The Search Committee for the next College of Science Dean invites UP Cebu faculty, staff, students, alumni, and other stakeholders to join the Public Forum this Wednesday morning (10 February 2021) 9-11am via Zoom. Sole nominee, Prof. Nelia Ereno (OIC Dean), will present her vision paper. Q & A will follow.
For those who cannot attend the public forum and wish to submit their questions, you may email them in advance. Please email the committee chair, Rose Arong, [email protected] for your questions or for your requests for Zoom meeting details.
For those who wish to discuss their concerns, hopes, and dreams for the college with the committee in a more private setting, please attend the stakeholder consultation on Wednesday afternoon (10 February 2021) 1-4pm via Zoom. Please send your requests to the following:
UP Cebu Administrative Staff: Ms Edna Desucatan [email protected]
UP Cebu Faculty & Other Stakeholders: Profs Kim Bondoc [email protected] or Rhenozo Barte [email protected]
UP Cebu Students & Alumni: Edrine Durante [email protected] or Rose Arong [email protected]
RELATED: Search for the Next College of Science Dean
VISION-MISSION STATEMENT
by
Prof. NELIA S. ERENO
Nominee
Search for Deanship ‘21
College of Science
University of the Philippines Cebu
Deanship is a major part in the distribution trunkline generating authority, responsibilities and accountabilities in educational management, like in the University of the Philippines Cebu, College of Science. It requires high level of management skills and a good dosage of academic leadership. Robert Katz (1982) identified management skills classified into technical skills, human skills and conceptual skills.
Technical skills refer to the manager’s proficiency in the methods, processes, and techniques in educational management which include non-instructional skills in managing the school’s finance, accounting, scheduling of development projects, purchasing, construction and maintenance of school plant and facilities. Human Skills refer to the manager’s ability to work effectively with other people on a one-to-one basis and in group settings which requires considerable self-understanding and acceptance as well as appreciation, empathy, and consideration for others, including knowledge of understanding of and facility for adult motivation, attitudinal development, group dynamics, human need, morale, and the development of human resources. Lastly, Conceptual Skills cover the manager’s ability to view the institution and the total educational program as a whole. It counts in an effective mapping of interdependence for each of the components of the school as an institutional system and the functioning of human organization. The development of conceptual skills relies heavily on a balanced emphasis of Administration’s Theory, Organizational Human Behavior, and Educational Philosophy.
The three-pronged sets of managerial skills emphasize that good managers are not necessarily born; they may be developed. Furthermore, academic leadership is required for effective management in educational institutions. Prominent educators claim that effective academic leaders are those who have brilliant ideas and the capacity to inspire, thought and action, in others are the main generation of energy that yield productive outputs of well-planned and systematically organized curricular and other academic programs of the institution. With humility and willingness to serve, I positively respond to the call for public service by accepting this motivation for deanship of the College of Science of the UP Cebu. I may not have yet in full possession of the desired attributes of a dean to become an effective manager and academic leader, but my experience as a professor in UP taught me through direct exposure
to, immersion in settings of various style of management and academic leadership; of what made our executives in the past effective or less effective ꟷ they are good lessons to learn of. May I now translate these brilliant thoughts of effective management and academic leadership into my statement of vision, mission, and programs of action that are aimed at your appreciation of my attributes befitting merits of my nomination to the position of Deanship of the College of Science of the University of the Philippines Cebu.
A leading constituent college of UP Cebu in pioneering research, ICT-driven creativity, environmentally based innovations in the sciences, human resource competence development in the service sectors through relevant academic programs in the computing sciences and community need based development training in the region relating to the national and global webnet of knowledge interconnectedness among the disciplines. Drawing its inspiration from her college vision, the nominee translates such vision for its attainment into the following mission statement with appropriate programs of actions.
Pursue Academic Excellence
The College of Science has three undergraduate programs: BS Biology, BS Computer Science and BS Mathematics. It has two graduate programs: MS Computer Science and MS Environmental Science. It has at present 44 faculty, 15 of them have doctorate degrees, 21 with master’s degree (5 are PhD candidates) and 8 with baccalaureate degree. It has 508 undergraduate students and 87 graduate students. The college is supported by 4 staff members for administrative functions and 2 laboratory technicians.
The Department of Computer Science is a CHED’s Center of Excellence in Information Technology while the Department of Biology and Environmental Science is a Center of Development in Environmental Science.
