by OPI
The MSU-IIT Chancellor, Dr. Sukarno D. Tanggol was in Silliman University (SU) to give a lecture on the “Socio-Cultural Dimensions in Mindanao: In Pursuit of Peace and Development” during an Academic Convocation on March 7, 2013 at the Silliman Hall.
Tanggol’s lecture was part of the university’s celebration of Southeast Asia (SEA) Week sponsored by the General Education Integrative Learning Lecture-Series Committee headed by the Dean of Student Services, Carlos Magtolis, Jr., and the History and Political Science Departments of the College of Arts & Sciences (AS).
The well-attended lecture was held at Silliman’s oldest wooden building of colonial architecture, the Silliman Hall beside the Administration Building. The refurbished historic hall still has kept its iron posts and metal pan ceiling taken from an abandoned theater in New York even as parts of the hall’s walls are made up of corals.
Tanggol accompanied by his wife, Beverly Faith, Dr. Christine Godinez Ortega, and his secretary, Raffy Abdul Tanggol paid a courtesy call on SU President, Dr. Ben S. Malayang III who, among other things, reached out to the Chancellor by tracing his (Malayang’s) ancestry to Baloi, Lanao del Norte.
Malayang later offered to MSU-IIT a collaborative research project with seed funding of P1M to continue the research work on the Ulahingan, the Arumanen-Manobo epic whose 5-volume collection was started by the late ethnomusicologist, Elena G. Maquiso.
In the afternoon of the same day, Tanggol and his party toured the 62-hectare university on the Silliman cruiser with a Campus Ambassador as guide.
“This is like bench marking [for us],” Tanggol said during the tour.
Among the university landmarks he visited were the Anthropology Museum, the Luce Auditorium, a donation by the Henry Luce Foundation; the Silliman Main Library which has the biggest collection of books in Southeast Asia including the original volumes of Blair and Robertson, and enlarged facsimiles of Jose Rizal’s novel, Noli me tangere and the Ultimo Adios. At the library, the Chancellor was happy to know that a copy of his first book is among the library’s acquisitions in its extensive Filipiniana Collection where un-transcribed and loose manuscripts of the Ulahingan are likewise kept.
Other places Tanggol and his group visited were the Silliman University Medical Center and its Laboratories; the School of Medicine; and the Silliman Marine Laboratory (Marilab), a CHEd Center of Excellence for its researches at the Silliman Beach.
At the Marilab, he saw SEA’s largest collection of cetacean bones; the on-going experiments on the breeding of giant clams, groupers, and crocodiles, the mangrove area, and later, met briefly with Marilab Director, Dr. Hilconida P. Calumpong.
Aside from being the MSU-IIT Chancellor, Tanggol is a Professor of Public Administration and a former Philippine Ambassador to Kuwait. He has a doctorate in Public Administration from UP Diliman. (OC News Release)