THE PORTRAITS of past deans line the hall on the ground floor of the St. Raymund de Peñafort Building, their monochrome gazes frozen in time, watching over generations of students who pass beneath them. 

Each frame tells a silent story — of leadership, vision and the indelible marks each dean left on the Faculty of Arts and Letters (AB).

Among these storied faces are women who led through moments of change: Magdalena Alonso-Villaba, the first laywoman dean of the Faculty and a pioneer in philosophy; Ophelia Alcantara-Dimalanta, who stirred a generation of Thomasian writers; and Marilu Rañosa-Madrunio, who kept AB moving through a global crisis.  

These women carried the torch of leadership with grace and conviction, each leaving behind a chapter that redefined what it means to lead with heart and purpose. 

Magdalena Alonso-Villaba

Dean Emeritus Prof. Magdalena Alonso-Villaba, O.P., was a woman who walked the same corridors as her students, having graduated with a Philosophy degree in 1957. A year later, she stood at the front of a classroom as a philosophy teacher at the University.

Back then, it was a man’s world. According to a tribute released by the University, she was one of the only three women in the Philosophy Department. At a time when the field was dominated by men, her presence served as an inspiration to female students who looked up to her as a role model.

Her scholarly contributions further cemented her reputation as a leading thinker in the country. Among her notable publications are “Philosophy of the East” (1980), “Atman-Brahman Relationships in the Upanishads” (1972) and “Mission of Women: A Return to Their Original Role” (1975), a monograph of the Discurso de Apertura she delivered for A.Y. 1975 to 1976. These works explored themes such as oriental philosophy and gender roles, showcasing her intellectual depth and commitment to advancing philosophical discourse.

Villaba became AB’s Assistant Dean from 1972 to 1976, before serving as its Dean from 1976 to 1987. She later became Dean of the UST Graduate School from 1987 to 1995. 

“My first impression was that she was a smartly-dressed woman, graceful and poised,” a former student of hers, Prof. Arlen Ancheta from the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, told The Flame.

She recalled how she was clad in classic straight-cut dresses and heels, and how her every step echoed authority. Her hair, meticulously styled into a neat bun, framed her presence with an air that turned heads and commanded reverence. 

It is no wonder, then, that among Villaba’s iconic contributions was the female uniform, which she designed back in the 1960s. 

The royal blue of the pleated skirt was meant to symbolize liberality, tradition and stability — values that AB manifests. The necktie that rests on top of the white blouse is called the “lambda,” the Greek letter “L” that stands for “Letters” from the Faculty’s name. 

“She values the lambda as a distinguishing part of the uniform. According to her, the lambda represents AB’s search for knowledge,” Ancheta said.  

In a 2008 interview with the Varsitarian, Villaba revealed that other colleges praised the design. 

“We want to make the Artlets proud as they carry the Faculty’s name,” she said in the article. 

Villaba also made her commitment to upholding standards in the Faculty clear.

Rowena Martha Quesada, a Political Science alumna from Batch 1983, recalled how the former dean would walk along the corridors in between classes. It meant an inspection — her mere presence a silent proclamation of order. 

Noise in the hallways would be subdued, while those she caught loitering had to explain if they had classes or not. Uniforms, which she made sure to check, had to be prim and proper. Not a single lambda was to be mispositioned.

“That was how fastidious she was,” Quesada told The Flame.

“Not once did she ever raise her voice. Instead, she would give us a stern look, which could not be ignored.”

Leading through understanding

Villaba was known to lead through dialogue rather than authority. Quesada recounted how Villaba handled contentious issues with openness and calmness.

“She would ask questions, which was characteristic of her, given her background in philosophy,” she said.

When male students once protested against a new uniform policy prohibiting denim jeans, Villaba chose dialogue over disciplinary measures.

The policy, which required incoming freshmen to abandon denim jeans in favor of new pants, sparked significant unrest among the student body.

As a student activist at the time, Quesada and her peers voiced their opposition, arguing that the rule was both impractical and exclusionary. They pointed out that the policy would impose an unnecessary financial burden on families, as not all parents could afford to purchase new clothing for their children.

