UST SIMBAHAYAN Community Development Office Assistant Director Asst. Prof. Froilan A. Alipao presented his paper titled ‘Journeying with Communities: Theoretical Reflections from the Community Integration as Complex and Integrative Method for Teaching, Research and Service.’ His paper about teaching and serving in a university setting was presented during the March 25-27, 2019 The Asian Conference on Education and International Development 2019 (ACEID2019) held recently at The Toshi Center Hotel, Tokyo, Japan. With the theme ‘Independence and Interdependence,’ the conference was organized by the International Academic Forum (IAFOR) in association with the IAFOR Research Centre at Osaka University and IAFOR’s Global University Partners.
The conference was highlighted by the lectures delivered by speakers, namely, Professors Yozo Yokota and Haruko Satoh. Yokota delivered his lecture focused on Education and Displaced People. He is an internationally renowned jurist and teacher in international laws on economics and human rights, a UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar and a respected advocate of human rights. Satoh delivered a lecture titled ‘Between Aspiration and Reality: Cultural Conflict in a University Classroom.’ He is a Specially Appointed Professor at the Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) at Osaka University, Japan.
Alipao, who teaches at the Faculty of Arts and Letters under the Department of Sociology, discussed that the role of the faculty members is to respond to the challenge of being agents of social transformation within and outside the university. He said that to be able to respond to this call, faculty members must be committed and equipped with integrated knowledge, skills and values for teaching and learning, research and service with the communities.
With Alipao’s experience of almost 17 years of serving the University of Santo Tomas through teaching, research and service with the communities, he has proven that these were complex and yet integrative for the full processes of learning and serving. These processes enriched Alipao’s experiences and wisdom for the integrative formation of students in terms of knowledge generation and management and service with the communities. His paper generally described and reflected the processes and learning gained from the experiences of community integration as integrative method of teaching, research and service for community development with all the stakeholders, which include the author (Alipao) as faculty, researcher and university community development facilitator; the immediate and substantial university departments or offices where the author is directly connected; the students as learners, researchers and servers for community development and empowerment and; the partner communities as substantial stakeholders.
Alipao joined 200 academics and practitioners in representing more than 40 different nations that came together and shared their research studies and practices.
