A prosperous 2016 to all alumni and friends of MSU!!
MSU President’s New Year’s Message to all MSU Alumni
We should thank the Almighty God for His blessings to each of us in 2015, and for buttressing us in surmounting or surviving the problems and challenges during that year. And may the Almighty God bless you and your loved ones more this 2016.
As your fellow MSUan who benefited from the life-changing transformative magic of MSU, and in the spirit of the core values that the past Christmas season and the preceding Ramadan and Eid el Adha taught to Christians and Muslims respectively, allow me to take this new year as an opportunity to urge all alumni to revisit their relationship to the university. It is important to note that the contemporary global challenges of poverty, ignorance and violence are but a globalized version of the same problems, which spawned the creation of MSU in 1961.
The growing number and intensity of faith-based violent incidents in many parts of the world today suggests the global relevance of MSU's special focus on the promotion of intercultural understanding and cooperation that each alumnus/alumna had experienced in our campuses for 4 to 5 years. Since its inception, MSU has been performing this multiculturalist integration function, while undertaking various programs for the educational upliftment of young Mindanaoans (Muslim, Christian and Lumad) and the collective empowerment of their communities.
The above points suggest that as MSUans, as Filipino citizens and as global villagers, we are called upon to play the role of MSU in development administration and peace building, after our MSU experience and outside its borders (wherever we are and whatever our profession and vocation). MSU alumni should strive to function as "Little MSU" for others, especially for the poorest of the poor and disadvantaged sectors. This means making every alumnus a capsulized version of the institutional goals and mission of MSU. Operationalizing this would require doing the following two (2) recommendations.
The first is the need for MSU alumni to contribute (in various appropriate ways) to the educational upliftment of the youth of Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan (MINSUPALA) and the development of the said megaregion and the whole Philippines. As you know pretty well, despite the numerous state universities and colleges (SUCs) and private higher education institutions (HEIs) that we have in the country today, higher education remains inaccessible and unaffordable to a big number of Muslim, Christian and Lumad youths in the Philippines. Obviously, helping the big number of indigent high school graduates from our respective barangays, municipalities, cities and provinces to access (with scholarship or financial) the degree programs of MSU and other SUCs or HEIs (especially this time when funds for internal scholarships or grants of MSU campuses have dwindled significantly), is certainly one major area to showcase the "MSU spirit" within our alumni. Your individual and collective contributions would certainly be a significant complement to the massive upgrading and modernization of the academic infrastructures and facilities and the rationalization and internationalization of curricular programs now underway in all MSU campuses. Thanks to the unprecedented support of Pres. Benigno C. Aquino III for the modernization of MSU to become world-class!
My second recommendation has to do with the role of every MSU alumnus/alumna (based in the Philippines or overseas) as a global citizen - as an active participant in the now increasingly globalized world economy. Our alumni have to help actively in the promotion of interfaith understanding and cooperation. They should help transform their places of work and abode to become like our campuses - as dynamic laboratories for peaceful interfaith or intercultural coexistence. With our 161,606 tertiary graduates from all 11 MSU campuses as of today that means we have the same number of "Little MSU" helping address the said global challenges.
In other words, we now have a critical mass of MSU alumni, big enough to make a huge difference in helping transform their alma mater to become world-class, and contribute significantly in addressing domestic and international peace and development imperatives, through their selfless and collaborative and cohesive efforts.
Let me stress also that our alma mater unselfishly and courageously flew with us, when we were under its tutelage. Today, for it to survive and grow, it needs us, its alumni, to be the empowering wind beneath its wings, as it soars to higher levels of excellence, relevance and inclusiveness for Mindanao and the Filipino nation, and as it continues with its extremely challenging journey towards world-class status by 2020.
Mabuhay kayong lahat! Mabuhay ang ating dakilang paaralan, ang Pamantasang Mindanao!
So kalilintad go so kapipiya ginawa na mambagiyaniyo langon sangka-i a bago a ragon a 2016! Kapdipdi kanobo na pamisita kano sa MSU imanto! (May peace and happiness be upon all of you this New Year 2016! Please visit MSU now!)
Message from your fellow MSU alumnus, Dr. Macapado Abaton Muslim, President, Mindanao State University System. Sent on January 1, 2016. (By Asa Al Maraj Madale)
