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UP President Emerlinda R. Román started
the Gawad Chanselor Awards (GC) in 1992, during her first term
as UPD Chancellor. Its categories, judging and prizes have
been beefed up over the years, all the while retaining its
purpose—a dual reward and incentive mechanism recognizing
the best of UPD’s faculty, students, REPS, and
administrative staff.
The Gawad, as you know, is the highest
recognition conferred by UPD for excellence in teaching,
research, publication and extension work, along with creative
endeavors in the literary, visual and performing arts. Ranking
first among the categories mentioned is teaching. We would
like to re-align the Gawad to place more focal and purposive
emphasis on teaching, which is what the business of a
University should be.
Excellence in teaching, I believe, goes
beyond the bread-and-butter efforts of lecturing a hapless
score of youth, while inserting tidbits about the teacher’s
life. Teaching should include a certain self-consciousness, an
initiative to share experiences with other teachers, for it is
a self-correcting and self-refining discipline. Good teachers
tend to bring out the good in students, but we are not merely
after the “good.” We want to maintain our academic
leadership in thecountry.
“At a teaching college,” writer Robert
Pirsig said, “you teach and you teach and you teach with no
time for research, no time for contemplation, no time for
participation in outside affairs.”
UP, I would like to believe, is nothing
like this. Our faculty have time for research, their personal
pursuits and for outside affairs to enhance their professional
growth. It is this freedom, I think, that allows them time to
reflect on what they teach, how they are teaching it, and how
they can improve, over time, the genuine education they are
passing on.
The output of our teachers should be
recognized for what they are: excellent research,
publications, performances and service as outstanding faculty.
Our leading faculty researchers, performers, scientists and
artists are, first and foremost, teachers. And their astute
contributions outside the classroom should be acknowledged and
given praise only when they shine in passing on genuine
education.
We are thus making a slight change in the
categories of the Gawad awards. For the faculty, we will now
have only one category, the Natatanging Guro Award (NGA),
which we will confer to about 10 or 12 faculty members.
Previously, we had Pinakamahusay na Guro (one each for
Instructors, Assistant Professors, Associate Professors, and
Professors). Other awards included Pinakamahusay na Guro sa
Gawaing Ekstensyon, Pinakamahusay na Alagad ng Sining and
Pinakamahusay na Mananaliksik.
For the NGA, the following have agreed to
be members of the Board of Judges: University Professors Dr.
Cecilia Florencio, Dr. Edgardo Gomez, and Dr. Gémino Abad;
Vice President for Academic Affairs Amelia P. Guevara (2-time
Gawad Chanselor Pinakamahusay na Guro recipient); Professor
Emeritus Dr. Milagros Ibe; and former UP President Dr.
Francisco Nemenzo.
There is also an added incentive, this time
to be awarded to the academic departments where our Gawad
awardees will come from. We think the departments deserve to
be cited too, since their winning, and therefore outstanding
faculty prove that they allow an environment conducive to
teaching, creativity, research, and extension work.
We must also acknowledge at this point
that, the faculty aside, the University is a pulsing organism
composed of its students, Research, Extension and Professional
Staff (REPS) and administrative staff. We wish to use the same
tighter criteria for reward. For a student to be eligible for
an athletic commendation, he or she must first be an excellent
student. For a REPS to deserve an award for research, he or
she must first perform professionally as a REPS. For an
administrative staff to be conferred as an outstanding
employee, he or she must have a sense of civil service that
accords the University respect in the public eye.
Thus, the categories in the Gawad will not
change, they are only more exacting. All these awards will
continue to encourage excellence in teaching (faculty),
academic performance (students), professionalism (REPS) and
public service (administrative staff).
—Dr. Sergio S. Cao
Chancellor, UP Diliman
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