Historical Background
The Ramon V. del Rosario College of Business (RVRCOB) at De La Salle University has a unique history intertwined with the university’s centennial celebrations in 2011. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of Lasallian education in the Philippines, the university honored one of its distinguished alumni, Ramon V. del Rosario, by renaming its College of Business after him in July 2011. In the next two years, the first Dean of RVRCOB, Dr. Brian C. Gozun, documented this milestone as well as the college’s aspirations in a series of articles published via The View From Taft column in BusinessWorld.
The first article explains the significance of renaming the college after the late Ramon V. del Rosario. As a visionary business leader and ambassador who embodied Lasallian values of faith, service and communion, attaching RVR’s name to the college accords it honor and prestige. The second article elaborates on RVRCOB’s mission to produce graduates who transform business and think about the common good beyond profits. It aims to nurture socially responsible leaders through entrepreneurial education rooted in Lasallian teachings. The third article further expounds the constitutional and Christian basis for RVRCOB’s philosophy of “business education for the common good.” Together, these three articles provide an inside look into the founding aspirations of the Ramon V. del Rosario College of Business.
An Inside View of Taft
Brian C. Gozun
Note: This article was first published via The View From Taft business opinion column under BusinessWorld on June 9, 2011. The author was Dr. Brian C. Gozun, the Founding Dean of the RVRCOB.
From the time this column was started in 1990, it has been filled with views on business and management issues of the professors of the De La Salle Graduate School of Business (DLS-GSB). Oscar Lagman, a GSB marketing professor who played a big role in talking with BusinessWorld about establishing this column, gave the column its name, a take-off from the common expression “the view from the top,” for the then GSB was based at Taft Avenue, Manila. Now that the University is celebrating its 100th anniversary, it is timely and fitting that an inside view of Taft, meaning De La Salle University itself, be taken.
De La Salle started as a private primary school as a counter-response to the growing popularity of schools established by American Protestant missionaries in the early days of the American colonial period. Manila Catholic Archbishop Jeremiah James Harty, an alumnus of a Christian Brothers school in St. Louis, felt that a school run by English-speaking Brothers would draw students attracted to the schools of American Protestant missionaries because English, the emerging official language, would be the medium of instruction in those schools.
Archbishop Harty asked the Mother House of the Christian Brothers in Rome to set up a school in Manila. With the endorsement of the Pope, the Brothers opened as an elementary and high school for boys on Nozaleda Street (now General Luna) in Paco, Manila, on June 16, 1911, with 125 students. On February 12, 1912, the college was incorporated. The college was permitted to confer commercial high school diplomas in the same year. It received a charter from the Governor-General of the Philippines allowing the college to confer associate degrees in commerce. It started offering the degree as a two-year program in 1920.
The college moved in September 1921 to a bigger site on the newly built Taft Avenue in the newly developed residential area of Malate to accommodate the ever increasing number of enrollees. In 1968, the high school department transferred to La Salle Green Hills to make room for the fast expanding enrollment and faculty of the college department. Ten years later, the grade school was dissolved, making De La Salle Taft (as it is commonly called to distinguish it from the other La Salle schools) a purely tertiary school.
The 1970’s also saw other major changes. The college started admitting female students in 1973. Two years later, it was granted university status, requiring a change in name to De La Salle University. DLSU currently offers coeducational undergraduate and graduate degree programs through its seven colleges and one school specializing in varied disciplines, including business, engineering and liberal arts.
The Graduate School of Business, whose faculty composes the pool of writers of this column, had its beginnings in 1960. After two years of study and preparatory work with alumni and consultation with captains of industry and leaders of the business community, De La Salle opened its Graduate School of Business with the Master of Business Administration program. In 1982, it started offering the Doctor of Management program, which was renamed the Doctor of Business Administration program in 1992. Since 2008, the Graduate School of Business has been fully articulated with the College of Business to strengthen the academic focus and practitioner-orientation of both undergraduate and graduate programs in accountancy, management, entrepreneurship, marketing, commercial law, and finance.