Instead of responding with punitive measures, Villaba instead invited the students to her office.

“Though she disagreed with our position, she saw the rationale behind our protest,” Quesada said. 

Throughout her career, she maintained a steady focus on the importance of ethics in philosophy, encouraging her students and colleagues to always question, reflect and seek truth. 

“Dean Villaba welcomed discourses, and she was not one to judge how strong or weak the position is,” Quesada added.

“She listened and stated her point without diminishing the other. She called for critical thinking.”

Her contributions earned her numerous accolades, including the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice award from Saint John Paul II in 1987 — the highest honor for Catholic laywomen.

“If there is one thing I would want the current AB community to remember about Dean Villaba, it is that leadership is not about influence but about dialogue, resolution and inclusivity,” Quesada said.

“She herself emulated these.” 

Ophelia Alcantara-Dimalanta

Ophelia Alcantara-Dimalanta carried herself like a poem — measured yet unrestrained, deliberate yet flowing. Her presence in AB was not just seen or heard; it was felt and continues to be felt, like the unfading weight of a verse long after the page is turned.

“She was very down to earth, very human,” Prof. Augusto Antonio Aguila, the Co-Director of the Center of Creative Writing and Literature Studies, said.

“When you talk to her, you feel like, My God, I’m talking to Ma’am Ophie! But then she jokes, she tells stories, she makes you feel at ease,” Aguila told The Flame.

As the dean of AB from 1990 to 2000, she promoted a culture of openness, transforming AB into a hub for literary and critical discourse. She expanded literary programs, promoted publications and fostered a culture of creative freedom.

Colleagues and students remember her as an approachable and supportive leader who created a space where both faculty and students could grow. 

“It’s kind of rare for an artist to take up administration,” Aguila said.

“Artists usually want freedom — they don’t want to have so many responsibilities like admin work. But Ma’am Ophie — she managed it. She was able to steer AB into a new and exciting direction.”

Whether in the classroom, at her desk as dean, or in the pages of her books, poetry guided the way she saw the world. Every decision, every lesson, every line she wrote carried the same force. It shaped the Faculty’s culture.

“You could feel at that time in AB that everyone was excited about the arts, about literature,” Aguila added.

The prolific literary artist

Outside of administrative duties, Dimalanta was a towering figure in Philippine literature, with a love for the arts that grew and expanded from a tender age.  

Her works throughout the years won her a Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 1974. A founding member of the Manila Critics Circle, she served as judge for the nation’s most prestigious literary awards, such as the Palanca Awards and Philippines Free Press Literary Awards.

With a background as a concert pianist, she wove a distinct musicality into her lines.

“She always loved sensory details. You can see how much she is into the sound of things,” Assoc. Prof. Nerisa Guevara, from the Department of Literature, noted.

Guevara first heard of Dimantala’s name through studying the poet’s first collection, “Montage,” released in 1974,  when she was taking up a course on Philippine literature. 

She soon discovered how the poet’s words lay bare the many layers of being a woman — its quiet joys, heavy burdens and contradictions. 

In “Montage,” Dimalanta captures the exhaustion of Monday mornings and the way women shift between different roles until they blur into one. But her exploration of womanhood did not stop there. 

In “Flowing On” (1988) and “Love Woman” (1989), she continued to write about love, identity and desire, unafraid to embrace both the tenderness and the rawness of human emotion.

“If you look at Ma’am Ophie’s work, you can see that it’s cinematic. It’s her own world,” Guevara explained.

Tough love in meter and rhyme

Above all, Dimantala was a teacher — one who urged her students to find and refine their voices, demanding excellence from themselves.

“She has inspired many young poets,” Aguila said.

“Some of them are now teaching — not only in UST, but in other universities.” 

Marie Rowena Sardalla-Davis, a former literary editor of The Flame who now lives in California, remembered meeting Dimalanta in 1979 as a freshman in Literature. It was an initiation by fire. 

“She took all of us seriously, even the sheltered 15-year-old I was,” Davis told The Flame.

The first assignment — an essay about their vision of the future — was met with a blunt critique: “That’s a shallow take on life.”

