University of The Philippines Diliman - Centennial Celebration

Centennial Celebration

On 8 January 2008, the University of the Philippines System, with 7 constituent universities and 12 campuses offering 258 undergraduate and 438 graduate programs, began its centennial celebration at the Diliman campus. The university has produced 7 of 15 presidents, 12 chief justices of the Supreme Court, 34 of 35 national scientists and 36 of 57 national artists, and an estimated 250,000 alumni (15,000 doctors, 8,000 lawyers and 23,000 teachers).

Fernando Javier, 100, of Baguio City, oldest living U.P. alumnus (Civil Engineering from the University of the Philippines Manila, 1933), began the 100-torch relay at the U.P. academic oval in Diliman, Quezon City. The 99th torchbearer was Michael Reuben Dumlao, youngest, a 6th-grader from the University of the Philippines Integrated School in U.P. Diliman. Then U.P. president Emerlinda Roman, also its first woman president, ignited the centennial cauldron in front of the U.P. Oblation plaza.

The cauldron featured three pillars representing the University's core values of Excellence, Leadership, and Service and 7 flowers representing the constituent universities, to wit, U.P. Manila, U.P. Diliman (together with U.P. Pampanga, its extension campus), U.P. Los Baños, U.P. Baguio, U.P. Visayas, U.P. Mindanao, and U.P. Open University.

The centennial celebration came with a massive fund-raising campaign for the U.P. System, and generous donations from alumni came pouring in. One of the largest was the GT-Toyota Asian Cultural (ACC) Center, a gleaming 100-million-peso, one-hectare complex envisioned to be a major hub of campus activity as well as the main site of the Asian Center's different collaborations.