UP faculty, students question selection process for deans
A group of faculty and students wore black and staged a rally Thursday morning in front of the Quezon Hall in the University of the Philippines (UP) to protest the alleged irregularities in the selection process for deans in at least four colleges of the state university.
The rally was held in time with the meeting of the Board of Regents (BOR), in connection with what they called “political appointments” of deans recently.
According to UP Diliman chancellor Michael Tan, there are at least four deans who have been appointed under questionable procedures, three of them allegedly having personal connections to the BOR head, Commission on Higher Education (CHED) chairman Prospero De Vera.
Tan named the colleges as UP’s Cesar E. A. Virata School of Business (VSB), the National College of Public Administration and Government (NCPAG), College of Engineering, and UP Pampanga. Tan named the appointees as Joel Tan Torres for the VSB; Ferdinand Maregdeg for the College of Engineering; Dan Saguin for the National College of Public Administration. Tan did not name the fourth person appointed for UP Pampanga.
“It is very clear, deans are academic leaders and they must be selected based on academic merits. The BOR says they have the power to make the final decision and they do, but they do not have the power to devalue academic requirements,” Tan told the Manila Bulletin.
Tan said the BOR appointed in October Joel Tan Torres as the new dean of VSB. Tan said Torres has no doctorate degree and had minimal experience in teaching.
“Itong sa VSB kaya nagpoprotest sila, of the five candidates four were faculty members, [have] extensive teaching experience and administrative experiences, and all with PhDs. This guy [Torres] has no PhD, almost no teaching experience, so what is going on (In VSB, they are protesting because of the five candidates, four were faculty member, have extensive teaching experience and administrative experiences and all with PhDs,” he said.
He said that several officers of various VSB departments have resigned from their posts due to the appointment.
One of those professors is Department of Business Administration chairman, Dr. Gloria Talavera, who called on the BOR to listen to the appeal of the VSB community in choosing their dean.
In a 10-page joint position paper of the sectoral regents of the UP System, they argued that the qualification of the chosen dean is “inferior to all of his conominees.”
“With respect to the recent selection of the dean of VSB, it is a fact that the BOR chose to vote against the recommendations of the Search Committee and the Diliman Chancellor and ignore the appeals of the faculty of the unit concerned,” the statement read.
During the protest program, UP President Danilo Concepcion, with some members of the BOR, appeared and assured students and professors that all of their requests and appeal will be addressed in a proper forum soon.
“We have compiled all your statements on democratic governance, collegiality, accountability and transparency. As your president, everything I read, heard, and printed is all in my mind,” he said in Pilipino.
“We assure you that we will pay attention to this. Now is not the time for an extensive discussion as there are still work to be done but expect this to be the beginning of our conversation, our dialogue, along with sectoral regents,” he said in Pilipino, before going back to the BOR meeting.
CHED chairman De Vera, who failed to appear during Thursday’s mobilization, earlier dispelled the allegations and defended Torres’ appointment as the new dean of VSB.
De Vera said that Torres was qualified in the position as he aced the CPA licensure examination, had served in the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Professional Regulations Commission, and is an outstanding alumni of the college.