UP Mindanao personnel celebrated the success of the ISO Stage 2 Audit at the first university flag ceremony on January 6, 2025, along with the accompanying recommendation by TÜV-SÜD for the issuance of an ISO 9001:2015 certification for UP Mindanao.
Quality Assurance Director Assoc. Prof. Ritchie Mae Gamot, Vice Chancellor for Administration Asst. Prof. Leo Manuel Estaña, and Chancellor Prof. Lyre Anni Murao gave congratulatory messages tempered with advice.
Prof. Gamot facilitated a game of “bato-bato pick” (“rock, paper, scissors”), innovated through the use of two hands, which enlivened the gathering.
Relating the game to ISO, Prof. Gamot (shown in the above photo) said “your picks are the options that could work in your office. We have a goal t find the best method that will allow us to implement a particular task in the most optimal way. Each of you can contribute a process, a method that will be the best. Let’s make a habit of quality.”
Vice Chancellor Estaña (shown in the above photo) reiterated the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle for continuing improvement. “For me, quality is a way of life,” he said. “For our internal and external clients we have questionnaires where we can check whether our services are satisfactory or not. If there are any suggestions from our customers, we evaluate what we can do further, and we act on it. It becomes a cycle.”
“At least we all agree that we all deserved that break,” said Chancellor Murao. “Even if we extended one day to be able to finish our ISO Stage 2 Audit we were able to get a good result with the recommendation at the end of the day.
I hope that you had a good time with your family with your time to refresh, relax, and other ‘R’s during the break. But now comes the new year. As we all know when the new year comes there’s always that word.. resolution. New Year’s Resolution.
Resolution comes with the word ‘resolve.’ It doesn’t mean that if you haven’t done it today that is the end. You have to be determined through ups and downs to work on your resolutions.
Here in the university my resolution is to make change. We are going to make change for UP Mindanao and what we are now doing through ISO is one of the means, one of the tools, we are using to help implement better things here in UP Mindanao
But beyond that, if there’s any change that we want to have in our institution, I think the change should come from ourselves first. Transformation should come from within ourselves, what can be improved in our outlook, our perspective of ourselves in this institution.
I hope that is also one of our resolutions for 2025, to be the transformation that the university wants of you. Because if we all are transformed, imagine the impact that you will have as a collective body. The impact that we will have in our institution. I hope that everybody here has that personal resolution. I hope that that resolution will result in a personal transformation that will lead to better relationships with your family, with a deeper understanding and concern for others. Because that is the concept that we want to inculcate through ISO, customer service. Always looking out for others, for the needs of other people. So, I hope that we continue to work on that as individuals and collectively as a university. Of course, change cannot happen overnight but what we are doing here is setting the baseline,” she said.
The well-attended ceremony culminated in a fellowship snack of pastries and beverage mixes sponsored by units of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
UP Mindanao’s Stage 2 Audit was completed on December 19, 2024, with the findings and recommendations delivered by TÜV-SÜD Audit Team Leader Len Marc Tagud. The ISO accreditation aligns with the UP System’s flagship program for Quality Assurance and Quality Management Systems.
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