Graduation day!

One hundred seventy-two senior (and super-senior) students finally graduated from UP Mindanao! Congratulations to all!

Recognition Day

Photo by Jean Claire Dy

We had our Recognition Program and Send-Off Ceremony for the 2009 graduates today. It was a solemn ceremony with the graduates lighting candles to symbolize their carrying the torch of knowledge beyond the halls of academe, and with the faculty lining up and shaking the hands of graduates as they exited the Audio-Visual Hall.

The program also included the awarding of certificates and medals for graduating students who excelled in the different disciplines. While this is an annual affair, today’s ceremony was memorable for the inclusion of the candle-lighting and send-off rituals.

What have you done?

We at UP Mindanao spent the whole day today (I could only attend the afternoon session, though) cooped up at one of Gran Meng Seng Hotel’s function rooms for the “Consultative Forum on the Roadmap for UP’s Next 100 Years.”

One of the questions posed by the participants from outside the academe was UP’s contribution to the educational development of Mindanao. Apparently, UP Mindanao has not really made a dent in the region’s education sector. And I would tend to agree. We haven’t really done enough — given the financial and manpower constraints we in the University face.

But we do try. Just like when we were given the opportunity, last summer 2008, to share our faculty’s expertise through an “Advanced Study for Enhancement Program in English Proficiency” that we organized, with funding from DepEd Region 11 and the Compostela Valley Provincial Government, for selected high school teachers.

The teacher-participants were game in going through exercises that would train them how to make their classrooms more student-activity centered rather than the usual “banking method” employed by most high school teachers.

The teachers had a great time throughout the three-week training workshop, and they professed to having learned a lot from the UP teachers. (I just hope what they said really translates into them replicating the techniques they learned in the workshop to their classrooms back in ComVal.)

So, yes. UP has done something to help develop the education sector in Mindanao. And I wish we can do more.