TO OUR DEAR UPCD STUDENTS
First of all, on behalf of your College Administration, as well as the entire academic staff, I wish that all of you and all your loved ones are healthy and safe.
These unprecedented events in our lives are, and continuously, bringing enormous anxieties, stresses and concerns. We are all in this, and we share these feelings and treacly sentiments.
Numerous initiatives by your teachers and advisers have been started and are currently going on, in trying to reach out to each and everyone of you, to at least mitigate the anxieties and lessen somehow the impact of this problems, especially in the psycho-social wellness aspect of your situations, and also those of us. As the University put in place a more structured system to address the same, I urge you to participate actively in the program. This, among other purposes, is also intended to have an “accounting and inventory” of students’s conditions and make the administration cognizant of your conditions, so that interventions and actions may be done when necessary.
A big deal of the uncertainties resulting from the present situation, has brought forth worries in the fate of your education and training. At the onset of the quarantine, your teachers have responded by shifting to alternative and innovative learning environment for didactic classes. As we are about to plan and develop the same modes for your laboratory and clinical courses, the UP System (and later the CHED) decided to suspend all forms of teaching activities including online instructions and even submissions of requirements using digital platforms. Therefore, our efforts to sustain your learning have tremendously diminished. So I call for the cooperation of the studentry, that along with your own ways of coping with the existing scenario, and some of your teachers’ and advisers’ efforts to reach you for your own learning and wellness, to do your part and institute self-directed learning strategies. Spend time (or continue spending time) to go and seek sources of information about your lessons: the net (if you have the means); your textbooks; your notes; transcriptions, and others. Learn with your peers (peer learning) by sharing information and resources with your friends and schoolmates. Help one another.
Meanwhile, I am confident that when this health emergency is over, issues on clinical accomplishments, requirements, completion, residency rules, and those other issues that pertains to your training and education, will be addressed appropriately, working with a huge understanding of situation. Rest assured that we, your teachers, are all with you on this.
Thank you everyone, and let us all help each other. Stay healthy and safe. God bless us all.
DLM
