Photo from Miguel Garra
by Angelo Gamalindo and Angel Grace Untalan
Before ushering the start of classes for this academic year, Mathematics and English courses waved its goodbye to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as the doors of their new found home -- the College of Education opened for them, last July 2.
COED now houses Math and English faculty members and will also handle all concerns related to these courses.
“It’s just logical for the [COED] to serve [the Colegio] in terms of servicing other units with faculty in English and Math,” said dean of College of Education Prof. Danilo Villena, PhD. As of the moment, the Education department only has six faculty members along with the current department head.
“They have quite a number of faculty [members] in different programs under CLAS and the COED has only two program offerings which is the Bachelor of Secondary Education in Math and Bachelor of Secondary Education in English,” said Villena.
Dean Villena also assured that this facilitating technique of the Letran administrators will ease out some difficulties from the CLAS in terms of faculty loading.
Students will no longer have to queue in the long lines in front of the CLAS office when requesting for petition courses.
“It’s also going to be more of an advantage to students because they can easily come to us and request for petition courses in English and Math, rather than filing their petitions with the CLAS where they have a lot of concerns with other academic courses,” explained Villena.
Students vouched that the transfer of the said courses really helped eased out the process.
"Yung pag-pasa ng petition ng letter, pumunta lang ako kay ma'am Joy Chavez tapos sumulat ako ng letter addressed kay dean Villena ng COED, tapos pinasa ko yung letter, signed agad, encoded na agad. Wala pang 30 minutes [yung buong process],” narrated Political Science senior Princess Justine Mae Talimio, a student who enlisted an English course at COED.
She even noted the unwavering concern of COED’s Asst. Prof. Joy Chavez to the students enlisting.
“Si Maam Joy, i-nuupdate niya din ako kung na-enlist ko na daw ba para makapag-bigay na siya ng prof sa akin,” she added.
“Since graduating nako, mahirap maghabol ng back subjects. Kaya when I found out na nag-ooffer na ulit ng ENG103N. It was a big relief for me kasi di ko na kailangan magcross enroll. Mabilis yung response ng COED,” shared Marketing Management senior Anilou Odsinada.
The ‘sciences’ in CLAS is here to stay. All science courses which includes natural sciences and social sciences courses will remain with the CLAS under the leadership of General Education area head Asst. Prof. Mary Rose Magbujos-Salagubang.
Math and English courses since time immemorial have been with the CLAS, thus, faculty members of these courses have established a deep bond among their colleagues from other courses.
When asked about the impact upon the professors on the recent development Mathematics Asst. Prof. Enrico Calantas bared that ranking among them will be the same.
Yet, he noted that the environment will be different since they will be separated from their co-workers who they have already established a bond for a long time.