Address. General Faculty Convocation
Ateneo de Davao University
Martin Hall. July 4, 2023
We have celebrated the 75th anniversary of ADDU, and are now transitioning to a new academic year and a bright future for ADDU under a new, competent and dynamic academic leader.
This is my last address to the General Faculty Convocation. After 24 years of university leadership, 12 at ADNU, then 12 here, I am transitioning after September 14 to
Malaybalay for the first sabbatical of my life. In this year I hope to journey once again to the heart of Ignatian Spiritualty through the SpEx and to involve myself in the Jesuit Bukidnon Mission..
As thousands of precious memories flood my mind, this Faculty General Assembly is a privileged opportunity to speak to you from the heart.
So I ask you to be patient with me as memories, reflections, and hopes intermesh endlessly.
From my heart, I say thank you. Thank you for allowing me to journey with you in discovering, articulating, and re-articulating the vision and mission of the Ateneo de Davao University. Thank you for allowing me to journey with you in living out this vision and mission over the last twelve years – and through the challenges that these years brought. Thank you for allowing me to work with you with all of my strengths and weaknesses, willy nilly as a complement to your own.
Thank you for allowing me to experience the importance and power of a Catholic, Jesuit and Filipino University in Mindanao. Please allow me in this sharing to recall something of what we have experienced together – and how I think these experiences may continue to challenge us as a University even beyond the limits of my administration.
I Vision and Mission
Crucial for these last twelve years were the five days we spent in Eden Nature Resort as we gathered then anyone who was passionate about anything in the University. They were to share what they were passionate about and whether they could live out that passion at the ADDU. They came from among the administrators, faculty, staff, the unions, the students, and the alumni. That “Shared Passion, Shared Mission” exercise unlocked many powerful emotions, some of them deeply painful, some of them painfully cathartic. The exercise clarified foundational ideas and unleashed many creative energies. It generated eventually the 2012 version of the Vision-Mission of the University. It was clear. We are a University. Not just a “teaching university.” But a university – as all genuine universities – committed to excellent instruction and formation, vibrant research, and meaningful service to the community. Furthermore, as a university we are Catholic, Jesuit and Filipino. Our mission, we accepted, includes the service of the faith, the promotion of justice, sensitivity to cultures, and inter-religious dialogue.
In 2019 after the 36th General Congregation, our Vision statement was revised to articulate our special commitment as a Filipino University to the service of Mindanao; our Mission statement was updated to include the reformulated mission of the SJ in terms of participation in the work of the Father in reconciling humanity with himself, human beings with one another, and humanity with creation. It includes the strengthening of the faith, the promotion of humane humanity, and the protection and promotion of the environment as our common home. It includes our commitment to the Bangsamoro people and to its new political entity, the BARMM, as well as to the Lumad. Also, against widespread poverty in Mindanao, it includes our commitment to the creation of wealth and its equitable distribution. With this, our resolve to strengthen science-and-technology instruction, research, and technopreneurship in Mindanao. It also promotes friendship with our Asian neighbors, lifelong learning, and the dialogue between academe and the world of work. As this VM impacts on our leaders in the University, it produces ADDU sui generis leaders.
With the articulation of the VM we were able early on to provide the University with important new infrastructure to enable the community to implement the VM. This included in Jacinto, the construction of the University Chapel of the Assumption built for prayer and worship that is Catholic because it is open to the unfolding truth of lives shared with Christians, Muslims, Lumad, seekers for Peace, and doers of justice. With the Assumption Chapel, we built the 10-storey Community Center of the First Companions, not for more classrooms but to bring the university together in community, faculty members with administrators, teachers with students, laypersons with Jesuits, residents with guests, in order to cultivate instruction and formation, strengthen research, and to enable the community to open up to Mindanao, the nation, the Asian community, if not the globe in dialogue and service. With it we also built this Martin Hall as a sports center but also as a venue for large-format gatherings – for such as graduations, fiestas, Christmas celebrations, service awards and General Faculty Convocations such as this. Meanwhile, in Matina, outside of various renovations in the Grade School and the High School, we built the indoor Rudy Malasmas swimming pool and what was then a state-of-the-art track. We also built a multi-tiered parking building to ease the congested traffic in the Matina area. But, what was actually first on our list, we also built the St. Ignatius Spiritualty Center in Samal – because we considered the promotion of Ignatian spirituality essential to the success of our mission.
