From the President: Ricky Peña
UPIEAA is a 13-year old association of UP alumni who graduated from a course that turns 50 this year. Despite being relatively young, the Association has made its mark on the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research alumni, students, faculty as well as facilities. Incorporated in 2006, the organization was led by the following Presidents: Vito Aberin (2006), Rafael Cortez (2011), Pete Maniego (2012), Elise del Rosario (2013), Jaime “Bing” del Rosario (2014) and Ricky Banaag (2017).
The 2019 Board is composed of the following officers:
President Patrick Vincent Peña
Vice President Jose Mari Mercado
Treasurer Elise del Rosario
Secretary Erick Llaguno
Asst. Secretary Anais Silvestre
Over the last 12 months, the UPIEAA Board continued the work of its predecessors in serving the various sectors of the UPIEAA community.
The Board is organized into Working Committees, as follows:
The Membership Committee that Jomari heads with the help of Board members Maan del Rosario and Malou Esguerra, led efforts to liaise with the students, specifically with the two IE student organizations UP IE Club and CIEM (Circle of Industrial Engineering Majors). This included sharing of alumni databases and sponsorship of the Graduation Ball. The UPIEAA has traditionally helped the students organize their Graduation Ball. Apart from taking on a major part of the cost, UPIEAA inducts the graduates into the Association during this event.
This Committee carries on the massive task of cleaning and updating the alumni database with the current program being one of identifying batch representatives and batch chat groups in order to facilitate broadcasts.
The Communications Committee headed by Anais Silvestre and assisted by Liza Ting, sees to it that the website (upieaa.org) is updated to reflect the current activities of the Board. It has been active in its social media postings. Among the recent updates include the final selection of Achiever scholars and videos from the 2019 outstanding alumni. The committee will sustain this program to include other outstanding alumni so that students and new graduates may find role models and derive inspiration for the branches of IE they could pursue.
Selection of the Outstanding Alumni was spearheaded by the External Relations Committee led by Jop Yap which liaises with the UP Alumni Engineers as well as the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. After a careful evaluation of candidates, we present this evening 4 Distinguished Alumni Awards. We will also honor two professors as Distinguished Alumnus Awardees for Service to the UP IE Community.
One of the awardees, Elzar Dodjie Simon, served as speaker this afternoon in the first project of the Professional Enhancement Committee that Boyet Castro leads. The Committee will continue to make best use of the vast talents of alumni to help enrich other alumni, especially the ones who are just starting their careers. Along this line, talks will be supplemented by a mentorship program, plans for which are in the pipeline.
Realizing the importance of continuously getting the alumni involved and in touch, the Homecoming Committee opted to have an unscheduled get-together this year as we celebrate 50 years of IE, as well as the meteoric rise of the UP Men’s Basketball team. Mikal Rallonza, our Homecoming Committee Chair, congratulations for staging this event.
A key program of the association is the UPIE Achievers Program that Jop Yap and I manage. As designed, this program provides a monthly stipend to cover daily allowances for food, transport and supplies to IE students who have limited sources of funds. Now on its 4th year, the new set of six scholars were chosen after an arduous application process followed by interview sessions. The committee members in charge starting from this year, have made it a point to hold Kamustahan sessions that aim to provide mentorship and moral support to complement the financial assistance.
Starting this year, this Program will be extended to include not only financially challenged students but also those who are academically promising, as the program was successful in attracting support from the Security Bank Foundation. Furthermore, during the year, Jollibee and Jose Aliling Construction have started their program of supporting IE scholars. The latest development provides inspiration for the Board to continue its efforts of attracting the support of corporate donors.
While directed at students, the Achievers program is also intended to retain IE Faculty who cannot yet access the Teaching Research Grant because of their tenure.
In the pipeline is the Fund-Raising program for the Department which our Department Chair Erick Llaguno will launch tonight. This will be a major project for the coming year.
By all indications, a very busy UPIEAA year is about to end and a busier year is in the offing!
To this year’s Homecoming theme – CONNECTIONS / DIRECTIONS
It is the Board’s goal to add value and contribute to the growth of the UPIE community in effecting positive change for the community, the country and beyond.
This can only happen as we strengthen the CONNECTIONS that bind us, as we marvel at the diversity of our members and how our common IE discipline has impacted on Philippine business and society. We are presented with over 3,000 dots – proud products of the UPIE system over the last 50 years. We connect these dots, we create new DIRECTIONS and build a formidable force that can harness and unleash the full power of the quintessential Industrial Engineer’s role in delivering meaningful change in the turbulent seas we find ourselves in. This, while helping and ensuring future Industrial Engineers to be far better than we are.
Again, I welcome you our dear Alumni, and encourage you to take a more active stance in helping your UPIE Alumni Association. Enjoy the evening as only IEs can, I’m sure you’ll THINK OF BETTER WAYS to make this evening a blast like no other! Cheers!
UPIE Batch ’87
