The IT Academic Community of Davao

In my past posts, I have been mentioning about PSITE, PSITE-XI, CDITE-XI. And there's another one which I have not mentioned yet -- PSITS-XI. These acronyms refer to organizations in the area of information technology education.

PSITE stands for Philippine Society of IT Educators. It is a national organization which has chapters in almost all regions of the country. In Luzon, Regions 1 to 5 and the Cordillera Autonomous Region (CAR) have active chapters. In the Visayas, Regions 6 to 8 have active chapters too. In Mindanao, Regions 9 to 12 have active chapters as well. The Caraga Region (Region 13) already has a working core group and is seeking for recognition as a chapter. It is only in the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) that PSITE has no presence. The main mission of PSITE is to improve the quality of IT Education in the country. And I personally believe that this national network of IT Educators is making a lot of inroads in terms of this mission. I can say that since I get to see things from the top being part of the National Board as Vice-President for Mindanao for the past five years.

PSITE-XI is the regional chapter in Region XI. It is now ably led by Dr. Randy S. Gamboa (University of Southeastern Philippines), the chapter president, and his core of officers. Established way back 2001, it flexed its orgnizational muscles when it immediatley hosted the 4th PSITE National Convention held last February 2002 at the Grand Men Seng Hotel. I was then the chapter president before Dr. Gamboa took over. PSITE-XI once again proved its organizational prowess when it hosted the 4th National Conference on IT Education (NCITE) last October 2006 at the Ateneo de Davao University. PSITE-XI is recognized as one of the most active and productive chapters of PSITE. For the past four years, it has been holding its own IT Education Week (usually during the late part of November and early part of December) which has the following components, namely: Mindanao Conference on IT Education (MCITE), Academe-Industry Dialogue, ACM-based Programming Competition, IT Quiz Bee, IT Sportsfest, IT Students Congress. The membership of PSITE-XI has two types: institutional members and individual members. The institutional members are the IT schools in the region (with two official reprentatives from each member school). The individual members are the IT faculty of the IT schools.

CDITE-XI stands for Council of Deans for IT Education in Region XI. It is composed of the IT Education Program Heads of all 26 IT schools in the region as well as their alternates. In an agreement with PSITE-XI, CDITE-XI will take care of the IT administrators while PSITE-XI will take care of the IT faculty. CDITE-XI was established in the later part of 2001, through the initiative the Commission on Higher Education-Region XI (CHED-XI),and had Vic Calag (University of the Philippines in Mindanao) as it first president who served for 3 terms until 2004. I took over as president and will end my third term by July 2007. I will talk more of CDITE-XI in another post.

PSITS-XI stands for Philippine Society of IT Students in Region XI. It is composed of students coming from the three IT Education Programs (BSCS, BSIT, BSIM) of IT schools in the region. It has its own set of officers with 1-year terms. Its main activities are synchronized with the annual IT Education Week. PSITS-XI anchors the IT Sportsfest and IT Students Congress in coordination with PSITE-XI. The chapter president of PSITE-XI acts as the adviser of PSITS-XI. I will request the current officers of PSITS-XI to write about their organization and I will post it here.

So there you are, the main players of the IT academic community of Davao: PSITE-XI, CDITE-XI, PSITS-XI. Expect more write-ups about them in the next posts...