Student Life

UP Mindanao, 15 March-3 April 2020

on 12 April 2020.

UP MINDANAO BULLETIN
15 March 2020–3 April 2020

MESSAGE FROM THE CHANCELLOR

“In the past two years, we have experienced major disruptions. Last year, we had to deal with the various earthquakes that hit Mindanao. This year, we—and the rest of the world—face another threat in the form of a pandemic caused by the coronavirus disease.
“What disruptive events such as this pandemic teaches us is the importance of focusing on what really matters. And right now, during this difficult time, what the university is focusing on is taking care of its constituents, particularly our students, our teaching and nonteaching staff, and our non-UP contractual staff.”
—Prof. Larry N. Digal, PhD, Chancellor
READ FULL MESSAGE HERE: https://bit.ly/3dSW7rK

IMPORTANT REMINDERS AND NOTICES

19 April 2020 | End of extended work and class suspension unless further extended, modified, or withdrawn
8 April 2020 | Deadline for submission of work accomplishment for 17–31 March 2020
4 April 2020 | Bayanihan for our non-government service, security, and sanitation personnel (Read letter here: https://bit.ly/2xV3FcV)
30 March–15 April 2020 | Ongoing work-from-home (WFH) training for all UP Mindanao personnel

UP MINDANAO COVID-19 TRACKER

We are currently working out a system for tracking the condition of UP Mindanao constituents, particularly students (through the Office of Student Affairs) and employees (through the Human Resource and Development Office). The tracker will go live in the next volume of the bulletin.

ISSUANCES

UP System Memoranda and Other Releases

03 April 2020 | Memorandum no. NGY 20-56. Submission of Work Accomplishment from 17–31 March 2020 and 1–14 April 2020. https://bit.ly/2ReP6Id
02 April 2020 | UP System IT. Reminder on Secure Zoom Meeting Sessions. (Email sent to everyone)
25 March 2020 | Memorandum no. LGSB 2020-017. Submission of Project Proposals for UPSA Funding Request. https://bit.ly/2V4pS0i
20 March 2020 | Memorandum no. OVPAA 2020-40. Payment of Salaries of Lecturers and Teaching Assistant/Teaching Fellows up to 15 April 2020. https://bit.ly/2XcA9Kv
17 March 2020 | UP System IT. Zoom Video Conferencing Access for UP Faculty and REPS. (Email sent to everyone)
17 March 2020 | Memorandum no. OVPAA 2020-39. Addendum to Memorandum no. OVPAA 2020-38 on the Suspension of Classes in All UP Constituent Universities Except UP Open University. https://bit.ly/2JK40BW
13 March 2020 | Memorandum no. NGY 2020-44. Implementation of Alternative Work Arrangement. https://bit.ly/3e29bLM
05 March 2020 | Memorandum no. NGY 2020-33. CSC Guidelines on the Procedure of Availment of Leave Privileges for Absences Incurred in Relation to Self-Quarantine and/or Treatment of Public Sector Officials and Employees Relative to COVID-19. https://bit.ly/2wlKKI6

UP Mindanao Memoranda and Other Releases

2 April 2020 | Memorandum no. LND 2020-041. Extension of Work and Class Suspension until 19 April 2020 Unless Further Extended, Modified or Withdrawn.
https://bit.ly/3c6lSDx
1 April 2020 | Memorandum no. MTRE 2020-005. Misting/Disinfection of the City Health Office in UP Mindanao on 1 April 2020. https://bit.ly/2XeVEdE
26 March 2020 | Memorandum no. LND 2020-40. Work-from-home (WFH) training for all UP Mindanao personnel from 30 March to 15 April 2020. https://bit.ly/2X4jBUR
20 March 2020 | Memorandum no. LND 2020-034. Clarification on the Early Release of Salaries of Non-UP Contractual Personnel and Project-based Personnel. https://bit.ly/2xTyzT0
19 March 2020 | Memorandum no. LND 2020-033. Skeletal Force During Community Quarantine and Possible Lockdown Due to COVID-19 https://bit.ly/2JHL86L
18 March 2020 | Memorandum no. LND 2020-032. Work Arrangement During Community Quarantine Due to COVID-19 https://bit.ly/2X8dwH8
17 March 2020 | Memorandum no. LND 20200-031a. Early Release of Salaries of Regular and Non-UP Contractual Personnel and Project-based Personnel. https://bit.ly/2RgWbrF
17 March 2020 | Memorandum no. LND 2020-031b. Requirements for Early Release of Salaries of Non-UP Contractual Personnel and Project-based Personnel. https://bit.ly/3bVBRUO
17 March 2020 | Memorandum no. LND 2020-029. Release of P25K CNA incentive. https://bit.ly/2Rd9wkE
16 March 2020 | Memorandum no. LND 2020-028. Reiteration of the Suspension of Work and Cancellation of Classes. https://bit.ly/2UMcAqr
16 March 2020 | Memorandum no. LND 2020-27A. Clarification on Memorandum no. LND-27, “Implementation of Alternative Work Arrangement in Relation to COVID-19 Code Red Sublevel 2 and Community Quarantine in Davao City” https://bit.ly/39Seni0
15 March 2020 | Memorandum no. LND 2020-27. Implementation of alternative work arrangement in relation to COVID-19 Code Red Sublevel 2 and community quarantine in Davao City https://bit.ly/3bOvvq2
13 March 2020 | Memorandum no. NBO 2020-16. Online mode of instruction. https://bit.ly/39MCVsy

