Caretakers’ Notes: Congratulations VSU for retaining ISO certification

To our partners from TÜV Rheinland who have been with us since 2020 in this arduous but essential journey of obtaining our ISO certification, to our key officials of the university, our faculty members and staff who prepared all the needed documents for this evaluation, and to our students who are around, maayong buntag kanatong tanan!

First, congratulations to all of us because we successfully retained our ISO 9001:2015 certification after a full-day audit done by TÜV Rheinland today, February 12.

For this evaluation, we received 5 positive feedback, zero nonconformity, and 13 opportunities for improvement (OFI). This is a huge improvement in our previous audit findings and a good indication that we are heading in the right direction.

I would also like to give due credit to the former President and now our Vice President for Administration and Finance Dr. Edgardo E. Tulin for pursuing our institutional ISO certification during his administration. This is indeed one of the many enduring legacies of the Tulin administration that will continue to have an impact on the university in the many years to come.

I remember that when we were in the first few years of radically changing our system to align it with the quality management system, there were many complaints about this mainly because of the amount of preparation that had to be taken by each and everyone. Fast forward to today, I can say that because of this certification, we have significantly improved the quality of our operations and some of our core university processes.

But of course, we understand that there are still many things to be done and can be further improved in terms of providing services to our stakeholders and clientele. Four years after our first certification, we know that we need to identify more areas where we can improve our client transactions and core processes.

Concerning this, last December we conducted a Design Thinking Workshop with our young but very credible consultants from Limitless Lab—a Philippine social innovation company that uses design thinking to create impactful solutions. They have helped many private organizations including local government units to apply the concept of design thinking to improve operational efficiency and public services in their organizations.

In this workshop, we’ve realized that while we are ISO compliant there are still many basic processes that we have that can be further improved and digitized in the future. It was a very good exercise that allowed our senior management and our frontline workers to go back to the drawing board and think about ways in which we can better serve our many stakeholders and clients. 

Because of this activity, we also learned the significance of an iterative process that we should all engage in so that we can better understand our immediate stakeholders and clients, challenge pre-existing and long-held assumptions and practices, redefine our current problems and challenges, and see it from a brand new perspective, and possibly create innovative solutions to prototype and test future operational improvements that will cut time and effort of everyone who would like to do basic businesses and transactions with the university.

We are currently at a crossroads because of two things—first, we are about to welcome a new administration very soon, and second, we are celebrating the university’s centennial year with the highlight festivities to take place in April.

Our new administration will surely benefit because of the many small victories we collectively accomplished because of subjecting our systems to ISO certification. We expect that the next set of leaders of VSU will continuously push this initiative forward and encourage our component campuses to do the same. With just a few pushes and further refinement, I’m sure that our four component campuses in Alangalang, Isabel, Tolosa, and Villaba will soon become ready to undergo ISO certification.

As regards our centennial celebration, this is important for us because we see this year as a pivot to greater accomplishments in the next century that will hopefully elevate VSU further to global and international prestige.

Daghang kaayong salamat sa atong mga faculty and staff, most especially to our unit heads and their respective dDRCs who worked tirelessly to prepare the needed documents while also preparing your respective areas for site visits and teaching demonstrations.

Also, we would like to remember and honor our ever-dearest Dr. Editha G. Cagasan, our quality assurance champion and one of our leaders who persisted in achieving and maintaining our ISO certification here at the university. We all miss her genuine warmth and grace despite the pressures that are included in accreditations like this one.

Let us all pray for the best four our dear VSU and hope that we can learn more so that we can further refine our systems and improve our delivery of services to our students, alumni, faculty and staff, and to many others who look up to VSU as a model of institutional excellence not just here in Eastern Visayas but also in the entire country.

Mabuhay po tayong lahat!

• Prev
• Next