PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte led the inauguration of the Malayan Colleges Mindanao (MCM) on July 7, 2018 marking the start of the school's operations with over 1,200 students enrolled in its senior high school and college programs.
"We have started our college classes last Monday (July 2, 2018) and our senior classes will start this Monday (July 9, 2018)," said Mapua University and MCM President Dr. Reynaldo Vea in a media interview on July 6, 2018 at the Marco Polo Hotel Davao.
Vea said they are offering mechanical engineering, civil engineering, chemical engineering, industrial engineering, information technology, computer science, and entrepreneurship programs for the college level.
He said the school, which is located in Matina, can cater to some 8,000 students. At present, around 400 are enrolled in college and around 800 are enrolled in senior high school.
However, Vea said the number for the senior high school may still grow as they are still accepting enrollees. Vea said some of the school's programs have been crafted to address the needs of Mindanao.
"We want to be able to address the concerns of Mindanao like in peace, livelihood, energy, and agriculture," he said.
For example, in addressing agriculture, Vea said they want to have special tracks in their mechanical and civil engineering programs that will be composed of courses from agricultural engineering. In civil engineering, they want to offer irrigation and other civil works related to agriculture.
As for mechanical engineering, they will have tracks on the mechanized implements of agriculture. In chemical engineering, they are looking into integrating courses on food technology.
However, Vea said when it comes to the agricultural engineering program, they have yet to see if there is a demand for the program.
"Meanwhile, we will be able to help [the agriculture industry] with these special tracks," he said.
On top of their programs, MCM has also invested in its information technology infrastructure to integrate digital education in their programs.
"We will have smart monitors in our classrooms that would be connected wirelessly to the devices of the students to allow the flow of educational materials within the classroom," Vea said.
The school also has a learning management system that allows faculty members to put up their various educational materials in the cloud and then can be accessed by students anytime, anywhere.
As for their future plans, Vea said they hope to have some of the programs at MCM to get an international accreditation to allow their graduates be competitive internationally.
He also said they will work closely with the local industries to ensure that they also meet the local human resources demands.