Ateneo’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology leads Philippine Sociology Roadmap Visioning Workshop for NCR-Luzon

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Ateneo de Manila University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology (DSA) conducted the Visioning Workshop for the Philippine Sociology Roadmap project, involving Chairs of Sociology programs of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the National Capital Region (NCR) and Luzon.  Thirty-six Chairs and representatives of Sociology programs from NCR-Luzon attended the workshop held on 28 to 29 April 2025, at the Sotogrande Hotel Katipunan, Quezon City. The workshop was led by Dr Leland Dela Cruz, President of the Philippine Sociological Society and Assistant Vice President for Social Development, Environment, and Community Engagement at Ateneo. 

The Philippine Sociology Roadmap project aims to formulate a five-year roadmap for Philippine sociology. With support from the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Sociology Technical Panel, the project is spearheaded by the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT), a CHED Center of Development in Sociology, and Ateneo de Manila University, a CHED Center of Excellence in Sociology. Dr Melissa Quetulio-Navarra, DSA’s Acting Chair, is the NCR-Luzon Project Manager for the Roadmap project. 

The Roadmap shall contain implementable programs with strategies aligned with CHED's vision, international standards in teaching and practice of sociology, national priorities, and local needs to ensure highly employable and skilled Filipino sociology practitioners. However, as emphasized by Dr Cynthia Bautista in her keynote address, “While the roadmap cannot disregard employment or entrepreneurial program outcomes, we should not reduce sociology to technical employability. Rather, we should foreground meaningful employability: the capacity of our graduates to think critically, engage ethically, and act individually or collectively at work and in life.”

The NCR-Luzon workshop is one of the two regional workshops designed for the Roadmap project. It was conducted after the Visayas-Mindanao workshop attended by Chairs and representatives of Sociology programs of HEIs from the region. The Visayas-Mindanao workshop was held in Mindanao State University-IIT from 1 to 2 April 2025.

The results of the two regional workshops will be combined for the visioning of a national Philippine Sociology Roadmap. The national visioning workshop is scheduled from 26-27 May 2025, in Quezon City.