Outstanding Thomasian

MANILA, Philippines - Leticia Nietes-Buhay, an alumna of the Faculty of Philosophy & Letters and the Graduate School, UST, receives the TOTAL Award (The Outstanding Thomasian Alumni Award) in Education for 2014. Buhay took her Master of Science degree in Speech Therapy at the University of Illinois, USA, under a Fullbright Travel Grant and a University of Illinois Fellowship. The first Chair of UST’s speech department, a speech professor for 26 years, and a speech therapist by profession, she founded the Maria Lena Buhay Memorial Foundation, Inc. a non-stock, non-profit foundation in 1987 in memory of a daughter who passed away a year earlier. The 27-year-old school continues to cater to hearing-impaired children who call her ‘Teacher Mom,’ helping them appreciate and experience the beauty of sound and speech, as she teaches them to talk. Buhay (center) is shown with (from left) Dr. Michael Anthony Basco, dean, Faculty of Arts and Letters; Rev. Fr. Herminio Dagohoy, OP, rector of the University of Santo Tomas; Henry Tenedero, vice president of the UST Alumni Association, and Mitos Araneta, president of the Philets Alumni Association.