Tag: November 27, 2015

UST HAS trimmed the number of scholars this year after a large increase in 2014, official data showed.

Following a hike in the number of scholars last year to 3,850 from 3,223 in 2013, the total number of scholars this academic year went down to 3,263, according to the latest Rector’s Report.

Hazel Maye Reyes, president of Becarios de Santo Tomas, the Thomasian scholars’ association, said the decrease could be partly attributed to a new requirement—high school valedictorians and salutatorians must first pass the Scholarship Qualifying Examination.

“I think the examination required for Santo Tomas scholarship is one factor for the decrease of scholars this academic year,” Reyes said in an email to the Varsitarian.

SCHOOLS should help promote the country’s vast human resource as part of their internationalization and cross-border learning programs, according to an official of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd).

CHEd will hold a public consultation on a new “framework” for internationalization policies of the country’s higher education institutions this November, said Lily Freida Milla, CHEd director for international relations and linkages. This will also be in line with the integration plan of countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), she said.

AFTER recording the lowest passing rate in the mechanical engineering licensure examinations in the last 15 years, the UST Mechanical Engineering Department will soon require students to take pre-board examinations.

Faculty of Engineering Asst. Dean Nelson Pasamonte said the exams would be a part of a “correlation subject” and serve as a final requirement before graduation. In previous years, taking the mock board exams was optional.

“It served as our wake-up call to emphasize the need for remediation and quality assurance, so that when the University has once again achieved a higher passing rate in the exams, we can sustain it,” Pasamonte said in an interview.

UST HOSTED the yearly Bar examinations for the fifth time this month, with thousands of law graduates trooping to the campus amid tight security.

The total number of registered examinees from all over the country reached 7,146, 12.6 percent higher than last year’s 6,344. The UST Faculty of Civil Law fielded 49 examinees this year.

The UST Main Building, along with the Benavides, San Martin de Porres and St. Raymund de Peñafort buildings were designated as testing venues. The exam committee also used the Tan Yan Kee Student Center as its office.

THE UST Senior High School (SHS) has improved its curriculum to make it “student-centric,” in time for the first batch of Grade 11 students in 2016.

Newly installed Principal Pilar Romero said the curriculum was “streamlined,” and copies of the six-track “academic strands” had been sent to the Academic Senate, composed of all deans of the University, for approval.

“In so far as the curriculum is concerned, we are good, we are prepared,” Romero said in an interview with the Varsitarian. “At this time, we have already streamlined the curriculum. [We will] have cluster meetings to further enhance the curriculum,” she added.

BEYOND the complexities of philosophy, the human side of the late French philosopher Paul Ricoeur served as the central discussion of an international conference co-presented by UST and Ateneo de Manila University last Nov. 21-23.

Leovino Garcia, former dean of the Ateneo School of Humanities, delivered a plenary speech on Ricoeur’s two early and untranslated works on philosophy and human beings.

Garcia extended his discussion to the role of philosophers in analyzing Ricoeur’s unpublished 1936 essay “The Risk.” In the essay, Ricoeur said philosophers must use their experience to share their knowledge and guide the people toward becoming more human.

COMMUNITIES devastated by Typhoon “Lando” will benefit from cash donations raised by the UST Simbahayan Community Development Office under the “Tulong Tomasino para sa Luzon” project.

Simbahayan Director Mark Abenir said the project was meant to address the disaster rehabilitation and recovery needs of Simbahayan partner-communities in Tarlac and Nueva Ecija.

“Dahil sa nagdaang bagyo, nasira ang mga kabahayan at pananim na nagsilbing pangkabuhayan ng mga nasalanta. Ang perang ating nalikom ay gagamitin upang maiayos ang kanilang bahay at pangkabuhayan,” Abenir said in an interview.

FOOD scientists were encouraged to use creative inventions and methods in visionary food development at the Food Conference on Innovation and Advancement last Nov. 11.

Spearheaded by UST Food Technology alumnus Richmond Victor Ejanda, the conference highlighted innovations in food manufacturing, retail and services,such as reverse food engineering, deformulation, and the use of nano-encapsulated flavors.

“[Reverse food engineering] is an interesting field that is booming right now [to the point] where companies hire food technologists to disassemble their food products,” Ejanda said. “It can divide food in different ways to obtain substantial (physical, chemical and nutritional characteristics) information about the product.”

TESTS such as the Rorschach and the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator (MBTI) have been commonly used by psychologists and people in general in determining one’s personality, but in the 1920s, a Japanese professor theorized that blood types can also do the same.

Takeji Furukawa of Tokyo Women’s University introduced the blood type personality theory (ABO theory) in a paper published in 1927. His “A Study of Temperament and Blood-Groups” stated that the four blood groups—A, B, AB and O—may work similarly with Hippocrates’s Four Temperaments, and that each blood group may hold characteristics unique from the other three.

WHEN he realized his friends took more pictures of their food than talk to each other during lunch, Bien Desingaño could not help but frown.

The Chemical Engineering senior had been planning to have lunch with his friends for weeks but the beeps of notifications from his friends’ smartphones told him that it did not go as planned.

“I was gone for a while because of my training with my pep squad,” Desingaño explained. “But now that I’m here everyone seemed to be too focused with their phones.”

His situation was reminiscent of the photographs published by London-based photographer Babycakes Romero in 2014. His “Death of Conversation” captured a series of images showing people “plugged in” to their devices instead of talking with their company.