International exposure for both faculty members and students is a must for education institutions in today’s job market landscape where our graduates are competing with talents from all over the world. Thus, higher education institutions today are more motivated to seek international partnerships that will provide their faculty and students with the rich intercultural experience that only an international exchange program can provide.
Such is the direction that De La Salle Medical and Health Sciences Institute is actively forging with a robust international linkages program geared towards ensuring that their faculty and students have opportunities to share and learn best practices with international partners in the areas of academics and research.
One such fruitful partnership is a student exchange program with Japan’s Miyakonojo Higashi High School in the Miyasaki Prefecture. For three weeks from April to May 2018, 15 senior high school students attended classes in the said school and underwent cultural immersion experiencing various activities that are icons of Japanese culture.
DLSMHSI is also hosting a number of foreign students as either full-time students who complete their degrees here or as exchange students who are exposed to short-term academics and cultural immersion programs.
Other institutions that have partnered with DLSMHSI for exchange programs include the St. Mary’s College of Califormia, Seton Hall University in the USA, Bengbu Medical College in China, Dongseo University in Busan Korea, and La Salle Madrid in Spain, to name a few.
These partnerships also offer scholarships for both advanced degrees and researches for faculty. Ms. Mezie Laurence Ortiz of DLSMHSI’s College of Medical Imaging and Therapy earned a Master’s Degree in Radiological Sciences major in Multi-Disciplinary Radiology from Dongseo University, Busan, South Korea, while Ms. Kathy Reyes of the College of Rehabilitation Sciences earned a Master’s Degree in Speech and Language Pathology from USA’s Seton Hall University, making her only the second in the Philippines to have earned a Master’s Degree in SLP. Dr. Llyrha Mae Maghari-Capio also finished her dissertation for her Master of Science Degree through a fellowship training grant from the BIOTEC, National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology of Thailand.
With higher education institutions like DLSMHSI setting their sights on more partnerships with reputable academic and research institutions in the world, our college graduates will be in a better position to compete with talents from all over the world, further cementing the reputation of the dependability and expertise of human resources from the Philippines.