Because of our VM, we got involved early in the fight against the SMI Tampakan Mines in south Cotabato, which occasioned the resignation of the Chairman of our Board. Because of this VM we continued with the work of the Tropical Institute for Climate Studies (TropICS); we established the EcoTeneo, and began working aggressively towards research into solar energy and applying it to our operation. In time, we evolved the Center for Renewable Energy and Appropriate Technologies (CREATE). Because of this Vision and Mission, we entered early into inter-religious and inter-cultural Dialogue through the establishment of the Al Qalam Institute for Muslim Identities and Dialogue in Southeast Asia (AQI). We also opened in cooperation with Huaqiao University in Fujian Province, China, the ADDU Confucius Institute, the only one of its kind outside of MM and Luzon.
Because of this VM we developed with you over the years a robust array of new programs in the last 12 years. I cannot mention all of them, but some of them were: on the undergraduate level, the BS in Entrepreneurship major in Agri-Business, the BS in Aerospace Engineering, the BS in Robotics Engineering, the BS in Environmental Science, the BS in Data Science, the BS in Anthropology with five distinct majors, the AB in Development Studies, the AB in Islamic Studies, the AB in Interdisciplinary Studies with five different majors; on the graduate level, the M in Engineering in Renewable Energy, the M in Engineering in Innovations Management, the D in Engineering in Energy Systems Engineering, the D in Engineering in Water Resources Engineering; the PhD in Educational Administration with majors in Basic Education Administration and in Higher Education Administration, the MA in Anthropology, the MA in Development Studies, the PHD in Theology major in Moral Theology. Of our current 96 programs, 30 or almost a third of them were developed in the last twelve years.
Because of our VM you took to heart the challenge to University research. Today some 24 percent of our faculty are actively involved in research on such topics as: Natural Resources Revenue-Sharing Arrangements: Platforms for Climate Change Adaptation, Secureity and Peace in Mindanao (Lourdes Simpol, Perpy Tio, Nelson Enano, Ryan Olarte), Evaluating the Potential of Solar-Photovoltaic Charging Facility for Large-Scale Disaster Relief in Selected Sites of Davao Region Affected by Tropical Storm Bopha (Nelson Enano, Randell Espina); It’s Not Funny Anymore! A Study on the State of Bullying of the Students of Ateneo de Davao High School (Miguel Dailisan II, Carlo Guiang, Sheryl Jane Ricafort); The Grade Six Pupils’ Perspectives on the Lunar Craters Named After Jesuit Scientists (Criselda M. Buyan, Ma. Nelfa Bermudes, Rowil Roxas with pupils); Radical Democracy in the Time of Duterte (Christopher Ryan Maboloc); Butuan in the Pre-Colonial International System: Reconstructing International History from Text, Memory and Artifacts (John Henry Gamas); Maximized Utilization of Philippine Pineapple Waste (Fr. Dr. Antonio Basilio, Dr Doris Montecastro); Texture, Text and Context: A Journey into Mandaya Folklore (Drs. Rhodora Ranalan, Pamela Castrillo, Maricar Gay Panda, Judith Dalagan); Effectiveness of the MIA Mix Intervention Project On Addressing Malnutrition Among Children between 4-5 Years of Age in Identified Areas in Davao City (Dr. Liza Floresca, Mary Donna Grace Cuenca, Marie Josephine Serra, Nelia Villarta); To Access Learning Click Here: A Multiple Case Study of the Lived-Experience of the Physical Education Professors and Their Insights [into] the Online Learning Course Syllabus for PE 1 (Nancy Pavia, Jade Halilio, Criselda Calero, Solamite Dizon, Francis Lloyd Singson); Gassification of Torrefied Coconut Shells for Energy Production (Dr. Randell Espina), Outside of such researches, the University Research Council continues with the ongoing City-Wide Social Survey in Davao (Cristine Diaz, Cleofe Arib, Mary Donna Grace Cuenca) and the Blue Vote. Since the beginning of the URC, there have been 193 completed research projects of 223 research grants (86%).
