WMSU Strategic Planning and Execution Continuum 2022
Today’s Covid-19 has brought about new challenges to various organizations to include academic institutions. The pandemic has triggered a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment which prompted organizations to employ pragmatic strategies in the planning; execution of its goals to clearly articulate its vision and mission. The four-day WMSU strategic planning workshop organized by the University Planning Officer, Mr. Oscar S. Sicat and the Quality Management Officer Dr. Mario R Obra held at the LM Metro Hotel from January 12-15, 2022 focused on the essential context of the organization. The concept of public value has been revisited by examining how various stakeholders in the local communities appreciate the services of the University. Thus certain expectations and requirements of external interested parties were highlighted by representatives of some government agencies namely: Dr. Rody P. Garcia OIC- Regional Director from the Commission on Higher Education (CHED)-9; Ms. Crisanta Marlene P. Rodriguez, Regional Executive Director Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)-9; Mr. Mark Louie C. Martin, Regional Director Department of Budget and Management (DBM)- 9; Hon. Matine A. Wee, Regional Director Department of Science and Technology (DOST)- 9 and Ms. Jocelyn Wee, RTC Chief of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA)-9. For the internal interested parties the sharing of expectations and requirements were presented by Hon. Ronald F. Abaa, President WMSU Alumni Association; Hon. Adrian P. Semorlan, President WMSU Faculty Union and Hon. Christiana D.A. Lintag, President, WMSU Student Council. The City Planning Office furthermore presented the Zamboanga City LGU perspectives and roadmap in consonance with the WMSU goals. In a separate sharing experience that introduced internationalization as framework to the University strategic planning, Dr, Christine N. Ferrer, Director for External linkages and International Affairs of Tarlac Agricultural University provided her own insights. Dr. Ferrer narrated a first-hand experience integrating internationalization into their Quality Management System (QMS) and collaborated with Universities with QS ranking abroad thus establishing internal and external synergy.
The message given is to inspire SUCs to collaborate rather than compete and to expand it frontiers outside the country and further to invest on state of the art facilities and infrastructures like ICT and SIS to capacitate faculty and students towards internationalization (IZN) e.g. collaboration online international learning (COIL) Atty Lily Freia M Milla, CESO IV Deputy Executive Director of the Commission on Higher Education International Affairs Office discussed further a strategy map in the implementation of the Internationalization Framework in Philippine Higher Education framework. She emphasized that the intercultural dimension is incorporated in internationalization thus expanding Higher Education learning beyond national borders and cross-border education. Also, Dr. Milla emphasized that to level-up, higher education institutions have to integrate the Philippine internationalization roadmap performance targets to measure SUCs engagements: CHED initiated platforms for partnerships like the ICPE- International Continuing Professional Education grants; Building global partnerships with the Innovation laboratory for Global & Digital framework. The message here is for SUCs like WMSU to drumbeat initiatives to work closely with the local government agencies and the tourism industry in their respective regions to make Philippine education a hub for international engagements and for SUCs to be recipients of international learning opportunities. Prof. Eddie M. Nuque as the resource speaker for the workshop provided a comprehensive discussion of the strategic overview and conceptual framework. He facilitated the revisit to the University vision, mission and core values as preliminary to the identification of the University strengths, opportunities, aspirations and results (SOAR). The discussions provided a clear offshoot to the gap analysis and identification of breakthrough goals essential for framing strategies and objectives that followed. The bichronous and blended sessions of participants online and face-to-face were facilitated by the Technical Working Group of the Quality Management Team led by Dr. Mely Jane D. Jacinto (Lead, Internal Quality Auditor); Ms. Ere Lee Q. Salang (Deputy Lead, Internal Quality Auditor); Engr. Aylene R. Ingkoh, Dr. Lea E. Usman, Dr. Janet Delena, Ms. Aida Escorial (Technical Working Group members) and the QMO staff. (Dr. Lea E. Usman/WMSU-PAO)
