A hundred years at UP with president Emerlinda Roman

Things have been rather hectic these days for Dr. Emerlinda Roman of the University of the Philippines system, as she wraps up work as chancellor of UP Diliman and prepares to take over the helm from outgoing president Francisco Nemenzo, who retires Feb. 10.

Roman becomes UP’s first woman president in almost 100 years, and already she is known as the centennial president when the university celebrates the landmark event in 2008, barring coups and other freak works of fate, although you never can tell at a school known as much for its liberal-mindedness as its unpredictability.

"I’m still part of the staff of president Nemenzo," Roman says at her chancellor’s office at the second floor left wing of the administration building, before she crosses over to the right side of the same floor on the second Thursday of February. There will in fact be a grace period of two weeks where she serves as president and concurrent Diliman chancellor, before the Board of Regents names her replacement as head of State U’s mother campus.

"Presidents come and go but we maintain the same vision to build up on academic excellence," she says, adding that she will continue the programs started by Nemenzo–known for strengthening the general education curriculum and helping engineer the fiber optic backbone to put most UP operations online–such as the aggressive fund-raising campaign and faculty development in line with the university’s modernization.

"The pursuit of excellence remains," she reiterates, and the fact that she is the first to give a woman’s touch to the job is not lost on her. "It’s very exciting, but in the end I will be judged (not as a woman but) by my performance as president."

Now that she oversees the entire UP system, she believes "attention should be given to different clusters and go beyond Diliman", where she has been chancellor since the 1990s.

During interviews with the Board of Regents in the selection of the next UP president, she was asked how she could assure them that focus would not be again on Diliman. She told the regents that she graduated from UP Los Baños, and so was not necessarily biased in favor of Diliman.

Perhaps her first administrative position at the university, not long after she graduated from UPLB and was already teaching at the College of Business Administration, was as business manager of the Philippine Collegian during the early martial law years, where the adviser was Franz Arcellana.

Meanwhile, the thrust of her administration, she says, would be on teaching, research laboratories and libraries, and modernizing the UP bureaucracy for better efficiency.

One big change that she mentions has taken place over the years, which would astonish the diehard Luddites among us, is that pre-enrollment and submission of grades are now computerized.

No more are there the long queues on enrollment week, fixtures of the bygone days but which president nee chancellor Roman described as harbingers of inefficiency.

Because of that fiber optic backbone, students can register online, and only have to appear personally at the enrollment site for the undying "chairman’s prerogative" or when perhaps the class size has exceeded its quota. And now that the ritual of collecting classcards at semester’s end in nearly empty campuses has gone the way of the dinosaur, students can view their grades online by entering a password, although naturally they’re not authorized to make changes.

"There was a time when students used to camp out overnight outside the enrollment classrooms just to be first in line the next day!" Roman recalls those ala Woodstock days.

Computerization of other UP campuses is in progress, she says.

Roman notes with interest that the UP student profile has 40 percent enrollees in science and technology related courses, as compared to the national profile which has 40 percent enrolled in business education courses. This she says is reason to embark on a scientific manpower buildup and faculty development.

While other leading universities around the world have faculty that are practically 100 percent PhD holders, at UP only 30 percent of faculty have doctorate degrees, and 70 percent have graduate degrees.

She hopes to improve the percentage during her tenure, as it has in the past 10 years: in 1995, only 58 percent of UP faculty had graduate degrees, so that already is a marked improvement.

In terms of developing the faculty–who she has described as the university’s greatest wealth, while the students are its preferred customers –Roman understands that there is a need to balance the academic with the practical aspect.

The ideal of course is that a good teacher would also be a good practitioner, or vice versa, but that is not always the case. We are reminded of the old adage, those who can’t do, teach. President Roman hopes to bridge the gap in more ways than one in the next six years.

The task seems all the more daunting because, as Roman observes, the trend is less government subsidies for university education, not only here in the Philippines, but also in other parts of the academic world.

This doesn’t stop UP from being the prime institution of learning in the country, as seen in the 65,000 prospective high school graduates who took the UPCAT exams, out of which only 11,000 will make the grade.

Roman’s election–narrowly beating the ambassador and former finance secretary Edgardo Espiritu –has also made sports aficionados of the State University more optimistic of UP’s chances in the UAAP wars.

"Focus has always been on basketball, but UP has always been near the top rungs in the battle for the overall championship," she says. These things also take time, as seen in the miracle win of the UP juniors basketball team some years back, a result of a long-term program by coach Lito Vergara, who now handles the varsity squad.

Volleyball games are also now being televised, she observes of the growing balance in coverage.

No doubt UP has come a long way from the Diliman commune, sanitary napkins hanging from trees outside, ladies’ dormitories like a misplaced installation art, the demolished old UP gymnasium which when seen from atop the UP Law Center was like a bag about to be picked up by a giant hand, and Danny Purple shouting obscenities in the corridors at twilight.

And whatever happened to the philosopher madman who talked to the lampposts at the lagoon, perhaps to exchange a joke or two? There but for the grace...

These days, if we go into the micro aspect, the UP College of Mass Communication is reportedly in need of practitioners in its faculty, and a second year BS Food Technology student is trying hard to make both ends meet while waiting for the next allowance from his father who drives a tricycle in Pangasinan. Not to forget either the institutionalization of the Oblation run, already a full-fledged rite of passage whereas before it was only a scandal wrought by raging hormones.

Yet some things never change, with Roman’s nearly breathless schedule between Senate hearings in aid of legislation relating to academe and the run-up to the presidency: UP has always strived to improve the quality and set the standard of higher education.

Roman has her own 10-point agenda outlining her vision and policy thrusts in the next years. Not to be confused with President Arroyo’s BEAT-THE-ODDS acronym, it nevertheless seeks to beat the odds.

Roman hopes to keep the engine running both as Diliman chancellor and UP president until Feb. 24, when the next chancellor is sworn into office. Among those short-listed are Virgilio Almario and Rene Ofreneo.

During her term, Roman expects to "bring back the past UP glory which many think has been lost; bring back pride of place among the alumni" as the university celebrates in 2008 its first one hundred years.

The next 100 years, according to its first woman president, would be just as formidable if not more challenging.