II K-12 Reform
The K-12 reform in 2013 seemed innocent enough. In order to comply with the global standard of Kindergarten plus 12 years of basic education, we needed to add two years to what was then only 10 years of basic education in the Philipines. What seemed easy, to add two to ten, became extraordinarily complex. For it meant rethinking programs and courses not only in basic education but in higher education as well. The process that was supposed to decongest basic education so that pupils and learners could focus on essential learning outcomes and competencies ended with basic education re-congested by higher education pushing down programs or courses it no longer considered fit for higher education. At ADDU it meant painstaking work at horizontally aligning all the programs and courses based on academic and formational inputs. Thanks to you, under the leadership of our AVP whose mandate embraced both basic and higher education, this work was done beginning from Kindergarten all the way to the graduate school – earning the admiration and envy of other Ateneos and schools. Every program, every course, was justified based on our Vision and Mission; every course was the outcome of earlier instructional inputs and the preparation for future inputs. In time, through the input of Fr. Jessel “JBoy” Gonzales, every program, every course, was complemented by ordered formational inputs implementing the Vision and Mission. Recently this horizontal articulation was revisited starting with higher education moving down to Kindergarten and Pre-school. Every teacher had and has the opportunity to take this to heart in caring individually – in cura personalis – for each of his or her students.
The K-12 reform had profound consequences for our infrastructure. We only needed to add two years of SHS. But this meant accepting gaps in our higher education enrollment. And where would we put our SHS? First, we thought that a facility to accommodate the output of our own JHS would be sufficient. Considering that the JHS in 2011-13 graduated approximately 460/year (461, 459 and 463), we first thought that a SHS for a total of 2,000 students would be more than sufficient. So we first designed a SHS for the land we had acquired as an annex to our Matina campus. Then, however, we considered the 1,300 or so students that we had already been accepting in first year college and realized that for the sake of maintaining a strong college we would need to be able to match this number as the output of our SHS. This meant we would need to double the population of our planned SHS – welcoming not just 2000 students, but 4000, having not just 25 classrooms but 50. That decision led us to abandon the plans for a SHS in Matina, to the acquisition of the 5 ha. Bangkal property through the sale of our 60 ha. Catigan property, and the construction of one of the few stand-alone Senior High Schools in the country. Against a national backdrop of general uncertainty of how SHSs would be implemented, the commitment to the ADDU SHS was not only a way of keeping our college enrollment robust through a broad freshmen base – which we are now benefitting from – but our way of making space for what is arguably one of the most creative SHSs in the country thanks to the leadership of Mr. Rikki Enriquez as director complemented by Ms. Aujefel Lee in academics and Fr. Jessel “JBoy” Gonzales in formation. Through a pioneering journey that included blood and tears, the ADDU developed a SHS culture of its own, creatively basic education transitioning into higher education, committed to preparation for college, but also to calling forth young personalities savvy with technology to enter adulthood practiced in active discussions, song and dance, under the aegis of love, love, love, 3675 minutes a year.
III National Leadership in Education Advocacy
There was a time when my being President of the Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools Colleges and Universities (PAASCU) coincided with my being president of the Catholic Educational Association of Philippines (CEAP). As such I was an ex officio director of the Private Educational Assistance Committee (PEAC), which administered the educational service contracts and the SHS vouchers, and then a member of the COCOPEA supposedly the unified voice of private education in the formulation of educational policy for the nation. For a while, I acted as its chair and connected COCOPEA to the Philippine Association of State Colleges and Universities (PASUC). Many of the things for which we fought at that time are still being fought for today. Fir the future, it is important that you be aware of them, otherwise our thriving private school may be squeezed out of existence by the public SUCs, LCUs and basic education schools that live from the electoral ambitions of local politicians, easily legislated budgets, and not from what the families of our students can afford in our straining economy to support their children in private education.
What do we fight for? Everything that is in Article XIV of the 1987 Constitution on education: Roughly:
The right of all citizens to quality education at all levels.
The right to such education accessible to all.
The duty of the state to establish, maintain and support a complete adequate and integrated system of education relevant to the needs of the people and society.
The complementary roles of public and private institutions in the educational system.
That our educational institutions …shall be owned solely by citizens of the Philippines.
That all revenues and assets of non-stock, non-profit educational institutions used actually, directly and exclusively for educational purposes shall be exempt from taxes and duties.
And emphatically: Academic freedom shall be enjoyed in all institutions of higher learning, and not in the CHED.
Because of the constitutional guarantee of quality education, the duty to establish and promote systems of quality assurance, e.g. the quality standards used by PAASCU and the other members of the Federation of Accrediting Associations of Private Schools (FAAP), complemented by the Philippine Catholic School Standards for Basic Education and, more recently, for Higher Education (PCSS-BE and PCSS-HE). In the context I was privileged to participate in the CHED Technical working Group that formulated the CHED MO 16 on Q and QA.
