UE to confer Honorary Doctorate Degree upon Alumnus-National Artist Almario
NATIONAL Artist for Literature Virgilio S. Almario, the incumbent chairman of the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF), will be conferred the degree of Doctor of Literature,
honoris causa, by his Alma Mater, the University of the East (UE), on September 20, 2016, Tuesday, 2 p.m., at the conference hall of the UE Manila campus.
Also known by his pen name Rio Alma, KWF chairman Almario is a Filipino artist, poet, critic, translator, editor, teacher and cultural manager. Almario began his poetry career in the early 1960s as a UE student, taking up subjects under the University’s Bachelor in Secondary Education and Master of Arts in Education courses and becoming the Managing Editor of the Dawn, UE’s student newspaper.
He is credited for spearheading the second successful modernist movement in Filipino poetry together with Rogelio Mangahas and Teo Antonio. His earliest literary criticism pieces were collected in the 1972 book Ang Makata sa Panahon
ng Makina, which is now considered the first book on literary criticism in Filipino.
Chairman Almario has also been translating into Filipino works by the best contemporary poets of the world, as well as plays by Nick Joaquin and Bertolt Brecht, and Jose Rizal’s Noli Me
Tangere and El Filibusterismo. For his work on those two landmark novels, Chairman Almario was given the 1999 award for translation by the Manila Critics Circle.
He had been an instructor at the Ateneo De Manila University ( ADMU) from 1969 to 1972. In 2003, he was appointed Dean of the College of Arts and Letters of the University of the Philippines (UP), where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Master of Arts in Filipino degree.
Chairman Almario has received numerous awards, including several Carlos Palanca Literary Awards, two grand prizes from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), the KWF Makata
ng Taon, the Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) award for Literature, and the Southeast Asian Writers Award (S.E.A. Writers Award) of Bangkok. He was proclaimed National Artist for Literature in 2003.
Chairman Almario will be the 33rd recipient of an honorary UE degree in the University’s 70- year history. This honorary-degree conferment coincides with UE’s foundation anniversary celebration this year, whose theme is “UE Going Great @ 70.” For more information, please visit
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