CEAT ChemEng holds 1st Stakeholders Meeting
The UPLB Department of Chemical Engineering (DChE) held its 1st Stakeholders Meeting virtually on June 27 with the theme, “Stakeholders engagement: Sharing vision and goals in advancing the chemical engineering education.”
The Stakeholders Meeting aimed to gather insights, suggestions, and recommendations from its alumni, industry partners, and students to improve the BS Chemical Engineering (BS ChE) curriculum. The event also aimed to establish plans for DChE by capturing the current needs and visions of its stakeholders and various relevant industries and the future trends in chemical engineering.
Chancellor Jose V. Camacho, Jr. gave a video message to thank the stakeholders for their participation and reiterated that the university needs the insights and wisdom of the stakeholders to ensure that UPLB can develop high-caliber graduates who can contribute to nation-building.
The meeting was formally opened by Dr. Rossana Marie C. Amongo, dean of the College of Engineering and Agro-industrial Technology (CEAT). She said that the event aligns with CEAT’s goal of being globally recognized as an excellent institution and that it “will help prepare, revisit and re-engineer [CEAT]’s curriculum to uphold its relevance in producing excellent graduates that will complement the human resource requirement for nation-building.”
During the morning session, distinguished speakers from UPLB and DChE were invited to share their expertise and knowledge.
Dr. Serlie B. Jamias, an assessor for the ASEAN University Network Quality Assurance, talked about the Plan-do-check-act Cycle model for implementing change and how it is used to assess and improve the quality of different academic programs.
Dr. Jewel A. Capunitan presented the current and future directions of the different BS ChE curricular programs, while Dr. Ramon Christian P. Eusebio discussed the results of the graduate tracer study, which assessed the effectiveness of the BS ChE program in terms of employability and alumni satisfaction. Dr. Capunitan and Dr. Eusebio are both faculty members of DChE.
Parallel focus group discussions were held during the afternoon session, where alumni, industry stakeholders, and students were divided into groups. The output of each group was presented later by an assigned moderator.
Dr. Jovita L. Movillon, DChE’s Professor Emeritus, synthesized the learnings and outputs of the whole day event. Dr. Movillon emphasized the importance of getting feedback from the stakeholders to achieve a transparent decision-making process in the development, improvement, and quality assurance of the UPLB BS ChE program.
The Stakeholders Meeting was organized and attended by the faculty, staff and current students of DChE. Participants included alumni and representatives from the academic and private institutions located within the Philippines and abroad. (Marilyn C. del Barrio)
