ILOILO CITY – The University of the Philippines Visayas (UPV) broke ground Friday for its College of Law Building here, which will serve as the permanent home of its law extension program.
“For now, it is an extension program, but hopefully, if it continues to mature and will attract more students, then it will attract more faculty members from Diliman (Quezon City), then it may become a College of Law of UP Visayas. That is our hope. Of course, that is an open-ended thing, and we have to work with the UP System for that,” said UPV Chancellor Dr. Clement Camposano on Friday.
The PHP100-million fund for Phase 1 of the project was facilitated by Education Secretary Sonny Angara when he was still a senator.
Angara joined the groundbreaking ceremony together with Iloilo Third District Representative Lorenz Defensor, UP College of Law Associate Dean Andre Palacios, and heads of other universities in Iloilo offering the law program.
Camposano said the program started during his first term, initiated by UP President Danilo Concepcion, and currently has over 100 students.
He said only a minority of the students came from Iloilo, with the rest coming from Leyte, Cebu and Mindanao.
“That means that the market for a UP-branded legal education is actually the southern half of the Philippine archipelago,” he said.
Camposano said if UP Visayas can provide a permanent home for the law program and continue to attract the support of law faculty members, eventually it will have its own College of Law.
“This law program is really going to contribute to the rise of Iloilo not only as an educational center, as we already are, but also a center of top-quality legal education. I am confident we would be able to do that not in contention with the more established law schools here in Iloilo but in collaboration with them. As you know, these other schools are also run by UP Visayas alumni,” he added.
The building is a three-story structure designed to resemble the main structure of UP Visayas. It is expected to be completed in one year. (PNA)