UPIEAA Endorses Dean Aura for UP Chancellor

In a formal letter last December 22, 2016, from UPIEAA’s president Bing del Rosario addressed to UP President Fred Pascual, the UPIEAA formally endorsed Dean Aura Matias for the position of UP Chancellor, a  position that had opened up. In his letter, Bing del Rosario cited that Aura was instrumental in working with Professor San Mateo to set up the UPIEAA in 2006 and that her term as Department of Industrial Engineering & Operations Research Chair was marked by a strong reach-out to the IE alumni, formal linkages to the corporate world (e.g., Dante Briones and Bayantrade, SAP Philippines, P&G Philippines, Accenture Philippines, etc.), formal visioning and missioning for the department, extensive use of benchmarks and metrics to measure the department’s success, strong support for the professional organizations such as the Philippine Institute of Industrial Engineers (PIIE) and Operations Research Society of the Philippines (ORSP), and the opening of a new track on Ergonomics and Human Factors that inspired a huge number of IE students to take up the major.

Bing also mentioned in his endorsement that during her term, Aura institutionalized the annual reporting of departmental accomplishments and activities to the alumni, primarily during the homecomings. He said, “She had set a very high standard for IE department chairs that successors had found hard to equal. Although the college itself had been regularly tapping the engineering alumni for chair donations and infrastructure renovations, it was only during Aura’s IE chair term that the IE department systematically utilized the IE alumni network to assist with various infrastructure projects. She reached out to several alumni, for example, for help in defraying the cost of sending IE students and their coach to compete in the Bandung Statistics for Engineers international competition – which UP IE won.”

Bing also noted her savvy marketing and communication skills. “I have seen her ‘work’ corporate types effectively so that they’re eager to help and she gets alumni excited when she shares her vision for the future of the department. Her strong presentation skill is backed up by a very high level of fluency that is not that common among engineering faculty. Her talks are very well organized, supported by the right level of data, and she is highly effective in meetings, whether one-on-one or with a crowd of 150 at an Engineering Theater forum. And although she is always very engaging, her IE background keeps her level headed, always with end in mind and in problem-solving mode.”