As it pursues academic excellence, the college is currently and will continue vigorously to do the following:
1) proposing new graduate academic programs – the MS Math, MS Data Science or possibly PhD Environmental Informatics if PhD Environmental Science is still not feasible – and pursue the proposal for new undergraduate program – the BS Statistics;
2) elevating the Mathematics Program to Department of Mathematics and Statistics as soon as the proposed BS Statistics program shall have been approved and implemented;
3) upgrading existing curricular programs and course offerings to be strong, innovative, relevant, and globally competitive through the following undertakings:
3.1 making all course syllabi OBE-compliant with blended learning approach
3.2 reviewing and revising the MSES and MSCS programs, and;
3.3 instituting bridging course in Mathematics – a precalculus course
4) increasing the PhD faculty profile through appropriate development programs in the university;
5) raising the College of Science academic quality standing by assessing its academic programs internally and externally; entailing involvement of faculty members as quality assessors and send them to training; and
6) maintaining the status of being CHED’s Center of Excellence in Information Technology, and applying for COE in Environmental Science and possibly COD in Mathematics
Pioneering research
The college has the faculty to undertake and pioneer research projects of high relevant value. To carry this out, the following will be our desired initiatives:
1) Undertaking more research projects that will be utilized by the government, industry, and the public and these will be carried out by:
1.1 pursuing academe-government and/or academe-industry partnerships;
1.2 exploring potential collaborators with other local and foreign universities;
1.3 crafting and submitting proposals for private or government funding; and
1.4 organizing research teams with the required expertise, encourage collaboration;
2) undertaking more publication that will be utilized by the government, industry, and the public;
3) promoting interdisciplinary research projects of faculty from the different programs of the college;
4) promoting mentoring in doing research and publishing outputs in ISI or Scopus-indexed journals;
5) disseminating of research papers in national and international conferences;
6) motivating faculty to become recipient of the International Publication Award and apply in the Scientific Productivity System; and
7) establishing the Science Research and Training Center that we envision to increase the research outputs of the college, which will also provide several services and assistance to our faculty researchers, which will generate income that will augment the financial resource of the college, and likewise helps attain Performance-based Bonus (PBB) targets in research and extension
Students Services
The students are the direct beneficiaries of our services; hence they will be served among
others by:
1) monitoring our College of Science website and FB page and will be updated with posted
information about academe and other academic-related matters they are interested to
know; and
2) holding of student research congress in the three different disciplines – Biology, Computer Science and Mathematics.
Resource Generation
The college has been engaged with various resource generation activities that raised funds which augmented its capacity to provide resource facilities. These engagements have been ongoing and continue to be undertaken by holding training programs, conferences, by providing consultancy/technical services, and by allowing rentals of our acquired pieces of equipment.
Moreover, resource generation may be done by tapping as resource benefactors, stakeholders from the industry, manufacturers and business entrepreneurs who are the direct beneficiaries of integrating to their human resource our high quality graduates; continue collaborating with our educational partners from CHED for grants of financial aid needed for building up our material resource that facilitate in enabling us to become/keep up as Centers of Development and/or of Excellence; and pursuing the solicitation of funds from our alumni for the procurement of tablets, wifi dongles and prepaid cards for data and other technology gadgets needed in distance learning due to pandemic where some of our students from the underprivilege sector of the society are unable to acquire. This will sustain the support as already extended by concerned Math Program alumni who pledged the donation of the amount of 175, 106.07 pesos in addition to two tablets and 4 wifi dongles which will soon be available for utilization among such students in the Math Program.
As presented, all of the above-mentioned vision and mission statements translated into concrete programs of actions to be undertaken are just a few of what lie ahead as challenges that may confront the Dean upon assuming into office. With honesty, I may or may not be perceived as having the full capacity to be engaged with such challenges. However, with the desired collaborative efforts and support from all of the constituencies of the college, the university and the UP System, such challenges may hopefully be taken and undertaken in the light of sound tenets of democratic governance where administration is of, by and for all the constituencies of the college in particular and of the University of the Philippines Cebu and the UP System in general. It is an honor to have shared my vision and mission with concrete programs of actions with the hope of enjoining everyone to be active players in committing ourselves in engagement with whatever role we may be involved in the call for service.
Thank you very much!