Others

02 April 2020 | SMAARDEC/PCAARRD Secretariat: 2020 Non-Degree Training Courses https://bit.ly/2UJMggv

Reference Materials

UP System Coronavirus advisories and prevention guidelines: https://bit.ly/2UCQS80

NEWS

01 April 2020 | UP Philippine General Hospital Bayanihan Na! Operations Center is launched. Dial 155200 for assistance. https://publicservice.up.edu.ph/uppgh-bayanihan-na/
28 March 2020 | “Processing and release of 2020 UPCAT results suspended due to ECQ” (Philippine Daily Inquirer) https://bit.ly/3aNXLJj
27 March 2020 | “Villanueva: State universities, colleges, need raw materials, support to continue initiatives against COVID-19” (Manila Bulletin). https://bit.ly/2JEe53o
26 March 2020 | “LGUs to support proposed laboratory" (The Mindanao Times). https://bit.ly/2UWhnV0
26 March 2020 | “Call for volunteers for COVID-19 Testing Lab” (Philippine Genome Center-Mindanao). https://bit.ly/2wWJ5Jq
26 March 2020 | UP Alumni Association Davao, Inc. has launched a donation drive to provision public health frontliners (UPMin Facebook page). https://bit.ly/2V8TZ6P
23 March 2020 | “UP Mindanao proposes diagnostic program to test for COVID-19 in Davao City” (Manila Bulletin). https://bit.ly/3aQOQXC
20–28 March 2020 | Alumni, officials, staff, and students donated food and personal necessities for students stranded at the dormitory and nearby boarding houses (UPMin Facebook page). https://bit.ly/3e8to2u; https://bit.ly/34ePV96; https://bit.ly/3bWpnME
20 March 2020 | Launch of Online Portal of University of the Philippines CoViD-19 News and Information. https://www.up.edu.ph/index.php/covid-19-updates/

CONTACT DETAILS
Rene Estremera
Public Relations Officer
Email:
Messenger: https://www.facebook.com/pg/UPMindanao/services/

Message from the Chancellor, 3 April 2020

on 03 April 2020.

OC logo

03 April 2020

Dear UP Mindanao constituents:

In the past two years, we have experienced major disruptions. Last year, we had to deal with the various earthquakes that hit Mindanao. This year, we—and the rest of the world—face another threat in the form of a pandemic caused by the coronavirus disease.

What disruptive events such as this pandemic teaches us is the importance of focusing on what really matters. And right now, during this difficult time, what the university is focusing on is taking care of its constituents, particularly our students, our teaching and nonteaching staff, and our non-UP contractual staff.

For our students, since classes were suspended on 17 March 2020, most of our 836 students have returned to their families. However, a few remain in the campus and in nearby residences (17 in the dorm, 27 outside) due to the distance to their hometowns or their family circumstances. For those remaining in campus, the Office of Student Affairs (OSA) is looking after their physical and mental wellbeing and is in close contact with their parents for updates on their situation. And for those who have gone home, OSA has also prepared a Student Monitoring Survey to check on the condition of our students, which has received 322 responses as of 6:00 a.m. on 3 April 2020.

I would like to extend my profound thanks to our alumni and constituents who generously shared their resources, both financial and in kind, so that the university can continue to take care of these stranded students by keeping them fed. Rest assured that as soon as travel outside Davao City and to other parts of the country are permitted, the university will make the necessary arrangements and provide assistance for these students’ safe return to their families.

For our teaching and nonteaching staff, most are now working from home in compliance with directives from the city government. The personnel who continue on-campus operations are the staff of the Office of the Chancellor, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Administration, the finance offices, the Elias B. Lopez Hall dormitory, as well as our transport personnel who ferry members of the staff from their residences to our campus and our security and janitorial personnel who have quarters on campus.

Our main priority right now is for the release of salaries and benefits to personnel to ease economic hardships during these trying times. We will also undertake a donation drive to augment the limited assistance we can give for the needs of our non-government service and project-based personnel.

