Lasallians reap gold in major competitions

DLSU-Manila students won major prizes in two national competitions, including the prestigious Palanca Awards for Literature, while a Communication Arts student received an Excellence Award for besting thousands of participants from Asia and the Pacific in a recent UNESCO photo contest. 

Palanca awardees

Johannes Chua, an Economics graduate and student of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, grabbed the first place in the newly introduced category Future Fiction in Filipino of this year’s Palanca Literary Awards. Chua’s entry was titled, “Kalinangan.”

Aurora Yumul, another MFA student, also won the top prize for her work, “Selyo at Kastilyo,” in the category Dulang Pantelebisyon. 

Meanwhile, Rebecca Añonuevo, currently enrolled in the Literature doctoral program, won two awards. She was second in Filipino Essay for her entry, “Talinghaga ng Gana” and third in Poetry in Filipino for her collection, “Batubalani at Iba Pang Mga Tula.”

The Palanca Awards is an annual event in the Philippine literary scene, established in 1950 by the Palanca Foundation to pay tribute to the country’s gifted writers for their most outstanding literary works. For this year, two DLSU-Manila faculty joined the boards of judges in the Future Fiction category. Departamento ng Literatura at Wikang Filipino Chair Dr. Isagani Cruz judged in the Filipino division while Dr. Bienvenido Lumbera judged in the English division. 

UNESCO Prize for Excellence recipient

In another development, the Asia/Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO (ACCU) awarded the Prize for Excellence to Precious Angel Chua, a Communication Arts student, for her winning photo chosen among 4,787 entries submitted from 23 member states of UNESCO in the Asia and the Pacific.

Chua’s photo titled, “Let’s Play Ball!” features three physically handicapped men playing basketball. Her work will be published in album-form and included among 110 works for the Travelling Photo Exhibition in Asia and the Pacific.

Web Design champions

In the field of information technology, two Lasallians garnered the top prize in the PC-Partner Web Design Competition launched recently by SM Equicom, Infocom, and Banco de Oro, and participated in by students from other local colleges and universities. 

The team of BS Physics student Peter Martin Gomez and CS-Information Technology sophomore James Albert Subido was declared grand champion for their entry, ixavier.com.

The site “envisions the web of the future” and features links to some of the best sites for select categories. They beat other winners of inter-collegiate web design contests.

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