The OVCRD Report (May 2011-April 2014).2.10.14 | Page 8

UP Diliman

Preface by Vice-Chancellor Benito M. Pacheco

in priority areas like disaster risk management;
(2) emphasizing the value of R&D output
dissemination to policy makers and the public;
and (3) realizing mechanisms to transfer
creative and derivative works, inventions, and
other intellectual properties of UP Diliman
personnel to the private market where
applicable.
Coming to OVCRD as a professor at the
Institute of Civil Engineering, researcher and
practitioner of disaster risk management, and,
in 2011, national president of the Philippine
Institute of Civil Engineers, still I anticipated to
have to learn much more on the job.
And learn a lot I think I did.

First I express my gratitude to the OVCRD
personnel and officials for this privilege to
write a personal preface to our End-of-Term
Report.  This report is as much theirs as the
Vice-Chancellor’s.
When selected by Chancellor Caesar A. Saloma
to join his team in May 2011, I pledged to
operationalize OVCRD’s main functions and
responsibilities using a three-pronged
approach: (1) enabling more institutional
research and development (R&D) through
incentive awards and outright grants especially

Looking back now, I think we at OVCRD
learned further “how to see … and realize that
everything connects to everything else,” to
paraphrase Leonardo da Vinci.  We learned, I
learned convergence.
We learned, I learned more “careful and
responsible management of [the R&D
leadership] entrusted to [our] care,” which is
simple by Merriam-Webster definition of
stewardship, yet complex in implementation.
I learned, we learned as media-empire heir
Lachlan Murdoch once said, that “we all have
to expand our capabilities to encompass the
changing world, its growing diversity and,