Our staff who continue to report to work are our front liners. They are risking their health and wellbeing in the face of this lockdown to ensure that we receive our salaries and benefits in the midst of this pandemic. We appreciate and thank them for their service. It is because of them that most of us can carry on our functions in the comfort and security of our homes.

After taking care of our own, we need to remember that our work in the university does not grind to a halt just because classes are suspended. We are, after all, not only an institution of higher learning, but a research and public service university as well. Especially during times of crisis, we need to ask ourselves: What can we do for the country?

I would like to commend the Philippine Genome Center (PGC) Mindanao for their proposal to further enhance the diagnostic capability of the Davao Region. We are now working with the private sector and local government units to have this funded. The same goes to the researchers of the Department of Math, Physics, and Computer Science who are working with the Department of Science and Technology XI and the UP Resilience Institute to predict the spread of COVID-19 in the region and in Mindanao in order to inform the government’s key strategies.

Hopefully, more of our researchers can come up with ways to use their expertise to contribute in the fight against COVID-19 even within the restrictions of the quarantine.

For now, our campus academic oval is closed. Traffic is allowed only through the north road by the military camp and the south road through the Davao City-UP Sports Complex. The City Health Office did a disinfection of buildings and grounds by mist spraying last April 1.

So, the big question is “what now?” What happens when the quarantine in Davao City is lifted on April 19 (or extended or withdrawn earlier)?

As many have pointed out, the COVID-19 pandemic is a litmus test for a country’s health care system. It is also a test for the university’s health care amenities as well.

Our internal assessments have shown our weakness when it comes to our health care infrastructure in the university: we have inadequate healthcare personnel and facilities on campus. And we have been considering different medium- and long-term solutions to address this.

But in the immediate future when work and classes resume, our focus will be on setting sanitation protocols in place in line with recommendations from the Department of Health—i.e., mist sanitation of buildings, availability of sanitizers and handwashing soap, protective masks for our healthcare and other personnel, just to name a few.

Also, as people go back to the campus, identifying persons under monitoring (PUMs) and persons under investigation (PUIs) is crucial to safeguard the health of our employees. We are now studying mechanisms for self-reporting if one of our constituents is considered a PUM or PUI without, of course, violating existing data privacy laws—as details about one’s health is considered “sensitive information” and governed by strict guidelines for data collection and reporting. We are also working on better ways that we can disseminate to the public information and policies related to this disease.

As for details about resumption of classes, these matters are all coordinated at the System level, with inputs from all the CUs, and we are still awaiting decisions from the UP Board of Regents and the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs. The UP Mindanao Executive Committee already held a videoconference meeting to discuss these matters last 31 March 2020, and we are working on various contingency plans depending on different scenarios. So, I urge the members of our faculty to be active in discussing these important matters with your deans.

I also appeal to our teaching staff to take seriously the “blended learning” initiatives of the university. Since 2016, the Interactive Learning Center/Learning Resource Center (ILC/LRC) has been conducting seminar-workshops to promote this pedagogical approach that combines face-to-face teaching and computer-mediated learning; however, adoption of the approach has been very limited. Please use this time during the enhanced community quarantine to look at how we can improve our coursework syllabus for online delivery.

Given the global scope of the COVID-19 pandemic, various epidemiological models suggest that even if we contain the disease in our country, future incident clusters of the disease are likely to pop up due to imported cases as borders are opened once again. Hence, it is better to be prepared for potential interruption of classes in the near future.

We are aware that some of our teaching staff and many of our students might not have devices for use in online learning or have access to personal Internet connections. The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs has already coordinated with the colleges to conduct a survey so we will have a better picture of the situation and is working with the Information Technology Office to come up with a plan to mitigate this situation.

The disruption of the coronavirus disease will heavily affect many aspects of our society, and global policy experts predict that the fallout for this pandemic will be with us for years to come. Now more than ever, UP Mindanao needs to rise to the challenge in understanding various issues intrinsically linked to COVID-19 and other diseases that might threaten us in the future. Here are some ideas that come to my mind:

• For conservation biologist and environmental scientists – How can we better safeguard wildlife and their habitats to avoid transmission of disease from wild animals to humans in the future?

• For food scientists and scientists working in agriculture – How can we promote practices that contribute to food security, as well as provide safe food options in times of crisis?

• For economists and management scholars – What policies can we recommend post-COVID-19? How can we reboot our economy and help vulnerable communities such as small and medium enterprises after this pandemic?

• For social scientists and culture/communication scholars — What is the socio-cultural toll of events like this pandemic, and what can we do to help communities deal with this trauma?

I am certain that our community of scholars will perhaps have answers and, more importantly, will raise better questions. But I hope that we can all come together para sa bayan!