Davis quickly learned that under Dimalanta, mediocrity was not an option. Whether they willed it or not, her students learned how to embrace criticism and break conventions. 

“She demanded rigor,” Davis said.

“I saw this firsthand when I worked on my thesis — four original short stories that required constant revision.”

Inside the classroom, Dimalanta’s presence alone captivated the four corners of the room.

“For three hours, you don’t get bored. You’re just mesmerized by how she teaches poetry, fiction or creative non-fiction,” Aguila said.

‘She inspired us’

Alongside her significant contributions in Philippine literature, Dimalanta was committed to nurturing young writers. 

In 1989, she founded the Thomasian Writers’ Guild,  the University’s leading literary organization. A decade later, in 1999, she founded the UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies.

Through these writing hubs, the door of writing opportunities was opened wider to Thomasians.

Guevara was among such aspiring writers. Despite her trekking a different path studying Biology in the College of Science, TWG became an avenue to channel her passion for poetry.

Dimalanta took Guevara under her wing and trained her alongside the guild’s growing members.

“I met Ma’am Ophie, and that was when I started learning how to write,” Guevara told The Flame.

“She had an air of mystery. She taught us the craft, but we had individual voices. She never said, ‘This is the Dimalanta way.’ She never gave us a formula.”

TWG eventually became a space for students who were looking for a place to not only fuel their creativity but also a place to belong. Guevara remembers sneaking into St. Raymund to hang out with her guildmates in The Flame office. 

“We were misfits everywhere else, but [Dimalanta] made us feel seen,” Guevara, who then served as the guild’s president in 1994, said.

“It’s almost as if we could talk to her at any time.”

Even with the demands of her role as dean, Dimantala would send letters to different faculties and colleges to call her members. Soon after, rich discussions on literature and life filled her office, as both students and professors gathered around her table to converse as writers.

Dimalanta also served The Flame as a former adviser. 

In 1972, under her supervision, the publication released Lagablab, a Tagalog issue that spanned 24 pages, on the night of September 20, when martial law was first declared. The following day, thousands of copies of the paper were burned.

The literary giant made her support of Thomasian writers evident. 

“She would go to wherever the Thomasian fellow is and treat them to lunch and dinner. Para talagang nanay (Just like a mom),” Guevara recounted.

“She demanded so much excellence, but not in a way that, ‘I demand excellence from you,’ but it was in the way that she inspired us, so we demanded it upon ourselves,” she added. 

Marilu Rañosa-Madrunio

Leading the Faculty was a “Herculean task,” Prof. Marilu Rañosa-Madrunio once admitted. When she assumed the role of dean, in August 2019, she had no idea that within months, the world would change.

The pandemic forced classrooms into screens, leaving both students and faculty scrambling to adjust. Madrunio watched as professors struggled to navigate unfamiliar digital tools and students voiced their frustrations over unstable internet and overwhelming workload.

“It was really very difficult considering that we all had to undergo a lot of training,” she told The Flame, in 2023.

Rather than imposing rigid rules, she adapted. Meetings turned virtual, deadlines loosened and communication became a lifeline. She made sure no one was left behind, keeping her inbox open to student concerns.

Assistant Dean John Manuel Kliatchko described her deanship as a “collaborative experience,” where resilience was built not through authority but through teamwork. 

Steering AB

For students, the shift to remote learning felt like walking on shifting ground. Schedules changed unpredictably — from fully online to hybrid, then asynchronous, before returning to hybrid once more.

“No one had it easy. It was a university-wide challenge,” Joanna Manrique, former Chief of Staff of the Faculty of Arts and Letters Student Council (ABSC) in the academic year 2021 to 2022, told The Flame.

“Wala naman tayo choice dati but to adapt (We had no choice but to adapt),” she said.

She recalled nights spent catching up on recorded lectures due to power outages, waking up to the sound of typhoon winds while still having deadlines to meet. When back-to-back storms “Kiko” and “Jolina” pummeled through Luzon in 2021, unstable internet left students disconnected, both literally and figuratively.

