It’s not a secret that there is a lot of interest being generated by the so called Millennials or those who were born between 1980 and 2000.
Millennials or the members of the “Generation Y” or, as Time Magazine puts it, the “Me Me Me Generation,” have been criticized for being “lazy and narcissistic”, and possessed of “a sense of entitlement”.
Accurate or not, the description is hotly debated around the world.
In MSU-IIT, however, the Guidance Counseling Center (GCC) is of the mind that Millennials need understanding, and by virtue thereof, is helping organize a seminar that would provide their student peer facilitators and learning assistance volunteers knowledge on how to understand and reach out to the members of this new generation “in an ethical way”.
Almost all of the current student population of MSU-IIT were born between 1990 and 2000, making them Millennials.
The seminar, which is scheduled on December 14 at the College of Nursing Hall, features guidance counselor Charity M. Pagarigan, RPm as the resource person.
The GCC is assisting the Organization of Student Peer Facilitators (OSPF) and the Learning Assistance Volunteers (LAV) in putting together the half day (8 a.m. to 12 noon) event that will also double as the two organizations’ year-end fellowship and enrichment activity.
The year-end fellowship and enrichment activity actually functions as the culmination of an annual training to be given by the GCC to the members of the OSPF and LAV on December 12 and 13.
Acting head of the GCC Evelyn I. Dominguez, RP, RGC, told Chancellor Sukarno D. Tanggol in a letter that the seminar hopes to equip their student peer facilitators and learning assistance volunteers with the appropriate “attending and helping skills”.
Dr. Dominguez said in the letter that the seminar is called, “Understanding the Millennials: Ethical Considerations in Reaching Out to Them”.
“ISO Certification is just a consequence. The ultimate goal is to give quality services to our customers— the students,” said Prof. Emelyn Richardson Mordeno, Acting Director of the Quality Assurance Management Services Office (QuAMSO) of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Planning and Development (OVCPD).
Prof. Mordeno, the resource speaker and facilitator of the series of ISO workshops held in the Institute shared her knowledge and expertise in Organizational Development (OD) as a former Internal Auditor and HR Specialist of Aboitiz Transport System, an ISO certified company. She intends to help boost the Institute’s present status to a higher level of systematic, organized, and quality services for its constituents.
The awareness seminar on International Organization for Standardization 9001:2015 Certification was launched on April 11, 2016 at the Institute Gymnasium hosted by the QuAMSO of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Planning and Development (OVCPD).
OVCPD conducts series of ISO Workshops for the different units of the Institute which started on August 16, 2016 and will continue until September 13, 2016. Staff and faculty are excused from work and classes are suspended accordingly.
Vice Chancellor for OVCPD Dr. Feliciano B. Alagao said that “We should continue to educate and involve everyone in the process as we motivate ourselves to do our mandates with quality outputs. MSU-IIT as a Higher Education Institution (HEI) shall follow the statutory and regulatory requirements mandated to us,” he added.
The activity basically reviews all the important elements of the Institute as an organization as prescribed under the requirements of ISO 9001:2015. It looks into the needs and expectations of both internal and external customers of the organization, assesses organizational threats and opportunities, re-assesses roles and functions, identifies competencies, and reviews the organization’s processes and lines of communication.
See the schedule of ISO workshops for the following offices:
As the propaganda arm of MSU-IIT, the Office of Publication and Information (OPI) continues to develop its personnel by holding a seminar-workshop on Graphics Design, Branding and Reputation, and Powerpoint Presentation on August 7, 2015 at the Institute Boardroom.
The seminar-workshop was also participated in by staff members from IIT’s various cost centers who are in the frontline of image-building for the Institute.
The lecture on graphics design by Christina Newhard focused on content creation and publications. Newhard dealt with the fundamentals—what is aesthetically effective and pleasing when it comes to presenting information and ideas.
Christina Newhard is the principal of a one-woman, Brooklyn-based design studio she started herself. For 15 years, she has worked at the in-house Communication Office of Columbia University. Among her other creative involvements in the academe include Fordham Law School, New York University, and the New York Post.
Complementing Newhard’s lecture is Carminia Borja’s discussion on Powerpoint (PPT) Presentation and Branding and Reputation. As someone whose line of work is “selling it”, Borja shares her expertise on the importance of a good image, whether that be in a PPT slide or the reputation of a brand.
Borja has worked with Aboitiz Philippines as brand team leader and is in charge of executing design and brand strategy. Currently she is the supervisor of customer service and community relations of the Iligan Light and Power, Incorporated (ILPI).
“What is the brand of IIT?” Borja asked.
Intangible assets – the reputation and brand of an institution – can go a long way in assisting towards a goal, she adds; in IIT’s case, to be “world-class”.
With the insights Newhard and Borja shared with the participants, IIT is moving forward on that road towards building its image and strengthening its brand.
