CEBU, Philippines - The University of the Visayas will be giving a new 100-square meter house and lot to UV graduates who will place first in the Bar examination, Medical licensure examination, Dentistry, Nursing, Engineering, Architecture and Accountancy.
“We will be happy to give it as a prize. It’s 100 years sa UV, it’s something memorable,” said UV executive vice president Dr. Jose R. Gullas, in yesterday’s press conference on the launching of the school’s centennial celebration as an educational institution in 2019.
Gullas showed the design of the two-storey house and lot. The location of the lots is still being kept a surprise.
For second placers, UV will refund all their tuition fees and offer them P500,000 cash. Third, fourth and fifth placers, will receive P400,000, P300,000 and P200,000, respectively, as well as a refund of their tuition fees.
Gullas also said UV has already set its yearly schedule of activities in coordination with the UV Alumni Association Inc.
Lawyer Joseph Baduel, president of the UV Alumni Association Inc., also said the association will be the lead agency in the centennial celebration.
Baduel also said there will be an international alumni homecoming for UV graduates working abroad this coming 2013 in the US. Part of the project, he said, is a coffee table book that will be completed by 2019 featuring UV’s history and the successful men and women produced by the university.
“This will be a project of the UV Alumni Association Inc. where its thousands and thousands of Visayanians will pool their resources together, as a gesture of gratitude to their alma mater for their success in their respective fields,” Baduel added.
Gullas cited several UV alumni who became school presidents. He mentioned Dr. Alicia Cabatingan who is now the school president of University of Southern Philippines-Foundation, Southwestern president Dr. Frances Lumain and Salazar Institute of Technology president Dr. Doroteo Salazar, who is the current vice mayor of Madridejos town.
Also, Gullas said three UV alumni have established their own schools; Dr. Victoriano Tirol who owns the University of Bohol, Dr. Victor Lepiten Sr., who owns the Cebu Roosevelt Memorial College in Bogo City and lawyer Rodolfo Pelaez who founded the Liceo de Cagayan in Cagayan de Oro.
“It is a humanitarian institution that nurtures the philosophy of love, pursues the task of developing future leaders, and inspires the ideals of service in the spirit of democracy and nationalism,” Gullas said.
Gullas said he wants the centennial celebration to be memorable to Visayanians.
From 2007 up to 2009, the university already recorded 7,275 scholars. Aside from scholarship, Gullas said they helped and provided financial assistance and initiated fundraising campaign for the 1991 Ormoc tragedy, the Southern Leyte landslides, the victims of Typhoon Ondoy and Cebuano boxer Z Gorres, who is a former computer science student in UV.
Gullas recalled how his father Don Vicente Gullas founded then the Visayan Institute in 1919 with an enrolment of only 37 students.
The school became a university in 1948, the first university in Cebu. (FREEMAN NEWS)