August 8, 2022
Li Seng Giap Auditorium
I would like to welcome everyone to Academic Year 2022–2023, especially our incoming undergrad, graduate, and junior college students, and executives enrolled in our professional programs, and the new faculty and staff. I also like to extend a very special welcome to students and university staff who have been with us since 2020 but are setting foot on the campus for the first time.
Let’s count ourselves blessed for entering or joining UA&P at a time when face-to-face classes are slowly resuming. There are learning and teaching opportunities that purely online sessions simply cannot deliver. I hope you will take advantage of these opportunities to make your UA&P journey truly worthwhile.
Three years ago, before the lockdown, I would usually share during opening exercises with the university community the previous year’s academic performance and the plans for the current year. But I believe it won’t be necessary at the moment because we have held several university townhall meetings, team and group meetings, and have issued various announcements regarding our performance and plans using the digital platform. Doing that again during this ceremony will be redundant.
Allow me then to focus on general directions and more importantly on the necessary dispositions we should possess in order to navigate this new but very dynamic future and still fulfill our mission and bring us closer to our long term aspirations.
Despite the resumption of face-to-face classes and work, and our nation moving towards the tail-end of the pandemic, the situation generally, in my opinion, is the same: it continues to be volatile, uncertain, and disruptive. If in the past we had to cope with the lockdowns, now we have to deal with soaring prices of commodities, mobility and transport-related challenges, impending food supply issues, implications of the war in Eastern Europe, impending taxes on online services, new COVID-19 variants, monkeypox, and many similar concerns. The normalcy of the pre-pandemic years characterized by stability, certainty, and predictability will not return. It is a pipe dream. To thrive, we should accept that life now and in the future will be uncertain and disruptive. How to deal with these realities is actually a choice that we have to make: either we accept these new realities and work with it and through it, or lament over what has been lost. It is akin to being caught in a storm while sailing. Do we dock our galleon at the port to avoid the storm? Or do we continue navigating the rough waters and take an adventure?
I would like to quote from Damian Barr: “We are in the same storm but not in the same boat.” UA&P’s galleon is different from other ships because it has a unique mission to fulfill, people to serve, a society to change. Docking our ship at the port to avoid a storm is like reliving the first year of the lockdown, shackled by fear and losing enthusiasm. I say this to the University community, everyone here present and those listening to me in the virtual space: let us move forward, face the storm, learn to sail, and have an adventure. Let us avoid looking at other galleons that prefer to drop anchor or go to port during this storm. They have their own reasons.
However, moving forward and facing the storm involve risks and require harnessing all the available resources and means to sail and keep our galleon afloat. We will continue to encounter many challenges as we open the academic year and move towards a blended setup in the classroom and, at times, in the office. We have set aside provisions. We have announced the plans. But what the unforeseen challenges are, we do not know yet in full. We just have to come up with the contingencies and deal with the adversities as they come along.
For our faculty and staff, let us focus on two things: our mission and our stakeholders—our students and their parents, the executives, the community around us, and institutions, both public and private—capitalizing on our unique brand of profession-oriented but holistic education, research, and people development activities. For instance, the call for upskilling, reskilling, and retooling human capital for the new future is loud and urgent. Let us answer this call together and with urgency because they rely on us to help them. Let us collaborate, revisit, and adjust our curriculum; update our knowledge; upgrade our pedagogy; and introduce innovative programs and courses to meet the huge but still unmet needs of our students, executives, and other stakeholders.
Let us maximize all the available resources at our disposal: the learning management system (like Canvas), the Learning to Teach Online training program, the 365 Microsoft teams and Google packages, the library resources, and the university facilities and digital resources. Include also among these resources our network of contacts and alumni with whom we can collaborate. Most of all, let us rely on each other to work together as a crew and help this galleon sail through the storm and move forward.
To our students and our executives, these days there is no such thing as a perfect plan. We learn from execution and use the experience to constantly improve the plan. For the first time, we are going to adopt a hyperflex and blended approach, targeting a 50% blend between in-person and virtual sessions. The LMS platform will remain as our tool of engagement with the content of your courses. Hence, expect the unexpected: hitches, some risks, and inconveniences. But let us learn from it and together make the necessary adjustments. Regardless of these circumstances, let us learn as much as we can from the classroom and office lessons and also from these life experiences.
I am sure that the upheavals—the storms—will shape the character of everyone aboard our galleon: the crew (the university faculty and staff and personnel), the passengers (our stakeholders, our students), and our partners (our benefactors and alumni). As Helen Keller said, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” Thus, rather than turn our back on problems and crises, let us face it cheerfully, learn from it like a curious child, and come out of it better and stronger.
Meanwhile, let us also consider those who may have not yet recovered from the strains of past events. Whenever possible, let us – together – help them adjust and cope and, if necessary, extend them a helping hand and hitch them into our galleon.
Whenever we are drained and exhausted, let us draw fresh energy from within, institutionally and individually. Remember that like you and me, UA&P is more than just a body of academic and administrative services. It also has a soul that draws its energy from the wellspring of its Christian spirit and identity. Let us look up at the Star of the Orient, draw our energy from this wellspring. If, at times, after we have tried our best and everything else, prayer becomes the only option available, then let it be. Even though we find it difficult to say or to express what we want in our prayers during these periods of uncertainty and difficulties, what really matters most is He, the One who listens and heeds our prayers. With all hands on deck and with God at the helm of our ship, we will move forward; we will prevail.
With this, and by virtue of the authority vested upon me as president of the University of Asia and the Pacific, I declare Academic Year 2022–2023 open.
Banner photo by Helena Jankovičová Kováčová on Pexels.
Leave a Reply