The University Research Center (URC) held a general orientation to provide an overview of the research programs and grants offered by the university last Sept. 12. The session, conducted through MS Teams, was attended by 55 participants from different institutes.
The main objective of the orientation was to inform the attendees about the research opportunities available through URC’s programs and grants. Juanito Anot Jr., URC Director, opened the session by reiterating the URC vision-mission statement and the FEU URC Research Agenda which were previously presented to the faculty during the Start of Academic Year Orientation last August. The URC Director also introduced the members of the his team: Marc Lancer Santos (coordinator), Eldrin Jan Cabilin, Jiellian Anne Enano, Mycah-Amelita Chavez (project leads), and Rei Melgarejo (staff).
Afterwards, Santos discussed the guidelines and procedures for application to the Research Assistance Grants, Publication Incentives, Conference Grants, and Thesis/Dissertation Grants. He also presented the Remote Access Guide to Scopus and Science Direct, which can help researchers with resources, and explained how to access the URC SharePoint where all the URC forms and guidelines can be found. Finally, he made announcements related to research funding and timelines as well as external grants.
The University Research Ethics Office Director, Joycelyn Filoteo, presented the newly created office’s functions of “developing, enforcing, and evaluating policies and procedures related to research ethics review and governance.” She also detailed the organizational structure of the office which is composed of the director, the technical/administrative staff, and two review panels, under each are the chair, secretary, and independent reviewers. Filoteo then explained the ethics review process and gave updates on the office’s SOP revision, migration to online transactions, and schedule of reviews (receiving and screening every 15th and 30th of the month, review every 3rd to 4th week of the month, and FEU REB review meeting every 1st to 3rd week of the month).
After the presentations, the orientation facilitator, Enano, read the questions from the attendees which were answered by the three speakers. By the end of the session, it was hoped that the attendees were better prepared to engage with the URC’s programs and motivated by the opportunities available to further their research goals.
