Today, Saturday, 9 August 2014, the Ateneo School of Government (ASoG) celebrates a milestone as we conduct separate commencement exercises for the first time since we were founded. In its short history, 13 years of existence as an autonomous academic unit to be precise, ASoG has become a highly regarded institution in the field of leadership and public service. From a school that averaged, in its first 10 years, 10-15 graduates a year and a student population of around 50, we are graduating this year 70 students (around 130 if graduates of joint programs with other institutions are counted) and have a student population now of 800 students. Before today, ASoG always joined the graduation ceremonies of the Ateneo Graduate School of Business. But this year, taking note that our student population and number of graduates have soared, we decided that it was time to have our own commencement exercises. Because of the historic nature of today’s graduation ceremony, we invited Representative Henedina Abad, the first and founding Dean of the school, to deliver the commencement address to the graduates. Rep. Abad, with former Ateneo de Manila President Fr. Bienvenido Nebres SJ and our former Vice President for Professional Schools Dr. Alfredo Bengzon, founded the school with an emphasis on enabling and capacitating local governments. We continue that focus but have expanded our work to help build capacity in national institutions, citizen organizations, and international organizations. The School’s approach to building leaders is anchored on three strong tenets: (1) We teach by example and so our faculty members are notable professionals and practitioners in the public sector who bring their wealth of experience to class, many of them former Secretaries or high-level officials from all administrations (we are strongly non-partisan in choosing our faculty and accepting students); (2) We build leaders the Ateneo way, intent on producing public servants for others, and guided specifically by a well-developed leadership framework based on Ignatian concepts of leadership (heroic leadership) and other elements (personal mastery, emphasis on building institutions, ethical decision making that can be defended politically, outcome-based leadership); (3) The country is our campus, as we look beyond the traditional confines of the classroom to bring the theories, concepts and practices of good governance and ethical leadership to a wider constituency, reaching out to the rest of the country by sending our Faculty to local governments and communities who would have us help them. The School’s alumni are at work in national agencies and local government units – comprising both elective officials and those in the bureaucracy. Many also work in regional and international development agencies, here and abroad. Everywhere, they initiate innovations and new approaches to governance amidst a culture long characterized by poor governance, corruption and inefficiencies. They include governors, like Ruth Padilla of Nueva Vizcaya, and mayors of big cities such as Iloilo City Mayor Patrick Jed Mabilog, who was mentioned by President Aquino in his State of the Nation Address two weeks ago. We have many graduates and students who are young politicians (Vice-Governors, Vice-Mayors, board members, councilors) and quite a lot of our students commute to Manila on weekends by land and air (including as far way as Mindanao and the Visayas) just to attend classes. We also have had on-site programs in Calapan (Mindoro Oriental) Iloilo City, Tarlac, Nueva Ecija, La Union, Lanao del Sur, and Philrice in Muñoz, Nueva Ecija. We have a big joint program with the Development Academy of the Philippines, a Master in Public Management, major in Rural Development, with a hybrid, blended learning delivery system using both online and face to face approaches (a brainchild of Agrarian reform Secretary Gil De Los Reyes) for students (more than 300 so far) that come from the regional and national offices of the Departments of Agriculture, Agrarian Reform, and Environment and Natural Resources. Today, as our graduates marched at the Irwin Theatre in the Ateneo de Manila, accompanied by the music of Pomp and Circumstance, and later as they sing the refrain of the Ateneo graduation hymn “Mary for you, for your white and blue, we pray you’ll keep us, Mary faithful to you”, for sure, I will be proud for them and definitely feel good for the country. Slowly, but surely, we are transforming communities and helping build a nation.
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 02:36:32 +0000
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