I am very happy to see all of you in person today, wearing your dashing Barong Tagalog and Filipiniana. For two years, we weren’t able to hold activities such as this. But God has been so good for after the rain, he showed us a rainbow. It is terrifying yet astounding how time flies so fast. It seems like it was just yesterday when I started leading the Mindanao State University at Naawan as the Chancellor. Four years and a half have passed and today, I will be reporting to you the things that we have done to our dear Mindanao State University at Naawan.

Before I’ll start my message, I’d like to acknowledge our former Chancellors, Vice Chancellors, and other university officials who led MSU at Naawan before me, for without them and without their efforts, I cannot be the Chancellor that I am today. At this moment,
we will all Celebrate the Triumphs, and Carry on the Legacies. For 35 years since I started working here at Mindanao State University at Naawan, I have seen how the university evolved—and when I decided to lead MSU at Naawan as the Chancellor, I proposed to anchor my leadership to the qualities of Transparency, Accountability, Participatory, and Predictability. I promised to be transparent, accountable, participatory, and predictable.

Change is the only thing that’s constant and they said that it’s not the smartest nor the wealthiest that will survive, but the ones that are adaptive to change. And so, we embraced CHANGE. From crafting our university Vision, Mission, Goals, and Objectives; to expanding and improving our Organizational Structure so that our VMGO will become more functional. Before, we only have one (1) Vice Chancellor. But now, we have four (4)—the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, the Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance, the Vice Chancellor for Research and Extension, and the Vice Chancellor for Planning and Development. Through these offices, through my Vice Chancellors, and to you my dear constituents of MSU at Naawan, we are slowly but surely becoming an internationally recognized university in research and education in the Philippines.

In my term, I have set three major strategies to practice Transparency, Accountability, Participatory, and Predictability.
These are to:
1) EMPOWER THE PEOPLE,
2) STREAMLINE THE SERVICES AND PROCESSES, and
3) CHANGE THE LANDSCAPE

“EMPOWERING THE PEOPLE“

As the Chancellor, I know I cannot do anything without the most important part of the university—the people. I can only dream of making MSU at Naawan a premier institution, but without the people who works with me, no positive change will happen.

Because of that, we have institutionalized and strengthened the Agency Performance Commitment to set as performance parameters that are aligned to the VMGO of the university. This has been cascaded to the different offices through the OPCR and it stood as the basis for the individual performance commitment of the employees. I believe that the skills, knowledge, and talents of every employee in the university have contributed to the growth and overall performance of the university.

Without resources, we cannot move forward with our plans for the university. I am very happy that for our resource generation, over the last 5 years, we have an accumulated increase of 39% in budget from the National government and 29% in the internally generated fund.

To practice participatory and accountability, we decentralized our budget process. When we say we decentralized our budget process, we have utilized the functions of each office and shaped the future through strategic focus and targeted funding. We have allocated funds per cost center so that the department heads are given the authority and liberty to identify priority projects and activities that will achieve the objectives of the respective offices because I believe that the success of the university depends on the efficiency of each office.

Apart from empowering our personnel through the decentralization of the budget process, we’re also empowering our dear students as we gave them the authority, through the Supreme Student Council, to plan for their activities for the year like conducting and joining seminars and trainings, hosting of events, and joining cultural performances, sports activities, academic conferences, and the like.

“STREAMLINING THE SERVICES AND PROCESSES“

We acknowledge the importance of giving quality education and services to our clients, our dear students. With that, we have submitted our programs to be accredited by CHED’s COPC and the AACCUP.

To be globally competitive, the university is doing its best to fully comply with the policies, standards, and guidelines of the different accrediting agencies. As a Center of Excellence in Fisheries and a Center of Development in Marine Science, the BS Fisheries and BS Marine Biology programs of the university is presently working on the Level 1 AACCUP Accreditation and the other programs of the university are working for COPC and the AACCUP Preliminary Survey Visit.

I wanted to have a transparent administration that adheres to the government audit, accounting, and budgeting rules and regulations. Because of that, we were able to comply and implement various recommendations and observations of the Commission on Audit (COA) and submit timely the reports to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) for financial performance review.

We have also crafted a manual of operation for each office and this MOP is ready for review and enhancement to comply with the ISO standards. In line with the mainstreaming of the government mandates to adhere to the rules and guidelines of the Civil Service Commission, the Human Resource Management Office strengthened the university’s Strategic Performance Management System (SPMS).

We have also strengthened the composition of our Performance Management Team (PMT) that monitors the system and operation of the university to ensure that what we are doing will lead to an increase of our productivity. True to its commitment to elevate public sector human resource management to a level of excellence, the office conducted review and enhancement classes to the contract of service employees as refresher and preparation for the Civil Service Examinations conducted by the Civil Service Commission for them to have permanent positions in the university. With all these undertakings, MSU at Naawan’s allocation for NBC 308 was increased from
2 million to 3.265 million pesos.

This administration also practices Futures Thinking. To be able to succeed with our plans, we have to consider potential futures through the exploration of trends and drivers for change that may lead to different future scenarios. That includes the crafting of the campus Land Use Development and Infrastructure Plan (LUDIP) that will serve as a framework for good stewardship of the existing resources and future development, budget efficiency utilization, and the prioritization of project; a guide and layout to what will be expected in the coming years on the expansion of the campus with compliance from various government agencies’ standards, policies, and guidelines.

With all these things that the university is practicing and benefiting at present, as a futures thinker, we do not stop and limit ourselves with what we have now. As we visualize our future, we go back to our vision of making MSU at Naawan a premier university.