Within and outside Taft, the entire Lasallian community celebrates one hundred years of Lasallian education in the country. The celebration kicks off on June 11 with a Proudly Green Fellowship Event at the SMX Convention Center, Mall of Asia, where the story of the beginnings of De La Salle Manila will be depicted in a lyrical theater show. The veneration of the relics of St. La Salle will start on June 15 at DLSU-Manila and will move on to other La Salle schools. On June 16, La Salle communities all over the country will proudly celebrate the centenary of Lasallian education in the Philippines and will proudly look forward to the next 100 hundred years.
Animo La Salle!
What’s in a name?
Brian C. Gozun
Note: This article was first published via The View From Taft business opinion column under BusinessWorld on August 4, 2011. The author was Dr. Brian C. Gozun, the Founding Dean of the RVRCOB.
On July 25, 2011, the De La Salle University (DLSU) College of Business officially became the Ramon V. del Rosario College of Business (RVRCOB). The name RVR was previously attached to the Graduate School of Business (GSB) of the former De La Salle Professional Schools (DLSPS). Three years ago, when the GSB was vertically articulated to the then DLSU College of Business and Economics, the RVR name somehow got lost. Last week, it was revived to encompass not only the graduate school but also the undergraduate programs through the RVRCOB.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But contrary to what Shakespeare believed, names are important. The name is the first image that a person, place, or, in this case, a college projects. In its centennial year, DLSU accords honor and prestige to one of its distinguished alumni by attaching RVR’s name to its biggest college. RVR, who passed away three years ago, was a Lasallian from grade school to college. He was a visionary in the field of management. He adapted modern business methods at Phinma and opened FilOil, the first Filipino oil refinery. He ventured into the public sphere by becoming an ambassador to Canada, Germany, and Japan. He was also the founding president of the Manila Jaycees and headed various charities such as the Smokey Mountain Foundation and Caritas Manila.
Similarly, the business and management programs of DLSU have always been at the forefront of both theory and practice. Graduates of these programs become highly successful entrepreneurs, managers, and executives. Part-time faculty members who hail from industry provide the much-needed inputs from practice while full-time faculty members advance management knowledge through research and learner-centered teaching methodologies. The College of Business has been and will continue to be at the forefront of management learning in the country, in Asia, and in the world. Hopefully, this thrust becomes more concrete now that the college has an iconic exemplar in the person of RVR.
RVRCOB is the first and only college at DLSU that has a name attached to it. I have been asked several times how this had been accomplished by the del Rosario family. I reply that to be honored, one has to embody a true Lasallian – a person who has a very strong faith in God, zeal to serve God and country, and communion in St. La Salle’s mission of helping out the last and the least. RVR was such a person. When his name was attached to the DLSPS-GSB in 2006, RVR was deeply grateful to have experienced the event, which was attended by former President Corazon Aguino and by his longtime friend, Mr. Washington SyCip.
July 25, 2011, would have been RVR’s 93rd birthday. The launch of RVRCOB was attended by the del Rosario family and friends (including Mr. SyCip) and by the Brothers, faculty, staff, and students of DLSU.
Let me end with a statement from RVR’s biography, written by Roel Landingin, which states, “…RVR inspires young Filipinos to become nation builders through entrepreneurship built on professional competence, the highest standards of integrity, and genuine patriotism and social responsibility…”
RVR’s legacy will forever live in the students, graduates, faculty, and staff of RVRCOB!
Business Education for the Common Good
Brian C. Gozun
Note: This article was first published via The View From Taft business opinion column under BusinessWorld on July 9, 2012. The author was Dr. Brian C. Gozun, the Founding Dean of the RVRCOB.
