The past years have seen how UPLB has intensified the offering of graduate programs in new modalities to respond to being “glocal,” or to global competitiveness and to being relevant to local needs at the same time.

Global competitiveness is necessary with the internationalization of higher education while local relevance is the minimum requirement for the national university.

UPLB, in the recent past, started offering new modes of graduate education that aim to respond to both.

Building knowledge capital in Mindanao

In 2016, UP through UPLB, set up the UP Professional School for Agriculture and the Environment (UP PSAE) in Panabo City in Davao del Norte, Mindanao, the “heart of the center of agriculture in the country.”

UP PSAE aims to fill the need for professionals in environment management, agriculture, fishery, and forestry to help sustain the huge outputs of Mindanao in these sectors.

It will set up its home at Agriya City, a flagship project of Damosa Land Inc. and Anflo Management and Investment Corporation that will donate both the UP PSAE land and buildings.

UP PSAE is now offering MS and PhD Environmental Science.

Off-campus programs

Before the UP PSAE’s establishment, UPLB had already been offering graduate programs off-campus since 2013.

In the past three years, it offered more off-campus programs in partnership with government line agencies that wanted their personnel to pursue postgraduate degrees while continuing with their work.

Among these were MS programs in development communication, natural resources conservation, development management and governance, and business management and entrepreneurship.

Currently in the works is a postgraduate program on finance and taxation that UPLB will implement in partnership with the Department of Finance.

Joint programs

In 2015, UPLB, UP Visayas Institute of Fisheries Policy and Development Studies (IFPDS), and the UP Marine Science Institute (MSI) in UP Diliman offered the Professional Masters in Tropical Marine Ecosystems Management (PMTMEM). PMTMEM builds the capacity of on-the-job environmental managers in marine-protected areas through a multidisciplinary and integrated systems approach.

PMTMEM taps the multidisciplinary expertise and vast experience of faculty in well-established programs at the UP MSI, the UP Visayas’ IFPDS, and UPLB’s School of Environmental Science and Management and College of Forestry and Natural Resources.

Another joint program is the MS in Food Security and Climate Change under the University Consortium for Graduate Education in Agriculture and Natural Resources. It is funded by the European Commission’s ERASMUS + Capacity Building for Higher Education and offered with Kasetsart University in Thailand, Universiti Putra Malaysia, and Institut Pertanian Bogor and Universitas Gajah Mada in Indonesia.

The MS FSCC takes a holistic approach in studying food security and climate change with the student being exposed to knowledge and cultural perspective from two universities in Southeast Asia. The student research is jointly supervised by advisers from these two universities.

Dual PhD by research

The Dual PhD by Research is the first of its kind to be approved in the UP System. The first time that it is being implemented by UPLB is with the University of Reading in the UK.

Students will receive double degrees from UPLB and from the partner university. This is aimed at providing Filipinos access to niche courses in the UK and other partner universities through the Joint Development of Niche Programs under the partnership of the Commission on Higher Education and the British Council.

This modality may also be implemented with Curtin University in Australia and UP Mindanao, as well as with other universities that will partner with UPLB.

UPLB as host of the Nagoya University Asian Satellite Campus (NUASC)

UPLB Graduate School hosts the Nagoya University Asian Satellite Campus, the only Philippine HEI to do so and one of only eight host-partner countries in the world. NUASC offers the Transnational Doctoral Programs for Leading Professionals in Asian Countries.

The NUASC in UPLB offers doctoral degree in the fields of international development and bioagricultural sciences.

NUASC recently accepted its fourth batch of students. Interested students may avail themselves of the NU-UP Joint PhD Research Scholarships for UP Faculty and REPS. (Josephine M. Bo)