In support of its bid to attain world class status in 2020, the Mindanao State University System (MSUS) Office of the University Secretary (OUS), headed by Dr. Mary Joyce Z. Guinto-Sali, hosted a seminar-workshop for the implementation of paperless Board of Regents (BOR) meetings.
With over 50 participants representing all eleven campuses and system offices, the event was held at the School of Computer Studies (SCS) computer laboratory on July 31 – August 1, 2015.
Speakers during the said seminar were Datu Esma Mikee P. Maruhom (Student Regent), Dr. Jamail Kamlian (MSU-IIT Campus Secretary), Dr. Emmanuel M. Lagare (Executive Vice President), Prof. Yusof-den J. Jamasali (OUS Special Assistant), Ms. Nenen Borinaga (MSU-IIT Center for eLearning), Prof. Dante D. Dinawanao (MSU-IIT ICTC-CFSS Director), Ms. Selah C. Omamalin (OUS Executive Assistant) and Ms. Marlyn J. Nario (MSU-IIT OIS).
Dr. Merlynn S. Tan (VP for Administration and Finance) and Dr. Macabangkit P. Ati (VP for Planning and Development) also attended the said event.
The paperless system is expected to be implemented during the 3rd quarter of the BOR meeting in September 2015. The said action is also part of the university’s bid to reduce carbon footprint and minimize costs during the quarterly meetings. (Contributed news)
Chancellor Sukarno D. Tanggol emphasized the significance of IIT’s Communications Group by calling it the “circulatory system” of the Institute, and hailed as a “significant event” its holding of the Seminar-Workshop on “Avoiding Language Errors in Official Issuances and Review on Process Flow and Institute Policies and Matrix” held on August 12-13, 2014 at the Boardroom and at the HRM Laboratory.
The Chancellor not only welcomed participants to the seminar-workshop, but he presented his own proposed functional and flow chart of administrative and academic personnel within the MSU-IIT.
He urged the participants of the seminar-workshop—composed of mostly staves from the Institute’s major offices—to do competent and complete staff work in the processing of official documents before submitting these to the Office of the Chancellor (OC). Tanggol also encouraged the group to identify problems encountered in the flow of documents, especially since MSU-IIT “has grown”.
“There is room for improvement” he said in reference to the process flow, particularly how and where to send official communications. Tanggol said problems should be threshed out in relation to the Institute’s responsiveness on whether or not management has delivered the goods to its clients and whether or not the clients were “happy” with these.
At the same time, and apart from responsiveness, the Chancellor talked about the significance of the staff in the “organic line of functions”, even as he emphasized the values of efficiency and effectiveness in serving clients in relation to the Institute’s rules and its goals. He said that “regional competitiveness hastens global competitiveness.”
During the seminar, brief lectures were delivered by the faculty of the Department of English, College of Arts & Social Sciences (CASS): Professors Honeylet E. Dumoran, Sittie Noffaisah B. Pasandalan, and Lynnie Ann P. Deocampo; and, on “Institute Policies and Matrix” by Dominico Jumawid of the OVCAA and a “Review on Financial Matters and their Control” by Armilyn K. Abragan of the OC.
Dumoran talked on “Language Conventions and the Common Language Errors contained in Special Orders (SOs) issued from January to March 2014” and on “Avoiding Discourse Errors in Parallelism, Clausal Modification, Diction and the Use of Prepositions”.
Dumoran, who studied several months’ worth of SOs, revealed that an average of four errors attended each of the SOs issued from January to March 2014. These errors include unusual use of syntax; unusual use of lexicon in formal documents; non-use and wrong use of punctuation; non-use of articles; and the non-use and wrong use of prepositions. She said the syntactic errors were minimal.
From March to June 2014, a comparative study of the SOs and their drafts were made. Dumoran found that the number of errors dropped “significantly”.
According to Dumoran, the dramatic drop in the number of errors was indicative of an intervening factor, i.e., presence of an editor.
Pasandalan, for her part, lectured on “Avoiding Writing Convention Errors in Punctuation, Capitalization, and Abbreviations, while Deocampo gave tips on “Avoiding Congruence Errors on Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement, Subject-Verb Agreement, Number-Agreement and on Article Use.
The seminar-workshop’s chair and convenor, Rex G. Ortega, Executive Assistant to the Chancellor, gave a review of the communications flow of documents from various key offices to the OC and, he gave a brief presentation on problems in communications along with statistics on the wastage of paper and ink and effort when flawed documents move from one office to another.
The enthusiastic response of the participants to follow the suggested templates especially for the SOs was agreed upon during the last day of the seminar-workshop.
Ortega said that a major output of the seminar-workshop is the publication of a Stylebook of Usage and Standard Format that will aid in the production of error-free Special Orders and other official issuances in the future. By Christine Godinez Ortega for OC-OPI
