The University of Santo Tomas family continues to grow, with the formal name change of Aquinas University of Legazpi to University of Santo Tomas (UST) – Legazpi, Inc.
The Certificate of Filing of Amended Articles of Incorporation by UST-Legazpi was signed on September 12, 2017 by Director Marylou Duka Castillo of the Legazpi Extension Office of the Pasay-based Securities and Exchange Commission.
The former Aquinas University of Legazpi is the Dominican University in Bicol. The move to rename it was based on Acta (resolutions) from the 2012 Provincial Chapter of the Dominican Province of the Philippines, which mandated that two educational systems be formed: the UST system and the Letrán system.
In an interview with the Rector of UST Manila, Very Rev. Fr. Herminio V. Dagohoy, O.P., he said that the close collaboration between the two universities has been there even before the integration. UST supervises some of UST-Legazpi’s Master’s degree programs, including Pharmacy and Law. “The collaboration will continue and will include other disciplines. It will depend on UST-Legazpi [to determine] what programs to follow.”
This collaboration will eventually lead to more programs being supervised by UST Manila to re-align UST-Legazpi
program standards to those applied in Manila.
Earlier this year, on July 29, 2016, a similar event took place, when UST Manila signed the memorandum of agreement with Angelicum College of Quezon City. This MoA stipulated that Angelicum will be renamed UST-Angelicum College, with UST’s Rector as the latter’s own Rector and Chief Executive Officer. However, the UST-Legazpi linkage takes a different form, according to Fr. Dagohoy: “UST-Legazpi will remain an independent university from UST Manila [and will retain] its own Board of Trustees…I will just be an ex-officio member of the Board of Trustees of UST Legazpi.”