When students called for academic leniency, Madrunio responded not with glib assurances. Asynchronous learning became an option and professors were encouraged to grant extensions.

“We weren’t just numbers to her — she saw us,” Manrique said.

Madrunio’s doors were always open.

“She was approachable. She was open to dialogues and discussions,” Manrique said.

Yet, not all offices in the administration shared this accessibility. Manrique recalled a frustrating meeting with higher-ups, where student concerns were met with resistance and bureaucratic roadblocks.

“Then, we had a separate meeting with Dean Marilu, and automatically, all the problems went away,” she said.

“She didn’t just listen — she acted.”

Motherly approach

Madrunio’s leadership was never cold or bureaucratic. 

“She led like a mother, you know, very firm, but talagang, alam mong may puso, very compassionate,” Manrique said. 

When the ABSC pleaded for fewer synchronous classes during the pandemic, she did not shut them down. Instead, she asked for data, pushing for transparency so that decisions would be grounded in real student experiences.

Even Fr. George Phe Mang, O.P., AB’s Regent, noticed how hands-on she was. 

“She was always present, not just in meetings but in moments when students needed someone to listen, demonstrating motherly care and genuine concern for everyone under her supervision. ” Fr. George said. 

“Her leadership was not just about policies, it was about people,” he added.

A mark of her own

Madrunio’s leadership set new standards for excellence, shaping both the Faculty and the wider academic community. 

Under her term, AB secured ASEAN University Network – Quality Assurance (AUN-QA) accreditation for its Journalism and Communication programs, and she established the Faculty of Arts and Letters Research Ethics Committee (FALREC) to uphold integrity in academic research.

Her daughter, Kaela Madrunio, took pride in how the former dean brought forensic linguistics to the country. 

“My mom truly made a mark in the Philippine linguistics community for spreading the word about forensic linguistics,” she shared in a Philippine Daily Inquirer article last year.

Despite the discipline’s Eurocentric roots, Madrunio ensured that Southeast Asia would not be left behind in this emerging field.

“It will certainly take time for it to be known,” Kaela said.

“But she made sure to build that foundation.”

Bearing the torch

AB now enters a new era, defined by its past experiences and the leaders who have taken its helm throughout the decades. The lineage of women deans trickles down to the present day. 

After Madrunio, Jacqueline Lopez-Kaw became acting dean in 2022, as AB was transitioning from the pandemic. Her tenure saw the rise of hybrid classes with fixed schedules, with policies aimed at upgrading AB’s online facilities.  

Projects also focused on the professional growth of faculty members, AB’s research outputs and student experience through appointing class advisors and enhancing counseling services.

A year later, in 2023, Kaw was then appointed as the dean of the Graduate School of Law. Succeeding her was Prof. Melanie Turingan, a historian and Asian Studies graduate of the Faculty.

Turingan now finds herself sitting at the same desk in the very office where difficult decisions were once made and visions for AB’s future took shape.

The legacies of Prof. Milagros Muñoz, who served as AB dean from 1987 to 1990, and Prof. Belen Lorezca-Tangco, O.P., who served from 2003 to 2006, now loom large over her shoulders. Muñoz, who obtained her master’s degree in linguistics in New York, shaped her students with her expertise in translation and communication.

Tangco, an alumna of AB’s Political Science program, molded her students with her contributions to both higher education and the Catholic Church’s ministry. She was the founder of the Young Thomasian Professionals Lay Dominican Fraternity and, like Villaba, was president of the Dominican Laity Provincial Council in the Philippines.

The weight of that lineage is undeniable.

“Filling in their shoes creates pressure. I cannot even think of how I can be even half as they were,” she told The Flame.

Yet, in the face of uncertainty, she holds onto a belief that transcends titles and tenure, tried and tested. 

“When all things fail, the only thing that will remain is how well you worked with people,” she said.

A full year into her term, Turingan carries the torch, full of gratitude to those who have come before her. They were women who rose to the unique challenges during their tenure while leaving legacies in their respective fields — known not only as trailblazers but also as mothers to those they influenced.  

“Women have always been seen as emotional, intuitive and soft-hearted,” Turingan said. 

“I see these as strengths.” F