developmentstudies@ateneo.edu

This semester, we’re exporting a DS course to the School of Management’s Leadership and Strategy Department. DS 135.2 Social Entrepreneurship is being taught at the JGSOM (John Gokongwei School of Management) as LS 144. This is part of our "Think Development" effort where we’re trying to get other departments to use their specialized skills and knowledge for development applications. Since Vincent Rapisura has been exported to L/S for Social entrep, it also allows the Program to hire other faculty. This semester, Agnes Rana takes over the Microfinance course.

Last semester, we helped Communications link up with NGOs to make video productions for their organizations. This was a joint effort on the part of Jerome Montemayor, a DS faculty member who teaches resource mobilization and Maitel Ladrido, a Comm faculty member. The terminal report isn’t in yet but so far the feedback has been positive.

There are more plans for "export" but I don’t like to talk about things that are still being worked on. Let us know if you have ideas on how we can continue to export the development mindset to other units of the Ateneo.

The Second Semester starts on November 14 and we do registration next week. Let me give a rundown of courses.

Let me start with the electives. Gabby Lopez makes a comeback teaching Social Marketing. Gabby is on the Board of the Advocates for Fair Trade Philippines, Inc. (used to be the Chair) and used to be the head of DKT Philippines, which markets a popular condom brand (Talk about social marketing!) Gabby taught development management and social entrep to batch 2004. Our regular social marketing teacher, Christine Reyes is taking a leave this semester.

We also have a new microfinance teacher, Agnes Rana. Agnes used to be with PUNLA SA TAO Foundation but now works with Social Enterprise Development Partnership, Inc. (SEDPI) Both organizations conduct microfinance training. I’ve seen Agnes in action and she is quite impressive. We’ve exported our regular microfinance teacher, Mr. Vincent Rapisura (President of SEDPI) to Management where he’ll be teaching social entrep.

Brenda Batistiana (President of the Mediators’ Network) will teach her regular 2nd semester dose of Alternative Dispute Resolution.

Ross Villamil (Marketing Director of Pulse Asia) who taught devman last sem comes back to teach projman. We’ve also hired a new projman teacher, Edwin Santiago, who is also part of SEDPI and who is also an excellent trainer (I’ve also seen him in action).

(Nic, we miss you. Hurry home!)

As for the required courses, I(Leland) will be handling 101 and for the first time in history, it will be in the morning. (The first time I taught it was at noon, yuck). I’ll also be finishing off the 25+ theses. Sir Bobing returns to inject humor in the research methods class (which he has been handling since batch 2004, if I’m not mistaken).

Ronald Tamangan teaches statistics and he’ll teach stat in the computer lab and using a curriculum based on Excel (not SPSS) to dramatically improve software accessibility.

If the names of the teachers sound unfamiliar and you’d like to know where your old profs are, send me an e-mail and I’ll update you.

DS People of the World Unite!

A lot of graduates ask me how the Development Studies Program is doing whenever they get in touch so I thought I’d start a DS blog just to let everyone know (and for posterity’s sake) what’s been happening around these parts.

The first semester has been over for about a week but we just did our last two thesis defences this morning. Ralph delos Santos successfully defended his thesis evaluating a microfinance institution and as soon as he submits his paper, he’ll be officially the 250th graduate of the Development Studies Program. (That sounds like a number we should celebrate!) Yam Velasco is also scheduled to graduate this semester so she’ll be the 249th graduate of the program.

The other defence was Ge Angeles’ proposal defence. His thesis also evaluates a microfinance institution. This year, we’re experimenting with a one year thesis program and so far, the outcomes have been promising. (You’ll know how old you are based on your thesis experience. If you had your thesis in the second semester, you’re very old!)

Next year, we’ll be celebrating our 20th birthday as a Program so please expect some activities involving the alumni.