Cheers for SFU Alumni: World-class Pinoys

Harvesting gold and silver.

That's what some Southville Foreign University alumni have been up to recently as more and more of our graduates choose to finish their final college year in Southville's prestigious partner universities' campuses overseas.

Congratulations to two of my former Marketing students Jean Marie Baldado and Denesse Cajulis, and twin brothers (the cutest twin of all!) Jonas and Julius Mangahas---all 2010 SFU graduates who won top honors in three UK universities.

Jean Marie, graduating with a BS Business Management degree, romped off as Summa Cum Laude at Oxford Brookes University.

Denesse also finished Summa Cum Laude, BS Business Marketing, at London Metropolitan University.

Jonas and Julius share Magna Cum Laude honors from the University of Bedfordshire. Jonas took up BS Information Systems while Julius finished BS Computer Science.

What could have been the key to these four students' outstanding performance in such a competitive world-class environment?

Let me share with you some of my thoughts.

Impressed. That's my reaction when I first met Jean during the school's College Preparatory Program, a two-week long skills-honing course for SFU's incoming first year students before they wade waist-deep into college life.

She exuded confidence, spoke good English. I was floored when she shared that her dream was to help her family get out of poverty. So young yet so dead-set serious!

Yes, Jean came to SFU as a scholar. As she and I got acquainted in the coming months (she was never in my Marketing class but I asked her to join the Marketing team which competed in the Philippine Marketing Association's [PMA] Strategic Marketing derby), she would from time to time ask for mentoring, on school and some personal concerns.

She felt people misunderstood her. But the bottom-line was that she needed to focus and not be sidelined by things that would hamper her desire---and her timetable---to help her mother and siblings. (Jean's father died when she was very young.) She surprised us even more when we learned that her last year in college would be spent in London---under a scholarship!

Denesse, the fashionista! Under this facade of glamor and love for frilly things is a young lady with heaps of common sense and maturity. She worked relentlessly to get Merit and Distinction descriptors. She often checked with her teachers to make sure she always made the grade.

Denesse's strength, I believe, is her ability to relate well with others. A people-person surely has insight and empathy hard-wired into her psyche.

Jonas and Julius have never been in any of my classes, but I know their parents and their family as a whole. We attend the same church, Citygate Christian Ministries. Bojie and Rose have brought up their kids in the fear and instruction and the excellence of the Lord. So I am not surprised.

Rose has successfully grown her once-playschool to an outstanding Christian educational institution called Creative Middle School; and Bojie is a successful entrepreneur. Their material success nothwithstanding, Rose and Bodjie have remained humble and shown themselves faithful in their church service.

Southville Foreign University must truly be proud of its outstanding alumni. And there are many more of them---young people who, having come fresh from high school, soon discover that they have to swim in a sea of essays, assignments, research work and workshop sessions.

"I did not expect this," some would say, horrified that they are soon struggling through endless reading, paperwork and sleepless nights because of their Edexcel assignments.

"Thank you, SFU!" someone said on Facebook recently. She soon realized that her SFU curriculum gave her the discipline, focus and the ability to think for herself so much so that other pursuits after that become peanuts.

Jean Marie, Denesse, Jonas and Julius. They're the proof of the pudding. Yum!