NEWLY APPOINTED Faculty of Arts and Letters (AB) Assistant Dean Assoc. Prof. Alejandro Bernardo is aiming for the Faculty to become locally and internationally accredited, and for Artlets to have more academic partnerships with world-renowned institutions.
Bernardo earned his doctorate degree in English Language, cum laude, from the University of Santo Tomas in 2013 and has been the faculty secretary of the UST Graduate School ever since.
His term as faculty secretary ended last Dec. 31 and is set to replace Asst. Prof. Narcisa Tabirara who was the assistant dean for no more than 40 years.
Bernardo said that Tabirara was appointed as assistant dean because of institutional memory, but was extended several terms since 2014.
“But then she has reached 70 years old, hindi na ina-allow ng university ‘yun, so it’s got to be somebody else na as qualified as Ma’am Nancy but in terms of age, ’yung qualified din, hindi na yung age 65 and above,” he said in an interview with The Flame.
Bernardo added that tasks assigned to him are addressing student and faculty concerns, and serving as a representative of quality management in terms of the assurance.
“[This] February, we’ll have the preliminary visit by the Philippine Association of Colleges and Universities Commission on Accreditation (PACUCOA) to new programs natin [like] history, and English language studies, and then come March, it’s the level 4 reaccreditation of several programs plus AUN-QA (ASEAN University Network-Quality Assurance) assessment on March din if I’m not mistaken,” he said.
The new assistant dean also aims to establish domestic and international exchange programs, citing forensic linguistics as an introductory degree program for the English Language Studies (ELS) program, which is also the first in the country.
“The department has built an image na ’pag sinabing forensic linguistics, UST na and forensic linguistics is under the department of English, which is housed dito sa Arts and Letters,” he said.
Bernardo’s initial appointment as assistant dean is only until Dec. 31, 2020, since he is currently waiting for a scholarship admission abroad.“There is no university without the Arts and Letters and [as] Arts and Letters students, we have to keep in mind that we are all scholars and therefore we should act and think like scholars,” he said.F