While academic freedom in the Constitution is a mandate to search for and communicate truth in freedom, I have often admired this clear constitutional articulation of required content in our educational institutions, namely: The duty of all educational institutions to require the study of the Constitution and to “inculcate patriotism, nationalism, love of humanity, respect for human rights, appreciation of the role of national heroes in the historical development of the country, teach the rights and duties of citizenry, strengthen ethical and spiritual values, develop moral character and personal discipline, encourage critical and creative thinking, broaden scientific and technological knowledge, and promote vocational efficiency.” [Art XIV, Sec 3. (1), (2)].
What we have advocated for, that I urge you today to live in the spirit that is ours:
Respect the right of each one of your students to quality education. Come to your classes prepared. Care for your students personally. Open their minds. Lead them to insight. Help them to make commitments from within towards love, truth, justice, the common good, the environment.
Be sensitive especially to those students who because of lack of personal resources are struggling to keep up with the standards of our school.
Be ready to collaborate with public educational institutions, but fight for the existence of private institutions in an educational system where public and private schools are mandated to play complementary and not mutually destructive roles.
As a consequence of the complementarity between public and private schools in the Philippine educational system, advocate for more state funding for our private schools without ceding their identity, mission and academic freedom to the State.
Understand how foreign ownership of our schools may militate against our duty to inculcate patriotism, nationalism in our students… (cf Art XIV, Sec 3) – love for the Filipino, love for the Mindanaoan, love for the Bangsamoro, love for the multiple cultures of Mindanao.
Administer the resources of the University so that it can continue to thrive through both paying and unpaying students, and celebrate the achievements of all students who have been enlightened by our teachers and our ethos of education.
Then, finally, live academic freedom. This is the great privilege and mandate our constitution gives us:
not only in determining what is to be taught, how it is to be taught, who are to teach, and who are admitted to studies,
but in freely embracing the right and the responsibilility to search for, find and communicate truth, as far as this may be possible to us as a university community
in our diverse beliefs, convictions, and qualifications,
as mandated by our living (that is, interiorizing and implementing) our Vision and Mission,
in responsiveness to the demands of our stakeholders both within and beyond the university,
in a manner that meets the minimum standards of government,
but aims at and achieves standards of excellence that we ourselves determine –
all assured by an ethos of quality assurance.
Academic freedom is not an abstract concept
but that which is professed and achieved by a genuine universitas or community of living administrators, teachers, staff and students
passionate about finding truth together guided by their vision and mission.
It us not lived from nor controlled by the CHED.
IV Pandemic.
When the pandemic came, ADDU could have closed. Or, in the uncertainty of the situation, we could have had to lay off many of our teachers and administrators. Instead, keeping our faith in God, the source of our mission, we decided together to keep the faith with those who had come to us for education, and so to continue teaching, even if this meant doing so online. We were one of the first in the country to go fully online. While students in Manila were still protesting this possibility, we partnered with our students, and in many cases with our parents, in getting online education to work, despite its many challenges: uneven and unreliable internet accessibility, the need for appropriate gadgets, the need to clarify teaching protocols, loss of valued socialization, difficulties in working from home, in invasion of the work sphere into the private and familial sphere. We worked as best we could to meet the challenges, and learned patience when we couldn’t. We had to learn that you cannot just transfer a face-to-face teaching technique into an online modality. We had to learn that teaching online requires a pedagogical competency that appropriately exploits the technology for competent teaching. And so we developed our certification program to give us the skills we needed for excellent courseware production. We realized that the online modality, or that a hybrid modality that creatively combines f2f learning with online techniques represents a mode of teaching that is viable and valuable for both the student and the teacher in a VUCA world.
V Transition to the Future. Hopes
But then in this VUCA world things changed. The pandemic eased. The political environment changed. After more than two years of trying to perfect our capabilities in online education, the new President wanted a swift return to face-to-face instruction. His Vice President, concurrently the Secretary of Department of Education, moved to do his will, without considering the commitments we had made to another year of online education. Soon the Chair of the Commission on Higher Education was decreeing something similar, even though he backtracked out of respect for the academic freedom of HEIs. I will not belabor this. Feeling the pulse of our students on all levels and most of their parents, for SY 2023-24 we have decided to return to face-to-face learning but so as not to lose what we gained during the pandemic, now, “face-to-face learning enhanced by technology.” Recently, on various levels, you gathered together to clearly understand what this means, even exploring the place of such as CHAT GPT in the pedagogical strategy of the University. And today we are gathered at the onset of a new academic year, 2023-24, and a new chapter in the life and history of the Ateneo de Davao Unversity under the able and amiable leadership of Fr. Karel San Juan.
