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Next year the University of the Philippines at Los Baños (UPLB)
will mark its 100th anniversary. An autonomous constituent
university of the UP System, UPLB was founded by botanist and
agriculturist Edwin Copeland on March 6, 1909 as the College of
Agriculture, one of the first two units of UP, which the Americans
had established a year earlier in Manila.
Its visionary founders had such high
expectations for UPLB that they made sure it got one of the largest
campuses in the country. Located at the foot of Mount Makiling in
Laguna, UPLB has total land area of 147 square kilometers—four
times the size of the City of Manila. According to online sources,
92 percent of UPLB’s land is dedicated to research and consists of
a forest reserve, field laboratories and greenhouses spread out
across Laguna. It even has similar facilities in Negros Occidental.
UPLB’s nine colleges and two schools offer
over a hundred degree programs ranging from communication arts to
genetics. The Commission on Higher Education has accredited nine
UPLB programs as Centers of Excellence and two as Centers of
Development. The Office of the President has also recognized six
UPLB research institutes as Centers of Excellence.
UPLB alumni include three Nobel Prize
co-winners, 15 of the country’s 31 national scientists and some 30
of the 87 academicians of the National Academy of Science and
Technology. It has likewise produced leaders in industry, government
and the academe.
UPLB has lived up to the vision of its
founders—an accomplishment that many of its distinguished alumni
attribute to the dedication of the university’s administrators and
faculty members. They cite the example of Candida B. Adalla, who is
on her second term as dean of the College of Agriculture.
Management style
A Bachelor of Science in Agriculture graduate,
Adalla specializes in entomology. Her master’s and doctoral
degrees are on the same field with focus on host plant resistance.
Administratively, Adalla has served as director
of UPLB’s Offices of Institutional Linkages and Student Affairs
and as member or consultant of numerous government and
non-government projects.
Adalla is the first female dean of the College
of Agriculture. An article by AL Lantican published in 2006 in the
UPLB campus publication Aggie Green and Gold described Adalla as the
epitome of woman power. “She supports the gender focus in
development. Although she is not a feminist, she aims for a
respectable partnership between men and women.”
Lantican reported that during her first term as
College of Agriculture dean Adalla “employed a management style
that was empowering, transparent and genuinely participatory.”
Lantican added that it was during Adalla’s
first term that “the reorganization of the college into clusters
went full blast,” the culmination of a nine-year effort that
Adalla herself spearheaded. The agricultural Systems, Food Science,
Animal and Dairy Science and Crop Protection Clusters were formally
established.
During her second term, Adalla put up—among
others—the Crop Science Cluster and launched the AgriPark project
that is set to showcase a technology demo, theme parks and
recreation areas.
Lantican concluded: “With a new mandate,
expect the lady dean to surpass her previous achievements.
Definitely, the College of Agriculture is in good hands.”
The UP System Board of Regents is now in the
process of finding a successor to Luis Rey I. Velasco as UPLB
chancellor. Reports have it that Dr. Candida Adalla is a serious
contender—and a worthy one, indeed.
More ‘Oreo’ reactions
This column’s June 6th edition about Barack
Obama, titled “Oreo,” continues to draw passionate reaction.
Filipino American Ramon Velasquez <rrv1999@yahoo.com>
sent the following e-mail:
“This guy wants to be our President and
control our government. Below are a few lines from Obama’s books.
Pay close attention to the last comment!
From Dreams of My Father:
• “I ceased to advertise my mother’s race
at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I
was ingratiating myself to whites.”
• “I found a solace in nursing a pervasive
sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s race.”
• “There was something about him that made
me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.”
• “It remained necessary to prove which side
you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out
and name names.”
• “I never emulate white men and brown men
whose fates didn’t speak to my own. It was into my father’s
image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the
attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm,
DuBois and Mandela.”
From Audacity of Hope:
• “I will stand with the Muslims should the
political winds shift in an ugly direction.”
dansoy26@yahoo.com
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