The UP Board of Regents at its 1375th meeting on Nov. 10 approved the appointments of three UP Diliman (UPD) deans.
Maria Regina Lucia M. Lizares, PhD and Giovanni Francis A. Legaspi were appointed deans of the Cesar E.A. Virata School of Business (VSB) and Asian Institute of Tourism (AIT), respectively. Meanwhile, Joseph Ryan G. Lansangan, PhD will be serving his second term as dean of the UPD School of Statistics (STAT). They will serve from Nov. 10, 2022 until Nov. 10, 2025.
New deans
An associate professor of business administration, Lizares is the 15th VSB dean. She teaches introduction to business management, human behavior in organizations, and organizational theory, among others. She is a certified MBTI (Myers-Briggs type indicator) practitioner. According to The Myers-Briggs Company website, MTBI is one of the most popular psychometric tools in the world and has become the go-to framework for people development.
Lizares has published numerous researches in local and international peer-reviewed journals. Among her recent publications are Investigating the Association of Mission Statement and Performance Using the Component and Stakeholder Approaches in an Emerging Market in Journal of Management & Organization (2022), Ownership Concentration and Board Structure: Alignment and Entrenchment Effects in an Emerging Market in Managerial and Decision Economics (2022), and Offering Organizational Legitimacy: Foreign Underwriters and Outside Directors in Philippine IPOS in Philippine Management Review (2022).
She earned her bachelor’s (business administration), magna cum laude, master’s (management), and doctorate (business administration) degrees from UPD in 1988 and 2018.
Outside of UPD, Lizares earned her master’s (international business and economic development, with distinction) from the University of Reading, England in 1995 as a British Council scholar, master in business administration, bilingual program (English and Spanish) from the University of Navarra, Spain in 1991.
Meanwhile, Legaspi, an assistant professor, started teaching at AIT in 2007 as a lecturer. He is currently taking his doctorate (indigenous studies) at UP Baguio.
Prior to his appointment as AIT’s ninth dean, Legaspi served as the Institute’s secretary from 2017 to 2019, and director of AIT’s Division of Academic Affairs from November 2016 until June 2018. He was also the deputy director of the National Reserve Corps, National Service Training Program Diliman Office from 2020 to 2021.
In 2020, Legaspi was a project leader of Solar Community-Based Island Tourism and Livelihood Energizer Platform (SMILE) Project. In partnership with the Kabang Kalisakan ng Pilipinas Foundation, Inc. and funded by the European Union, Legaspi and his team from AIT finalized the long-term framework for tourism development in Dinagat and Siargao Islands.
Legaspi earned his master’s degree (awarded with academic medal of excellence) and diploma in international relations from the UPD School of Labor and Industrial Relations in 2017 and 2014, respectively, and his bachelor’s degree (tourism) from UPD AIT in 1992.
Reappointment. Lansangan is on his second term; he was first appointed on Oct. 11, 2019. His expertise and research interests are computational statistics, high dimensional data analytics, nonparametric methods, data mining, and business intelligence, among others. He has authored numerous academic papers published in ISI-indexed journals and in Scopus journals.
He received numerous recognitions and awards which include: One UP Professorial Chair Award for 2016-2018 and 2019-2021; School of Statistics Best Teacher Award (Graduate Program) AY 2016-2017; UPD Centennial Professorial Chair in 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021; and the UPD Centennial Faculty Grant in 2016 and 2020. He was conferred UP Scientist I (2014-2016 and 2020-2022) through the UP Scientific Productivity Awards.
Lansangan earned his bachelor’s, magna cum laude, master’s, and doctorate degrees in statistics from UPD in 2002, 2006 and 2014, respectively.