With the change in leadership as Dr. Johnny Ching took over as the new director of the University Research Office (URO), the office is poised to undergo changes especially in its organizational structure.
After reviewing the present organizational structure and the job description of each of the URO coordinators and consulting with the office’s coordinators, Dr. Ching made a restructuring proposal that covers the relationship among offices and divisions and the job titles and job descriptions of URO’s personnel.
Organizational restructuring
At present, URO serves as a coordinating and funding office under the Office of the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research (OAVCR). It has four divisions each handled by one coordinator. One division is designated to coordinate with stakeholders in the following aspects of research: training and evaluation, publication, intellectual property (IP), and research ethics.
The divisions for IP and ethics are special units as they require accreditation to operate at full capacity. The IP division was accredited by the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPhl) to be an Innovation and Technology Support Office, a servicing unit that mediates between applicants and IPOPhl as regards various IP applications like patents and trademarks. Meanwhile, the ethics division was accredited by the Philippine Health Research Ethics Board that enables it to review the ethical considerations of research proposals. The two divisions serve researchers and other stakeholders from both inside and outside the university.
The nature of the two divisions’ existence requires them to be independent offices that should not be under URO as they have their own personnel and resource requirements as specified in their respective accreditations. Their separation in the research office could not be done before because of the austerity measures brought about by the impact of K-12 to higher education institutions. However, it was seen that even if they cannot be physically separated yet from URO, it would be appropriate to follow what is required by their corresponding accrediting bodies. As such, both are proposed to be separate offices/units under OAVCR.
Moreover, an additional division is also proposed by URO. The proposed division will handle the research training, events and networking aspects of the office. This move will take away the responsibility of organizing the office’s events from the present Research Training and Evaluation Division so that it could focus on the implementation, evaluation and monitoring of URO-funded research.
Revised job titles and descriptions
Aside from the repositioning of divisions, the present four coordinators are also proposed to take new job titles and additional roles.
The present Research Training and Evaluation Coordinator will be renamed as Research Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator and shall be primarily tasked to handle the evaluation and monitoring aspects of research proposals and studies for URO funding.
The present Research Publications Coordinator is slated to take the title Research Communication, Dissemination and Utilization Coordinator; it will also take new responsibilities such as the creation of promotional materials like press releases about DLSU-D’s research activities and the facilitation of ways to make research studies useful beyond completion aside from publication and commercialization.
Also, the Institutional Ethics Review Coordinator is set to be renamed as the DLSU-D Ethics Review Committee Chair while the IP Coordinator will have ITSO Manager as an additional title to signify its leadership over DLSU-D’s ITSO.
Return of College Research Coordinators
In the proposed restructuring, college research coordinators (CRC) will make a comeback and will become permanently attached to URO and be its link to the colleges and other sectors.
CRCs were previously in place in the organizational structure of URO until 2011 when then Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research Dr. Willington Onuh changed the structure to streamline some important processes and in the operations of URO. At present, it was seen that the link to the colleges through CRCs is valuable in the plans and programs that Dr. Ching has for the office, thus CRCs are to be reinstituted.
Like before, there will be one CRC from each of the seven colleges in the University. They will be joined by two research coordinators from the sector of faculty assigned to offices and one research coordinator from the staff sector in the institutional committee for research known as the University Research Committee.
Effective date of the changes
The proposed restructuring was already submitted to Dr. Emmanuel F. Calairo, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research, for his approval and for further actions of higher offices. It is expected that the proposal will be approved and would take effect in the second semester of the present school year.
The Proposed Organizational Structure