher passing rates in the licensure examinations for certified public accountants (CPA) and librarians.

UST recorded an 88.74-percent passing rate or 197 passers out of 222 examinees in the June 2015 licensure exam for architects, higher than last year’s 81.89 percent or 199 passers out of 243 examinees. Last year, the University placed second behind the University of San Carlos.

TWO INDEPENDENT national accrediting bodies have affirmed the quality of Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy program and all six programs of the Faculty of Engineering.

The Philippine Association of Colleges and Universities-Commission on Accreditation (PACUCOA) awarded the Level IV accredited status, the highest recognition, to the Pharmacy program last May 12.

The Pharmacy program satisfactorily met all the criteria, namely: excellent outcomes in teaching and learning, research productivity as tool for institutional effectiveness, community service, linkages and consortia, career planning and development for students, and planning process.

THE FACULTY of Arts and Letters Student Council (ABSC) has drawn flak from social media for the late distribution of Type B uniforms, with students demanding refunds.

Among the student council’s critics is the UST Sociological Society, which released a statement on May 3 expressing disappointment over the delays.

“While the [UST Sociological Society] understands that there has been a failure on the contracted supplier’s end, we maintain that the ABSC is also liable and should have been prepared to effectively mitigate [the delay] from the start,” the statement released on Facebook read. “The ABSC should consider providing students—most importantly the graduating students—the option to refund.”

THE COLLEGE of Architecture has dropped a quarter of its freshmen under a stricter retention policy that required a higher cut-off grade.

A total of 135 out of 540 first-year students failed to meet the higher general weighted average (GWA) cut-off grade of 1.948 and the “no-failure” policy of the college.

Architecture Dean John Joseph Fernandez said the college lowered the initial cut-off grade from 1.880 after numerous appeals for reconsideration from students.

“After careful consideration, the new GWA cut-off grade for [incoming] second-year students is lowered to 1.948,” Fernandez said in a statement posted online last May 29.

MEDICINE is among this year’s top producer of honor graduates, with four out of eight summa cum laudes for Academic Year 2014-2015 hailing from the country’s top private medical school. Medicine also yielded 35 magna cum laudes and 40 cum laudes, a bumper crop compared with the faculty’s lone honor graduate last year.

Medicine Dean Dr. Jesus Valencia said the big number of honor graduates this year seemed to be out of proportion compared with almost 500 graduates.

“There have been changes in the way that we deliver the course that made it a little easier for students [to] graduate,” he said. “Before, we implemented base 65, meaning to say that 65 was equivalent to [a] 75 passing mark.”

Medicine plans to raise its academic standards, however.

A LARGE number of honor graduates does not necessarily reflect the quality of learning of the college, according to Graduate School professor Florentino Hornedo.

Since 2011, the College of Tourism and Hospitality Management (CTHM) has produced the most number of honor graduates, with the highest figurerecorded last year—166 honor graduates out of 421 members of the graduating class. This year, CTHM produced 103 honor graduates, broken down into 13 magna cum laude and 90 cum laudes.

The ratio of honor graduates to total graduates has remained at around 25 percent, meaning one of every four graduates took home a medal.

THE presidential elections may still be far off next year but several names have cropped up such as neophyte senators and local leaders sounding off the electorate about their possible candidacies. One of them is Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who has said he’s being asked by several sectors to run for president based on his allegedly stellar performance in enforcing the law in Davao and his tough, no-nonsense attitude toward governance, especially peace and order.

Known for his iron fist against criminality and communism—he’s said to run his own vigilante squad to carry out extra-judicial killings, which he does not deny—the 70-year-old mayor has debuted in the March 2015 Pulse Asia survey on presidential aspirants, ranking third!

LIFE is a constant racetrack, either we keep our pace and rush towards the finish line or we let others’ tail lights blind us off the road.

Being the eldest among three children, my parents encouraged me to take the driver’s seat and lead my life to the route I want to take. So I took the challenge, grabbed the wheel, and raced towards the finish line of my childhood dream, one step at a time.

Since I was a little kid, all I ever wanted is to become a successful physician one day. So I took up Pharmacy as my pre-medical course here in the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, my dream school.