August 1, 2026
From July 29 to 31, 2026, the Graduate School of Baguio Central University (BCU) opened its doors to the Regional Quality Assurance Team (RQAT) of the Commission on Higher Education, Cordillera Administrative Region (CHED-CAR), for the Assessment and Evaluation of Graduate Teacher Education Programs under the EQUATE Project, pursuant to CMO No. 15, s. 2019. For three days, our records, programs, and people stood before evaluators tasked to look closely and honestly at what we do. We chose to receive that rigorous scrutiny as a partnership for continuous improvement.
The visit opened with a welcome ceremony for the RQAT experts and a short program. We began with congregational singing of “Goodness of God,” the whole room joining in gratitude before a word of assessment was spoken. Dr. Jennifer Longchasen, our Graduate School Community Extension Services Coordinator, then offered the opening prayer, grounding the day in humility and asking for wisdom for everyone in the room, evaluators and evaluated alike.
Dr. Elma D. Donaal, the Vice President for Academic Affairs, delivered the welcome remarks on behalf of University President Dr. Margarita Cecilda B. Rillera. She reminded us that a visit like this can sound, on paper, like an exercise in scrutiny. She asked us to receive it differently: the evaluators came as partners to help us see ourselves more clearly and help us improve our programs and services. Excellence in graduate education, she said, is not a certificate to frame on a wall. It is a daily discipline, carried out in classrooms, in research advising, in the quiet hours faculty spend reading a thesis or dissertation draft one more time before returning it with notes.
Dr. Michael Sebullen, the Vice President for Administration, introduced the BCU management team and Graduate School faculty, while Dr. Patrick M. Dinamling, CHED-CAR Representative, then introduced the RQAT members who would spend the next three days with us: Dr. Felina P. Espique, Dr. Ramir S. Austria, and Dr. Elizabeth M. Sagubo.
The program continued with a look at who we are and what we have built. Dr. Genevieve B. Kupang, the Dean of the Graduate School, presented the Graduate School’s Vision, Mission, Goals, and Objectives, alongside its recent accomplishments. These included results from the students’ evaluation of instruction, the faculty’s continuing research output, community extension service engagements, publications, and internationalization efforts.
Dr. Michael T. Sebullen, Director of the Research and Development Center and Vice President for Administration, presented the university-wide research agenda and presented highlights of our accomplishments that anchor our research and creative work. Dr. Edna Culbongan, our Graduate School Research Coordinator, shared updates on graduate-level research specifically.
Dr. Jennifer Longchasen, our GS Community Extension Services Coordinator, presented highlights of our community extension services in the Graduate School, a reminder that BCU’s mission reaches beyond the classroom and into the communities we serve.
An intermission number, “I See Light,” rendered by Ms. Alyza Mangaoang, Purchasing Officer, and Mr. Jherwel Buenafe, Records Officer, closed the morning before the RQAT proceeded to the real work of the visit: the records review at the Graduate School Dean’s Office and the assessment proper.
What followed over the next three days was rigorous. The RQAT team, led in its findings by Dr. Felina Espique, examined our nine graduate programs against CHED’s Policies, Standards, and Guidelines, the Philippine Qualifications Framework, and the expectations of Outcomes-Based Education. Their observations were candid and transparent, offered with concrete examples of how we could improve. BCU administrators and faculty listened with open hearts and full attention to every feedback report. The findings came with clear direction and practical ways forward, which the Graduate School committed to act on right after the visit.
Days before we even accepted the letter confirming the RQAT visit, the Graduate School had already called a curriculum review meeting on June 27, 2026, bringing together stakeholders to begin the review. The RQAT’s findings confirmed a direction we had already chosen to walk.
That is the spirit in which we now move forward. CHED-CAR and the RQAT have given the Graduate School time to act on the recommendations and resubmit the compliance documents to CHED.
Processes like this is always done in collaboration with several offices and units in the University. The Board of Trustees has taken up these recommendations directly, resolving to direct and resource the corrective actions ahead and to furnish the Quality Assurance Office and CHED-CAR with the outputs of our work. Two GS coordinators, Dr. Edna Culbongan and Dr. Jennifer Longchasen, and Ms. Marjorie B. Macalingay (Library), Ms. Jamaica Luisa D. Simon, MAGC (Human Resource Development Office), Mrs. Christina Wallang (GS Personnel), along with the Dean Dr. Genevieve B. Kupang, carried an extraordinary share of the preparation for this visit and stayed consistent through the entire stretch. Their names, other Graduate School Faculty and Administrators, and other BCU colleagues who supported logistics along the way, belong in this story too. The Office of Student Affairs headed by Ms. Rufina Cas-oy has likewise stepped in, deploying a student assistant to help the Graduate School through both the visit and the compliance work ahead.
There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over an office, a unit, college, university once the evaluators pack up and drive away. It would be easy, in that quiet, to feel the visit is over. It is not. The real work, the work that changes how we serve our graduate students, begins now, in the months and years ahead. We take it up with the same posture we opened the visit with: grateful, humble, and unafraid to be seen clearly. We will work harder and smarter, and learn from those who have done this with excellence, because it is in being seen clearly that we find out where we still need to grow.
To CHED-CAR and our RQAT experts, Dr. Felina Espique, Dr. Ramir Austria, Dr. Elizabeth Sagunob, and Dr. Patricio Dinamling, Baguio Central University sincerely thanks you for the honesty of your findings and for treating this visit as the collaborative dialogue it was meant to be.
To the members of the Board of Trustees, the administrators, the faculty members, staff, and student assistants who helped make this visit a success, thank you for reminding us daily that quality assurance is not one office’s task. It is everyone’s responsibility. “Soli Deo Gloria!” (To God be the glory).
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