Election/Reelection of Trustees (Memo U2021-019)

I am pleased to announce that at the annual meeting of the Ateneo de Manila University, Inc held last 7 November 2020, the Corporation (re)elected the following Jesuit and lay members of the Board of Trustees:

New Trustee elected for a 3-year term from 7 November 2020 to November 2023:

Mars P Tan SJ

Fr Mars Tan SJ is the newly appointed President of Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro City. Prior to this role, he served as Rector of the Jesuit Community at Xavier for the past 10 years and was the Director of the McKeough Marine Center. Apart from teaching at the Biology Department of Xavier, he is a board member of the Manila Observatory and the Xavier Science Foundation.

Fr Mars holds a PhD in Environmental Science from the University of Notre Dame Australia; an MS in Environmental Science from the University of the Philippines; an MA in Theology from the Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo de Manila; and a BS Biology from Ateneo de Davao. A known environmentalist, his doctoral studies focused on the Sedimentation Dynamics of the Cagayan de Oro River Catchment and its implications for the coastal marine habitats of Macajalar Bay.

New Trustee elected for a 2-year term from 7 November 2020 to November 2022:

Jose VC Quilongquilong SJ

Fr Jose “Joe” Quilongquilong is concurrently Rector of the Jesuit Community in Ateneo de Manila and Director of the Philippine Jesuit Aid Association. He is also an Associate Professor of Spirituality at the Loyola School of Theology where he served as president from 2013 to 2019.

Fr Joe holds a doctorate in Sacred Theology (STD) from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome; an MA in Theology from the Loyola School of Theology; and a BS in Sociology from Xavier University. His areas of interest include Spiritual Theology, Ignatian Spirituality, Theology of Vocation and History of Christian Spirituality.

Re-elected Trustees for 3-year terms from 7 November 2020 to November 2023:

The other Trustees who were re-elected for 3-year terms each are Dr Fabian M Dayrit, Fr Gabriel Jose T Gonzalez SJ, Fr Karel S San Juan SJ, and Ms Bernadine T Siy.

On behalf of Ateneo de Manila, I thank Frs Tan, Quilongquilong, Gonzalez, and San Juan, Dr Dayrit, and Ms Siy for their generous willingness to provide strategic leadership and guidance to the University.

We are grateful as well to Fr Eric G Velandria SJ for his invaluable service to the University as Trustee for 4 years, thereby contributing to strategic decisions on our academic programs, development projects, mission and identity.

We also thank in a special way Fr Jose Ramon T Villarin SJ for his 20 years of continuous service as Trustee and his excellent leadership and stewardship of the University for the past 9 years, positioning the University to rise up to the challenges posed by increasing competition, globalization and technological change, and most of all, by the crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, with great resilience and compassion, thereby achieving for Ateneo de Manila University its stature among Philippine universities, as well as international recognition among universities in the region and in the world.

We pray that God may continue to watch over them and bless all their endeavors.