University General Assembly 2024
Br. Bernard S. Oca FSC
My dear faculty, staff, academic leaders, students and members of our ever-growing community — good morning. Welcome to AY24-25, a new academic year, another academic year.
Actually, dear fellow Lasallians and partners in a worthy Mission, as some of you may already know, AY24-25 is not meant to be just another academic year. Nearly fifty years ago, on February 19, 1975, the Department of Education and Culture conferred upon the old De La Salle College a university charter.
At that time, of course, we had already been offering postsecondary degrees — for decades, in fact. We started with an Associate in Arts degree in 1917, then our first full-blown baccalaureate degree, in Education, in 1930. If you wish, during our salu-salo later, you might want to politely enquire from those who were already on campus at that time what life was like then. Can I have a show of hands among our potential resource persons? Dr. Jun Tullao, I believe, once described it saying, “dalawa lang ang doktor noon — pareho pang nasa clinic.”
In an age of accreditation standards and higher ed regulations, it’s tempting to reduce university status to metrics such as the number of programs offered, the number of students enrolled, or the proportion of Ph.Ds among the faculty.
But I wonder how many of us here have heard the famous line from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Democratic senator from New York. He once said, “The way to build a great city is to build a great university and wait 200 years.”
It’s often quoted by university leaders abroad, I believe, because it hints at two acute truths. The first, and more obvious, is that the full impact of a great institution takes generations to unfold. A university can graduate thousands of trained and certified individuals every four months. But the full measure of their formation, their values, behavior, and decisions — only the long arc of posterity can properly reckon this.
But there is a second simpler, perhaps more challenging truth. First we must build a great university.
So permit me to ask plainly, on behalf of our community: in September 2024, on the cusp of our golden jubilee, our fiftieth anniversary as DLSU — are we a great university?
Are we a great university, upon which the hopes of three cities, or indeed a country, might yet rest?
For once, let us resist the urge to overthink and squirrel into narrow or self-serving definitions of what it means to be great. Great simply means considerably above the normal — in extent, in intensity, or eminence. Considerably above the normal, when compared to some reference or benchmark.
But there’s the rub, isn’t it? In life, there is a certain safety and comfort in declaring that one’s situation or identity or Mission is unique and therefore incomparable. These days, we are often reminded that comparison against others is a sure source of unhappiness.
And seeing as we are on the topic, can we speak for a moment about university rankings?
They are a curious animal, aren’t they? In my interactions with alumni, faculty, and fellow university leaders, there’s been nothing quite so triggering as talk of these international league tables.
The most frequent simmering suspicion, if not outright accusation, is that global rankings have distorted a university’s priorities. That long-term strategies, annual action plans, even operational budgets have all been skewed in a frantic but ultimately futile attempt to climb a made-up status ladder. That rankings are just a way for companies to monetize the deep tribalism of alumni. That a fixation with rankings has caused institutions like ours to lose sight of their special God-given Missions. And worst of all, that there is nothing any of us can do about it, that we have to play the game while simultaneously resenting it.
Surely there is a more sober and mature way to think through all of this.
We can begin by saying it’s true — there are universities that have fallen hard into rankings envy. Some have offered extraordinary sums for Nobel Prize winners, for instance, to either relocate, or simply lend their names to the faculty roster. There have been at least two very public cases in which university PR departments have been accused of spamming academics and employers with “awareness emails” in order to sway the results of reputation surveys.
But surely the way to avoid this is not to eschew talk of rankings and comparisons altogether, but to closely examine the underlying metrics and criteria that go into them, evaluate whether these are sensible and aligned with one’s values and aspirations, then use them to improve one’s performance.
In other words, to take the advice of every successful coach at the start of a season: focus on what we can change, our performance, and let the results take care of themselves.
My dear faculty and staff, our Jubilee year is upon us. There will be time in a few months to give thanks, to recognize the steadfast work of those who have served before us, and to celebrate properly.
But not yet. As we begin a new academic year, may I invite us all to take a measure of Faith, Service, and Communion in Mission and revisit our institutional priorities. They were first described last year, at the launch of our AY23–27 Jubilee Strategy. Give thought, in particular, to the first of our high-level Goals — Partners, that is, faculty and staff, who are Mission-focused, high-performing, and as a result fulfilled in their experience of De La Salle University.
We spent the first year of this strategic cycle learning from a small team of alumni who have spent a lot of time in global and high-performing organizations. Not through one-off seminars and workshops, but through mentoring and coaching at close quarters. It is not possible to roll out simultaneously across close to the 120 departments and offices we have at DLSU, so we have been proceeding in waves, starting with six units at a time. Eventually everyone will be covered by the end of this academic year.
May I share with you a few things we have learned by way of a conclusion today, and an opportunity to hit the ground running as we convene our departments this afternoon? Some are questions awkward, even painful to think about, but necessary as we begin our work this year, building a great university, planting seeds on behalf of those who will follow:
Strategy, if taken seriously, means extra work. Just because an organization performs its core activities excellently today, doesn’t mean it will be prepared for the threats and opportunities that will present themselves tomorrow.
But extra work should not mean 65 or 70-hour weeks. If we are to be a productive organization whose members are fulfilled, we ought to re-examine the ways we’ve been working and compare them to what high-performance high-morale teams do, whether in business, sports, research, the military, anywhere where the stakes are high.
What is the cadence or heartbeat of productive teams? Is it common for them to meet once a term, for three or four hours? Or do they work on the basis of more frequent, shorter, but more focused meetings?
When our meetings end, do we leave with clear ideas about next tasks and who are responsible for them? If not, how can we reasonably expect to deliver on any of our commitments?
Are we willing to learn how to better communicate, so that we are able to escalate problems more effectively, coordinate in advance with other offices to prevent them in first place, to think about measurable outcomes when we propose budgets, to encourage and recognize good work but also to ask the difficult question — what should happen if we are unable to deliver?
Mga kapwa Lasalyano, mga-sisingkuwenta na tayo bilang De La Salle University. Mid-life crisis siguro para sa karaniwang tao. Ngunit para sa isang institusyon, sinasabing halos pagdadalaga lamang o pagbibinata ito. Marami pa tayong maaaring matutunan, sa isa’t isa, at sa mga kasama nating naging matagumpay. Dasal ko na ang bawat isa sa atin ay mabigyan ng Panginoon ng bagong gana — at gigil — upang matuklasan ang Kanyang banal na hangarin para sa ating DLSU at maging bahagi ng pagtupad nito.