Chancellor Lyre Anni Murao delivers her Welcome Remarks

To all our freshmen, a special and warm welcome to the University of the Philippines, Mindanao. From a pool of over 100,000 applicants to UPCAT, you have qualified to be the new Iskolar ng Bayan. Congratulations to the 390 new freshmen of UP Mindanao.

We are deeply honored that you have chosen UP Mindanao to be your academic home for the next 3 or 5 years.

Setting into the halls of the university is a major milestone, and we want to journey with you in that important transition. This is now the culmination of your rite of passage to UP Mindanao.

From the enrollment to the freshman orientation, meeting your blockmates, up to today's convocation, you are now a qualified Isko Freshman. I missed that experience as a freshman when I entered UP 3 weeks late, coming from an international student exchange program. As a Probinsyana from Davao, and on my first solo adventure in Diliman, I was nervous, but also excited.

Actually, while I was looking at your faces, you looked nervous, right? Yes, okay. Everyone around me seemed to have already figured things out, yet I was still learning how to navigate through campus life. I remember my first encounter with my PE teacher.

He was ready to flunk me because I have already missed several sessions. That's why I know how important it is for you to be supported in this transition period. From now on, consider UP Mindanao not just as a place of learning, but consider it also as your second home.

UP Mindanao was created through a Republic Act to widen access to UP education down to the last mile in Mindanao. And here we are now. Look around you.

UP Mindanao students are not just beautiful and handsome. Your classmates came from 12 different regions in the Philippines, including BARMM. We also have 12 Lingap scholars coming from geographically disadvantaged areas, or GIDA.

This is the kind of home that we have built for UP Mindanao. A home for inclusive and holistic development. We provide a safe space that will allow you to live your full potential and totality as individuals.

The university is your playground for the free exchange of ideas, inspiring innovation and creativity, celebrating your uniqueness, and nurturing relationships with your peers and mentors. Of course, fundamental to that is the strengthening of character, building individuals of solid integrity. Your faculty, staff, and officials are always ready to support you in this journey of growth.

UP Mindanao is also a home for collective growth. Here, we collaborate with each other to create a campus culture of innovative thinking and service with empathy as foundations for institution building. This is a place where your out-of-the-box ideas are celebrated.

Your failures are treated as learning trajectories. Individual strengths are blended to generate success, and actions are guided by the value that they bring to others and to the institution. This is our practice, this is our habit, this is our lifestyle.

UP Mindanao is also a home for people who want to serve. At the core of our ethos is excellence and broad impact. As the only constituent university of UP in Mindanao, we have the unique opportunity to influence and shape the narratives of Mindanao and our neighboring countries in BIMP-EAGA through education, research, and public service.

As students, you may share in this narrative, you may contribute to this narrative by committing to your academic duties, developing research and creative works, active participation in student organizations and university activities, and volunteerism. Your batch is also privileged to be the witness of a university-wide milestone as we celebrate our 30th anniversary next year. This celebration will be an epitome of what we have delivered over the years as a public service institution.

In other words, the UP Mindanao brand of education is transformative, bringing positive change to the lives of individuals, groups, all the way to communities. Being the new members of this community, your success is our priority. May this success be an embodiment of honor, excellence, and service.

Welcome to your new home.