School of Education and Learning Design (Memo U2021-018)

I am pleased to announce that at its regular meeting held on 7 November 2020, the Ateneo de Manila Board of Trustees approved the establishment of a School of Education and Learning Design under the Loyola Schools (LS).

The creation of a School of Education within the Ateneo is long overdue – it is an idea first broached twenty years ago by Dr Ma Assunta C Cuyegkeng right after serving as Acting Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences to then AdMU President Fr Bienvenido F Nebres SJ. Moreover, the tradition of our work in teacher education, in fact, dates all the way back to the 19th century, when the Jesuit Escuela Normal de Maestros de instrucción primaria first opened its doors in Intramuros in 1865, the very first school dedicated to teacher education in the Philippines.

This School of Education and Learning Design is the fruit of over two years of careful study and extensive consultation among stakeholders from the different LS departments and schools.

But it is most fitting that we create this School this year, 155 years after the inauguration of the Escuela Normal, signaling our re-commitment to our important mission in Philippine education.

This School of Education and Learning Design, the fifth Loyola School, constitutes the university's strategic response to the challenges of Philippine education and will enable us to address these challenges more effectively through what we hope will be a strong institutional identity and presence in the national educational landscape.

The new School will open its doors in August 2021, and will be more than just a “traditional” school of education:

• It will offer not only our current array of master’s degree programs in education, but also eventually, distinctive and cutting-edge undergraduate and doctoral programs. As its name suggests, its programs will promote the science and art of designing learning – an increasingly crucial competence among educators working in formal education, as well as among learning professionals in fields other than formal education.
• It will be purposefully multidisciplinary, drawing from the university’s expertise in a broad range of disciplines and coordinating the various efforts in the different schools in order to make significant research-based contributions in teacher education, curriculum reform, and policy making that respond to the country's needs.
• It will be explicitly mission-oriented, marshalling the university’s resources and expertise both in scholarship and in practice to build the capacity of our educational leaders, policy makers, and teachers – especially those serving in our public education system. Generous benefactors have already endowed this fledgling school with a substantial fund that will provide support to the brightest and most promising present and future educators and leaders in the field.

The Education Department, currently housed in the School of Social Sciences, will move to the new School and will be joined by two new departments:  Department of Educational Leadership and Department of Catholic Education Philosophy and Practice.  

The Ateneo Teacher Center, the Ateneo SALT Institute, and Pathways for Higher Education will also move to this new School, and be the school's arms in teacher training, research and innovation, and outreach, respectively.

I will very shortly begin the search process for the Dean for this new School. Details of this search will be provided in a separate memo.

We look forward to the formal launch of our School of Education and Learning Design in early 2021, and the many contributions we know it will eventually make to the fulfillment of the university’s mission in education and nation-building.