By Michael Casas
The Ateneo de Davao University (ADDU) is a Catholic, Jesuit, and Filipino University founded in 1946. Through the years, ADDU went through institutional, academic, and structural expansions guided by its mission to become a leader in educational reform in the Southern Philippines.
The commitment of this university to excel in instruction, research, relevant community extension, and formation of men and women rooted in the Ignatian values, merited the numerous recognitions it received. Among the distinctions of ADDU include the PAASCU Level III Accreditation and Autonomous Status from CHED. Just recently, the university is included in the Top 300 Schools in Asia, 5th in the Philippines, and the only university based in Mindanao, that reached the QS Ranking of Academic institutions in Asia. All these validated the pursuit of the university to provide excellent academic programs and services in all its departments.
The ADDU Chemistry Department under the Natural Sciences and Mathematics Cluster of the School of Arts and Sciences offers the bachelor (established in 1969) and masteral (established in the early 1990s) programs in Chemistry. The board exam passing rate of the undergraduates has always been above the national mean and recently consistent at 100%. Several of its alumni received the BPI-DOST Science awards, topped the licensure examinations, as well as the University Graduation Awards. The recent increase in enrolment in the MS Chemistry program is notable due to the continuous upgrading of the department’s faculty profile and facilities.
The department was a Commission on Higher Education – Center of Development (CHED-COD) in 2004 and is presently granted the Level III Accreditation by PAASCU. The department continues to build strategic partnerships with various organizations including CHED, DOST, RHRDC, PITAHC and ICP. The department’s competent faculty teaching undergraduate and graduate courses are holding master’s and doctorate degrees and are sent for trainings within the country and abroad. The faculty’s expertise and research interest are on Analytical Chemistry, Environmental Chemistry, and Natural Products with many of their research outputs published in ISI-indexed journals. Faculty received research grants and awards from DOST, CHED, RHRDC, and the ADDU University Research Council.
The department also maintains the ADDU-Chemistry Analytical and Research Laboratory (CARL) to serve as a service laboratory for third party analysis and a research and advanced chemistry laboratory for undergraduate and graduate students. ADDU-CARL houses state-of-the-art instruments including a Gas Chromatograph-Mass Spectrometer (GC-MS), High Performance Liquid Chromatograph (HPLC), UV-Visible Spectrophotometers (UV-Vis), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrophotometer (FTIR), Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer (AAS), Electrochemical instruments, UDK Distillation unit, polarimeter, refractometer and bomb calorimeter.