Dr. Allan Benedict I. Bernardo
Conferred AY 2003-2004
A renewed Fellow…
I was elected as member of the Society of Fellows in 2003, and since then, my story as an academic has involved a lot of personal and institutional transformations. This story includes leaving DLSU, then returning to DLSU as a stronger researcher to mentor the next generation of DLSU researchers.
I was trained as a cognitive psychologist and educational psychologist at Yale University, and my move to DLSU pushed me deeper into the educational psychology field. In the turn of the millennium, as Dean of the College of Education and Director of the Lasallian Institute of Development and Educational Research, I initiated more research projects and successfully competed for research grants in education: educational assessment, teacher development, education reform, and student learning and achievement motivation. It was during this time that the college launched The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, the first DLSU journal to be listed in the World of Science and Scopus, and which I was Editor for over 10 years. Also during this time, I was very privileged to mentor numerous master’s and doctoral students, some of whom are now leaders in their respective institutions across the country and in other Asian countries. They are true exemplars of DLSU’s contribution to nation building, building talented professionals who bring the Lasallian mission and values wherever they go.
As I got more involved in university administration, I also became more involved in the higher education research and policy space, becoming more actively involved in committees, technical working groups, and programs of the Commission on Higher Education, Department of Education, and Department of Science and Technology. It was very fulfilling to represent DLSU in national spaces of policy work. During this time I was privileged to be elected Academician in the National Academy of Science and Technology, becoming only the second Lasallian faculty member to be elected the prestigious merit based scientific society, after the formidable and beloved Br Andrew Gonzalez, FSC.
However, my intellectual interests were pulling me to a new direction, one that focused on social psychological and cultural dimensions of educational and other social and behavioral phenomenon. I developed stronger ties in social and cultural psychology, especially with the Asian Association of Social Psychology, for which I served as President, culminating in my editorship of the Asian Journal of Social Psychology. The pull to do better social psychology research was the motivation that allowed me to be a Fulbright Advanced Research Fellow at Stony Brook University in 2011, and that made move to the University of Macau, leaving DLSU and ending my affiliation to the Society of Fellows in 2012.
In 2019, I made an important decision to return to DLSU as Distinguished University Professor and was very thankful to be accepted back to the Society of Fellows. As a renewed Fellow, I bring a different mission in the university, which is to help building capacities of a new generation of researchers, who will aspire to higher standards of research that align with DLSU’s global aspirations as a research university. My mission has been aided tremendously by DLSU’s support for research and publications. Since 2019, I have found renewed energy to mentor undergraduate and graduate students in psychology, develop collaborative mentorships with younger faculty members and researchers from different colleges of the university, win a few competitive research grants some of which are with international collaborators, and represent DLSU again in national and international organizations that work on psychology and human development, education, science, among others. Under the Psychology of Hope and Well-being Research Group (HopeLab@DLSU) numerous students and faculty member have completed and published numerous research projects, some involving international positive psychology researchers. Under the collaborative leadership of social psychologists from La Trobe University, we have initiated numerous cross-cultural research projects on the cultural ideology of polyculturalism, energizing research across Asia, Australasia, and Europe. My engagement with the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM2) pulled me back to doing education research, and as result of which I have facilitated a multidisciplinary group of DLSU faculty members doing research on different aspects of educational reform.
My renewed membership in the Society of Fellows has born fruit: close to 100 publications since 2019, many of which are co-authored with young DLSU and international researchers, with the hope that these young researchers will continue in the path of DLSU’s global research aspirations. Personally, I try to continue to bring honor to the university and the Society of Fellows. In the past five years, I have been consistently listed in the top 2% across all disciplines in terms of scientific impact, and honor I share with some other members of the Society of Fellows. In 2023, I was elected Fellow to The World Academy of Science, becoming the first DLSU faculty member to be a member of this international scientific merit-based society. In 2024, I was elected to serve in the Executive Committee of the International Union of Psychological Science, the first Filipino to serve as such.
My professional academic journey continues, and I continue in this path (hopefully of growth) with much gratitude to the community and fellowship of the Society of Fellows, and to the greater community of DLSU that aspires to build a better university, a better country, and a better world.
April 2025