THE UNIVERSITY of Santo Tomas won three excellence awards and 16 merits but fell short of recapturing the School of the Year title at the 10th Student Quill Awards.
The España-based university placed first runner-up for the second consecutive year. The last time it was named School of the Year was in 2021.
UST’s seven-year winning streak ended in 2022 when De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB) secured 26 merits, 11 excellence awards and one top award, higher than its 19 merits and nine awards of excellence.
This year, UST was bested by DLS-CSB anew after the Taft-based campus garnered six excellence awards and 16 merits, Quill Awards organizer International Association of Business Communicators announced on Tuesday, Jan. 23.
UST bagged a total of 19 accolades this year, lower than the 28 plums it won previously.
Behind UST was second-runner-up Colegio de San Juan de Letran, which bagged three excellence awards and 12 merits.
The awarding program used a seven-point scale of excellence to evaluate entries, with seven being the highest. An award of merit is presented to entries with a total average score of 5.25 to 5.74, while an award of excellence is given to entries with a score of 5.75 and higher.
UST’s latest excellence awards came from the entries of Tiger Media Network (TMN), the official broadcasting arm of UST, titled “Thomasian Homecoming: ROARientation 2022” and “UST Paskuhan Concert 2022: Pananabik, Pagbabalik, Panunumbalik;” and media production organization TOMCAT‘s “UST Halalan 2022 Campaign.”
The Flame, the official student publication of UST Faculty of Arts and Letters, earned three merits for its works, namely, “Afterglow,” a literary piece by Ghemarie Labsan; “Thomasians reminisce, move forward during return of onsite Paskuhan,” an article by Aubrey Shane Lim, former The Flame editor-in-chief Dawn Danielle Solano, associate editor Prince Ernest Eugene Ronson Sabado, news editor Zoe Airabelle Aguinaldo, Shayne Lee Andreas Macaraeg, Katherine Chan and former managing editor Matthew Dave Jucom; and “Hintayan,” the 2022 edition of Dapitan, the official literary folio of The Flame, led by former literary editor Maria Pamela Reyes.
Other Thomasian entities that received merits in the tilt were TMN (six); the Varsitarian (four), the official campus publication of UST; and TOMCAT (one). Two entries from students of the Department of Communication and Media Studies were also granted merits.
Quill Awards honors notable communication research, programs, skills and creative work in the country. This year’s Philippine Student Quill Awards adopted the theme “A decade of shaping the future of communication.” The awarding ceremony was held at the Manila Marriott Hotel in Pasay.
About 800 entries from different educational institutions in the country were submitted to the contest, the awarding body’s highest record to date. F
