Tag: May 13, 2013

WITH plans to construct a flyover on Lacson Avenue placed on hold, will the alternative proposal for an España Boulevard underpass solve traffic woes?

The Varsitarian reported last month that Public Works officials had decided to put the Lacson flyover project in the backburner and were planning to construct an underpass at España Boulevard instead.

Rito Badillo, project engineer of the Department of Public Works and Highways-Urban Roads Project (DPWH-URPO), said planning started last April and blueprints of the underpass were expected to be finished in August.

The procurement process for the P600-million underpass will start in November and bidding will follow after 120 days, he said.

THERE’S one less reason to be late for class.

To make sure Thomasians follow the same time on campus, 23 Global Positioning System (GPS) clocks were installed at strategic locations last February.

UST is the first Philippine university to align with the Philippine Standard Time (PST) in a campus-wide scale, with its own University Standard Time (UST).

“The reason for the GPS standard time is to have a unified reference time for the whole University. It used to be based on Internet time. Now there is a clear, very visible campus-wide reference,” Secretary General Fr. Winston Cabading, O.P. said in a text message.

THE NATIONAL Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) has sided with the University over a tenureship dispute with a Nursing professor, overturning a labor arbiter’s earlier decision that found UST liable for illegal dismissal.

In a decision dated March 27, the NLRC reversed the Dec. 27, 2012 ruling of the Office of the Labor Arbiter, saying it did not agree with the conclusions of the labor arbiter that the Nursing professor, Yvette Montecillo, had “attained regular status and [was] entitled to security of tenure” under UST’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the UST Faculty Union.

THE HONOR roll is shorter, for this year at least.

Most colleges gave fewer Latin honors during their solemn investitures at the close of Academic Year 2012-2013, data obtained by the Varsitarian showed, amid observations that UST has been producing too many honor graduates.

The College of Tourism and Hospitality Management (CTHM) remained the top producer of honor graduates, but cut the number of medals awarded. The following colleges also reduced their honor rolls: the College of Fine Arts and Design (CFAD), College of Rehabilitation Sciences (CRS), College of Nursing, College of Architecture, College of Commerce, the Faculty of Art and Letters and the Faculty of Engineering.

THE COUNTRY’S largest association of Catholic schools is crying foul over an order by the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) setting new standards that could lead to the closure of private colleges and universities, but not state-owned schools.

In paid newspaper advertisements last May 6, the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP) enumerated “myriad infirmities” in CHEd Memorandum Order (CMO) No. 46, series of 2012.

FACULTY members seeking tenure don’t have to be “satisfactory” all the time.

Union officials have asked the administration to ease up on a requirement for probationary faculty members to obtain “at least a satisfactory rating in all competence evaluation results” to qualify for tenure, saying this contradicts the 2006-2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).

The requirement is among the proposals being negotiated under the next CBA but is already being implemented, UST Faculty Union (USTFU) Vice President for Grievance and Complaints Reynaldo Reyes noted in his April 16 letter to Clarita Carillo, the vice rector for academic affairs.

Carillo has yet to respond to the Varsitarian’s request for comment.

ARCHITECTURE has dropped a third of incoming sophomores as a result of a higher cut-off grade and “no-failure” policy.

Out of 540 students, around 180 students or 33 percent were axed, reducing the 12 sections to just eight.

Incoming sophomores were required to meet the 2.271 general weighted average (GWA) cut-off, without failures.

But Architecture Dean John Joseph Fernandez said not all students were debarred. Some students dropped out to shift to other courses or because of financial difficulties.

“The Architecture program is a course in which you can’t force a person. There is that realization that one student must consider. Some [students] leave because they are not meant for this course,” he said.

NO MORE internship for Economics and Legal Management students next academic year.

Students will be sent to seminars or asked to do research, instead of summer “on-the-job training” (OJT) which often involved only clerical work, officials said.

“We thought that it is better for us to have seminars than to send out students for on-the-job training, considering that most of them [were] just asked to be clerks, or do clerical jobs like [photocopying], stapling,” said Legal Management coordinator Antonio Chua.

Chua added that law offices prioritize law students as interns rather than those taking up paralegal programs such as Legal Management.

SA GITNA ng makabagong panahon, hindi na sapat ang tradisyunal na pamamaraan ng pagtuturo sa kasalukuyang henerasyon ng mga mag-aaral.

Bilang pagkilala sa potensyal ng teknolohiya sa pagbabahagi ng kaalaman, plano ng UST High School (USTHS) na gumamit ng mga tablet para sa mga papasok sa Grade 7.

Ang mga kabataan ay lumaki na sa panahon ng computer, Internet, at “Youtube,” ani Marishirl Tropicales, principal ng USTHS.

“We want as much as possible to adjust to the kind of students that we have now,” ani Tropicales. “We’ll see if it will help them become better students.”

UST is again out of the worldwide subject rankings of the London-based consultancy Quacquarelli-Symonds (QS), while three other Philippine universities failed to maintain their standing in the annual listings.

Leading the Philippine schools in this year’s rankings are Ateneo de Manila and University of the Philippines (UP), which landed within the 51-100 bracket for English Language and Literature. De La Salle University trailed at the 101-150 range.

Last year, La Salle placed 44th in the same category, while UST failed to get into the top 200. Ateneo and UP placed 24th and 33rd, respectively, last year.

UP placed within the 151-200 bracket in Agriculture and Forestry this year, but failed to maintain its post in Geography.