We have also challenged our university resources and capabilities when we submitted our Information Systems Strategic Plan (ISSP) to DICT. With the intention to use ICT to support our thirst to realize our VMGO, we submitted a strategic plan that contained our overall strategy which involved the planning for our information and communications technology (ICT) thrusts and the strategies and programs that will transform the university to a smart and digitized campus. Through that, this year, we were granted 1B pesos that will be used as our resource in our path to the future. With that amount, our Digital Transformation and Literacy Systems Development project which is just part of our overall Information Systems Strategic Plan (ISSP) will be started. Through this funding, the following projects for the university will be done and established: Modular Data Center, Fiber Optic Routing and Installations (not only for the internet connectivity of the entire campus but also for the most parts of Poblacion, Naawan), a 4-storey Digital Hub, smart classrooms, and e-laboratories.

Because we wanted to embrace change for the better, and to move forward together, MSU at Naawan has digitized its services not only for the employees and students, but with the overall delivery of our services as well. Through the innovations and digitization of the university processes and procedures, we have enhanced our existing student information system making it available to students, and faculty and staff at places where there is internet access. Through the portal in our msunaawan.edu.ph website, students can have access to the online admission, enrolment, payment and request for credentials and other documents.

Our employees can also launch the online application and approval of leave, travel order and request for documents in the website and can have data sharing among offices for easier assessment and paperless documentation. In fact, our clients and suppliers can also
attend to the bidding process when we launched the online procurement process.

“CHANGING THE LANDSCAPE“

To become globally competitive, we need to transform the landscape to measure up to global standards. The most recent offices that the university created to realize its vision are the Public Information Office and the Office of International Affairs and Linkages. The Public Information Office is responsible for the dissemination of relevant information regarding the programs and projects of the university, as well as its linkages and partnerships with various agencies. The Office of International Affairs and Linkages is responsible for the research and academic programs exchange, and other international engagements of the university. Though only operationalized last year, these offices have already made a huge impact to the campus and the community. Indeed, its partnership with international agencies and universities is another step to make its vision of becoming internationally recognized a reality.

As we tread into the international arena, I’m proud to say that MSU at Naawan, though a small campus, is going big. Little by little, we are going big. Our network is getting wider not only with our neighboring ASEAN countries, but in the world. Our international partners include but not limited to the various universities and research laboratories in Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Russia, Japan, Australia, United States of America, and Turkey.

In fact, last year, we made history when we led the academic exchange program among the universities here in the Philippines and in Turkey. Just the other night, I received a letter from CHED Chairperson J. Prospero E. De Vera, informing us that MSU at Naawan will have to co-host the Türkiye Higher Education Fair that will happen in the Philippines and to simultaneously organize it with the conference that we will be conducting at the third quarter of this year. I am very happy and proud that the trust given to us by CHED was because of the very fruitful collaboration between the two higher education institutions CHED and YOK that happened because of MSU at Naawan.

As a research university, we’ve implemented a rising number of both internally and externally funded research projects. These research projects strengthened not only our partnerships with government agencies and private industries, but most importantly, these research projects have brought significant impact to the community and the economy.

We’re also proud to bring influence to the world of research as the research papers of the university constituents made it to the various research publications not just in our own Journal of Environment and Aquatic Resources (JEAR), but also in Clarivate Web of Science and Scopus Indexed Journals. We have the highest number of published papers last year.

I am also very happy that our faculty researchers and scientists, including myself, made it to the AD Scientific Index- Scientist Rankings in 2022.

Aside from that, through the various research projects, we have improved our infrastructure and research facilities that would allow our faculty and students to have broader educational experience. Since 2018, we have a total of P17,460,441.46 worth of repairs and improvement of research facilities and infrastructures. At present, we have 4 Research Centers that are housed in the university. We have the Crab Hatchery, Research on Environment and Nanotechnology (REY Labs), Coral Reef Management Center (CoReM Hub), and the Niche Center for Sea Cucumber in Mindanao (Sea Cucumber R&D).

Apart from the improvement of the infrastructures through research projects, the national government also funded a total of P 125M for the repairs of some existing buildings and the construction of the new ones such as the:

• Construction of Training and Students Activity Center Phase II & III
• Proposed 2 Story Boy’s Dormitory Phase I
• Various Construction and Improvements of MSU-NAAWAN Campus Facilities
• Construction of 3 Story (15 classrooms) of MSUN-IDS Senior High School Building Phase I
• Construction of School of Marine Fisheries and Technology Building Phase I
• Crab Hatchery Center in Mindanao Phase I & II
• Completion of ICT Office (2f) in Information Technology Building

I’m also proud to say that we at MSU at Naawan is true to our tagline, “A University for the Community”. Even when the pandemic hit, it did not stop us to reach a larger range of community beneficiaries. With increasing number of agency partners throughout the years, the Office of the Extension Division have implemented relevant, programmatic, and creative trainings and interventions that are mindful of the community’s needs in leading them to have economic development and transformation. Our technology in the tilapia fry production, tilapia grow out production, and Bangus production have reached quite a number of areas across the country.

I believe that for almost five years since I sit as the Chancellor of the Mindanao State University at Naawan, the strategies of: 1) Empowering the people, 2) Streamlining the services and processes, and 3) Changing the landscape, have resulted in various gains and positive impact to the employees and the university as a whole.

Moving forward, with the concerted efforts of its people—employees and students—and the support and continued help from our partner agencies, our MSU system family, our local and national government, our community, and most especially, with the blessings from above, I am confident that MSU at Naawan will be what it envisioned: “To be an internationally recognized university in research and education in the Philippines”.

To quote my message in April 2018 during my campaign, “I believe in change. I always believe in the goodness of people.”