As I am grateful to you for the journey we have shared, allow me to leave with you some hopes or challenges as pabaon for the journey ahead.
I hope you are able once again to get in contact with your personal passions, and check whether at the Ateneo de Davao University as it has unfolded or continues to unfold you are able to realize your passions.
As faculty members of the Ateneo de Davao University, I hope you are equipped to competently teach your students or learners or pupils, that is, that you are able to lead them in an ordered manner to learning outcomes and competencies that enrich their humanity before God and lead them to the professions or entrepreneurship to which they aspire. Where you see gaps I hope you can work together with the University to cure the gaps
I hope you can further contribute to development of our array of programs that we offer at Ateneo de Davao that are responsive to the needs of society esp. in Mindanao, even as you help develop a system of delivery of competencies that are not based on program or degree requirements but on their immediate utility in society (in the economy, in reforming our political institutions, in the pursuit of social justice).
I hope that based on our experience in basic education you can openly defend the K-12 framework of basic education, even though its curriculum can be de-cluttered and devolved to the Department of Education.
I hope that you can strengthen your instruction by taking advantage of programs offered by the ADDU Internationalization for Mindanao (AIM) program. This involves partnering with foreign partner universities, travelling to benchmark with them, participating in exchange programs involving faculty members and students, and welcoming such teaching strategies as the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL).
I hope that you can consider as an integral part of university output supported by appropriate instruction, formation, research and service to the community the challenge to excel in university-nurtured revenue-(or profit-) earning enterprises such as those being proposed by ADDVentures. The proposal is a clearer university commitment to the alleviation of poverty through wealth generation and equitable distribution, but also a strategy to increase the income of those who support them from within the University.
I hope you will continue to contribute to University research in academic freedom, and that the eros for research eventually replaces the eros for teaching load. With the new Handbook on University Research some steps are already taken in this direction. I hope your eros for research comes truly from within, from the living out your academic freedom and responsibility in appropriating and implementing the University’s vision and mission. I hope that once the University has helped you establish a successful research track record, that your research can be funded externally as endorsed by the University Research Council.
I hope that you continue what is meanwhile an ADDU tradition – the pakighinabi – that brings members of the University community together with our stakeholders or the persons/communities we are missioned to serve in conversations on urgent issues affecting the university community or the community at large. These include the concerns we share for genuine religion even in diversity, for life-giving religious spirituality, for the success of the BARMM, for the possibility of transforming such cultural practices as rido not only through political and legal means but through socio-cultural methods, for the protection and promotion of the environment, and in the geo-political context of today, for the possibility, if not the necessity, of appropriately instructing, forming and training our students in how they can contribute to the defense of our people in case of external aggression.
I hope you continue to engage in meaningful service to the community, primarily through the quality, vision and leadership of our graduates. But this hope also includes projects to provide the poor with skills for livelihood, to give voice to the silent cry of the earth for environmental justice, to concretely alleviate the malnourishment of segments of our population, to train our people towards entrepreneurship, self-reliance and innovativeness, to empower our people to vote responsibly, to give witness to your faith and stand up for your beliefs, to stand up as well for the marginalized, especially the discarded poor and the peripheralized LGTB++ community.
Finally, I hope you are able to grow in a spirituality that is appropriate for a Jesuit, Catholic and Filipino University. Through this spirituality, I hope you take care of one another, coming to one another’s aid in times of crisis, caring genuinely for one another, forming circles of friendship beyond your job descriptions, helping one another to find the straight path, and when necessary to return to the straight path. In the spirit of Jesus Christ, this means, “Loving God above all things, and your neighbor as yourself.” It means, “Judging not, that you may not be judged” and rejecting the spirit of the Pharisee, “Lord, thank God I am not like the rest of men,” but taking on the spirit of the tax collector who said, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, a sinner!” In this manner, may the members of the University find mercy in one another, imaging the mercy that the Father expresses in the sacrifice of the Son and the love of the Holy Spirit. May they arrive at the Life that Jesus comes to bring, who says, “I have come to bring life, life to the full. The Life that comes from his being the Way to the Father and therefore the Truth.”
My hopes blur my shortcomings, failures and sins, for which I ask your forgiveness. But in these past years, God has been good. So have you. In your com-unity, the Ateneo de Davao University in Mindanao is a beacon of Truth, Light and Hope. Once again, my undying gratitude to you all.
Photos by: Mr. Igy Castrillo
Fr. Joel E. Tabora, S.J. Blog 