The Administrative Staff Program for Institutional Resiliency and Excellence (ASPIRE) program returned for its eighth run, debuting in another campus after successful iterations for the OVPAA, Diliman, Los Baños, and Visayas. UP Manila (UPM) is the latest constituent university to jumpstart the involvement of its administrative staff in their journey to quality and excellence through the program. The hybrid training program was held last April 18, 25-26 and May 29-30, 2023 with remote sessions administered via Zoom and face-to-face sessions held at The Bayleaf Hotel in Intramuros. It was jointly delivered by the UP National Engineering Center (UP NEC) and the UP Diliman Quality Assurance Office (UPD QAO), in coordination with UPM’s Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Administration and Finance (UPM OVCAF) and their Human Resources Development Office (HRDO).
ASPIRE is a training program designed to equip university administrative staff with the necessary knowledge, mindset, and skills in developing and implementing a Quality Management System (QMS) that will help their organization attain improved and efficient operations, sustained culture of innovations, customer-driven delivery of services, and empowered human resources. For UPM, the program complemented their recent certification against ISO 9001:2018 and will prepare them for their validation visit this year. This also shows the university management’s commitment to quality and improve their internal processes for their stakeholders.
The cohort was composed of 53 participants from the different offices across UPM and five members of the UPD QAO. They formed eleven groups and were assigned a category of administrative functions from which they will select a specific workflow as their main topic for the training. UP Diliman Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research professors UPD QAO Director Prof. Aura C. Matias, PhD., UPD Vice-Chancellor for Administration Asst. Prof. Adeline A. Pacia, and Asst. Prof. Benette P. Custodio, together with UP NEC University Extension Specialist Mr. Pepito C. Dizon, served as resource persons and guided the participants as they went through the process of developing, revising, and suggesting improvements in their internal process workflows.
Select members of the UPD QAO staff also joined as participants and worked on the Academic Program Improvement (API) Fund Grant Management process. Initiatives to address pain points from the process stakeholders, such as introduction of standard templates to shorten process and cycle times, creation of an orientation program to address knowledge gaps and, the development of an online portal to facilitate the API proposal submission and project monitoring phases, were presented to the panel. During the critiquing session, UPD VCA Pacia commended the API digitalization initiative as it can be linked to the ongoing digital transformation strategy of Diliman.
The event concluded with a graduation ceremony held on the last day of the event, where participants were given their certificates of completion. Select participants were also given special awards to recognize their special contributions and outputs throughout the program. Team UPD QAO bagged the “Most Innovative Award” for their recommendations to digitalize the API process through development of an online portal.
ASPIRE is one of the five programs of the UPD QAO under the QA Competency Development Framework, aiming to increase awareness and competency of stakeholders on quality management concepts at all levels in the university.
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