A year ago, the De La Salle University (DLSU) College of Business officially became the Ramon V. Del Rosario College of Business (RVRCOB). In this column last year entitled “What’s in a name?,” I wrote about how proud DLSU was to attach RVR’s name to its biggest college. RVR, who passed away four years ago, was a Lasallian from grade school to college. He was a management visionary who adapted modern business methods at Phinma and opened FilOil, the first Filipino oil refinery. He ventured into the public sphere by becoming an ambassador to Canada, Germany, and Japan. He was also the founding president of the Manila Jaycees and headed various charities such as the Smokey Mountain Foundation and Caritas Manila.
A year after, RVRCOB through its Management and Organization Department (MOD) has found a way not only to live up to what Ramon V. del Rosario has done for business but also to be called a truly Lasallian business institution. The Philippines has more than 1,500 business schools and sadly, degrees in business and management are a dime a dozen. What makes RVR COB stand out from the rest is rooted in DLSU’s mission and vision to produce graduates who will transform the business environment both as entrepreneurs and as employees and who will think about the common good. Producing business leaders who think beyond the bottom line and work for the common good is what RVRCOB stands for.
The concept of common good can simply mean having the greatest possible good for the highest number of individuals. RVRCOB as a Lasallian business school espouses the common good by making students reflect that it is better to have one hundred millionaires than one billionaire in the industry. Rather than making it to the top ten of a ranking in terms of personal wealth, it would be better to spread the wealth by having not just one, but two, or three, or even hundreds of millionaires. What happened with the “we are the 99 percent” movement last year in various parts of the world just shows how unequal the corporate world has become. We hope and pray that RVR COB students, once they become the top honchos in the companies that they work with or at the enterprises that they start, will be able to share the wealth.
At RVRCOB, we aim to produce graduates who possess not only technical competence and proficiency but also an entrepreneurial mindset. We make sure that once they work in the so-called real world, they think of ways to innovate, to create, and to continuously improve their organizations. For those venturing on their own, social entrepreneurship will pave the way to creating businesses that will not only create value but also empower communities. Tony Meloto of Gawad Kalinga has espoused social innovation through social entrepreneurship among RVRCOB students. Social enterprises can create social change by adopting fair trade, using indigenous materials and empowering all members of the community.
The concept of business for the common good was recently discussed by Dr. Benito Teehankee, MOD Chair of RVRCOB, on Dr. Aliza Racelis’ show, DZXL’s “Buhay Pamilya at Bayan.” Dr. Teehankee reminded everyone of Article XII, Section 6 of the Philippine Constitution, which states, “The use of property bears a social function, and all economic agents shall contribute to the common good. Individuals and private groups, including corporations, cooperatives, and similar collective organizations, shall have the right to own, establish, and operate economic enterprises, subject to the duty of the State to promote distributive justice and to intervene when the common good so demands.”
This concept of common good, based on our Constitution and coupled with “Caritas in Veritate” (Charity in Truth), which espouses Christian reflection on social, political and economic issues, is what we are doing in RVR COB. As a Lasallian institution, we live by our values of faith, service, and communion in mission. As a school named after RVR, we produce nation builders who have professional competence, the highest standards of integrity, and genuine patriotism and social responsibility. Thus, RVR COB will truly be a resource of business education for the common good.
The three articles by Dr. Gozun showcase the intentional forming of the Ramon V. del Rosario College of Business as a distinguished Lasallian institution, right from its renaming in 2011 during the De La Salle University centennial celebrations. Through educating “business leaders who think about the common good,” RVRCOB aims to produce graduates devoted to social responsibility and nation-building, following the example set by Ramon V. del Rosario himself.
As the college moves forward with the vision “To be an innovative business school for human development and the common good in Southeast Asia,” and a mission to nurture business leaders guided by Lasallian values who influence policy, improve practices, and empower communities, may it continue to nurture young leaders grounded in core Lasallian values of Faith, Service, and Communion. By living its motto “We nurture Lasallian business leaders who make a difference,” RVRCOB hopes to transform business practices and progress the Philippines through graduates with technical competence, unwavering integrity and a spirit of patriotism. Guided by its noble vision and mission, may the young college thrive as a wellspring of responsible leaders who positively impact society.