1st from Mindanao

BEING the first Staff Regent of the entire University of the Philippines (UP) System coming from Mindanao, Analiza Fulvadora hopes to help address the surfacing issues of the non-teaching personnel of the system.

Fulvadora officially sat as the 5th Staff Regent of the entire UP System on July 27, 2017. The highest policy-governing body of the system is called the Board of Regents headed by the UP President Danilo Concepcion and the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) chairperson Patricia Licuanan. The body is also composed of a faculty regent, a student regent, representatives from the education committee of the Senate and the Congress, and Malacañang appointees.

As she starts with her work as the staff regent representing more than 8,000 non-teaching personnel of the UP system during board meetings, Fulvadora said she would want to push for the regularization of current contractual workers in the university and to continue the call for wage hike and continual benefits of the employees.

She cited that the 4th Staff Regent was able to improve the recognition pay scheme from being able to claim it by 65 years old down to only 60 years old. Fulvadora said she wishes to be able to attain similar acts of policy improvement that would benefit the personnel working in different constituent universities (CU) of UP.

Most of the times, when people hear about a university-wide operation, they think of the students and the faculty members and only later on do they think of the administration and research staff behind it. Fulvadora said she would want that the non-teaching staff to be able to also get the same benefits and attention given to the students and the teachers as well.

She said she is grateful that the university is very democratic in terms of its policy-creation, making sure that all the sectors of the university will be well-presented. In her two years term as a Staff Regent, she said she would make sure to deliver the expectation of her colleagues in the 20 UP campuses and extension schools nationwide.

Before getting elected as the Staff Regent, Fulvadora works under the Scholarship Sector of the Office of the Student Affairs (OSA). She also became the Elias B. Lopez Hall dormitory manager. For a while, there was no university nurse, which led Fulvadora to want to earn skills in nursing that’s why she studied. Now, she has degrees in commerce, nursing, and special education.

Her election as Staff Regent was also made possible by her presidency in the All UP Workers Union-UP Mindanao Chapter. Since then, she was allowed to represent UP Mindanao in the rotational election nationwide.

Her multiple degrees did not only help with her service as an OSA official, but also to her colleagues who would sometimes ask for medical advice from her.

As she jokingly said, “Sige lang ko'g skwela (I'm always studying).”

Fulvadora finds comfort in the many and varied knowledge that she has attained and which now allowed her to lead a number of people for the next two years.