In the coming weeks, we will be issuing memos and guidelines through different communication channels on relevant policies and action plans to guide all of us as we prepare to tackle the rest of the current academic year and the incoming one.

Keep safe!

Sincerely,

Prof. Larry N. Digal, PhD
Chancellor

CoViD-19 Bulletin

on 29 March 2020.

The UP-PGH has launched Bayanihan Na! COVID-19 Operations Center! Call 155-200 for your questions about COVID-19 and how to volunteer and donate.

Full story here: https://www.up.edu.ph/bayanihan-na-up-pgh-launches-covid-19-ops-center/

Visit https://publicservice.up.edu.ph/uppgh-bayanihan-na/ to learn more about the operations center via UP Public Service

IMG-1f32971a0eb73807b827d4b4d29127ca-V 50 percent

Dear fellow alumni and friends,

The effects of the COVID-19 virus has strained our health care system, particularly our health care frontliners: doctors, nurses, technicians, and hospital staff. Our health frontliners need Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to continue working effectively to limit the spread of COVID-19. Hence, the UPAA Davao Chapter would like to ask your help in raising funds for provision of these PPE. While we are working on a dedicated bank account to receive all donations, we are using the account one of our UPAA-Davao directors. Please send your donations to:

Atty. Marie Glenn C. Sorila

Metrobank Account No. 564-3-564-00734-0

Email an image of your transaction slip to

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UPMin Thank you message 3 40 Sa mga UPMin officials, faculty, staff, students sa pangunguna ng University Student Council (USC), Association of the UP Beta Sigma Fraternity & the UP Sigma Beta Sorority (Betans) at iba pang student organizations, All UP Academic Employees Union, All UP Academic Employees Union-Mindanao, UP Mindanao Alumni Association (UPMinAA), UP Alumni Association-Davao Chapter (UPAA-Davao), UP Mindanao Foundation (UPMFI), at iba pang mga nakibahagi sa aming munting bayanihan para sa ating mga estudyante na kasalukuyang natigil sa Elias B. Lopez Hall dormitory at boarding houses dahil sa ipinatutupad na community quarantine sa siyudad ng Davao dulot ng panganib na dala ng COVID-19 ...

MARAMING SALAMAT!

Mula sa Office of Student Affairs, University of the Philippines Mindanao

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Message from UP President Danilo L. Concepcion
March 20, 2020

Dear members of the UP community:

I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to you all for your amazing response to this crisis—a global situation the likes of which we have not seen in our lifetimes. We have been forced to suspend classes, work and all other campus activities, and to stay inside our homes and practice social distancing, all to contain the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and to keep our healthcare system from being dangerously overwhelmed. For some of us, the effects of these measures on our finances, work, and social lives, and on our mental and physical health, have been devastating.

Yet, I have seen UP rise magnificently to the challenge. Every constituent unit, every sector, and every member of the UP community has demonstrated and continues to demonstrate incredible courage, resourcefulness, intelligence, selflessness, and compassion. Our scientists have used their knowledge to help their fellow Filipinos. Our medical and health practitioners, including our interns, are serving heroically at the frontlines of this war. Our faculty are exploring new ways and alternative platforms to fulfill their mission to teach, no matter the circumstances.

Our skeleton staff are working to keep our University running and to protect our communities. Our administrative officials have been tirelessly steering the University through rough waters. And our students, alumni and campus residents are doing their part by using their training to build sanitation tents for public use, or by donating food and supplies to fellow members of the UP community in need, or by campaigning for support for our doctors, nurses and health centers, or by simply doing what they can to educate, to ease people’s burdens, and uplift their spirits.

You are all an inspiration to us. Ang iskolar ng bayan ay tunay na maaasahan.

I cannot say for certain how the future will be shaped by this global crisis. However, I can assure you that we will keep moving forward as one UP community. We will continue to harness the expertise of the country’s premier community of scholars to make thoughtful and informed decisions. We will continue to communicate with you and disseminate information as often as possible. We will support your efforts to help yourselves, your families and your communities. Together, we will emerge stronger, better, and more united than ever.

We must and will remain in touch with one another. To facilitate this and to make sure that we disseminate and receive only official and verified information at a time when misleading and even dangerous rumors abound, we are opening a dedicated webpage at https://www.up.edu.ph/index.php/covid-19-updates/ for the UP community. I urge you to bookmark and to follow that page for future announcements and updates, and stay safe.

Once again, I thank all the individuals and teams who are toiling bravely through this uncertain time. Thank you for showing the world what honor and excellence in the service of the Filipino people truly mean.

Maraming salamat po.

Naglilingkod,
Danilo L. Concepcion

Student Life

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