UP Min's 1st summa

UP Mindanao's first summa cum laude Pete Maverick Nicole Estudillo.  (Contributed Photo)
UP Mindanao's first summa cum laude Pete Maverick Nicole Estudillo. (Contributed Photo)

SHE sounds polite and a little shy over the phone but when the conversation was finally about biochemistry and food chemistry, Pete Maverick Nicole Estudillo talks with much passion and interest that one would nod and say, "I get now how she's the first summa cum laude of UP Min."

Estudillo graduated yesterday, June 21, 2019 from BS Food Technology with a Cumulative Weighted Average Grade (CWAG) of 1.1971, the highest record in the university since it was established 24 years ago. She shared to SunStar Davao how it hasn’t really sunk in yet that she made history for the university.

The eldest child of Ivy D. Estudillo spent her high school years at the International Christian School in Bangkal, Davao City. Looking back, she said her only wish then was to be able to pass the University of the Philippines College Admission Test (UPCAT) as she found the exam difficult. Ever since high school, Estudillo was already fond of biology and chemistry which prompted her to write down Food Technology as her first choice during her UPCAT application.

“Since I was a kid, I love playing with my food. It doesn't sound too nice but I really do. For one, I know sugar is carbohydrates but I learned here that it’s more complicated than that and I found these learning to be amazing,” she shared.

In college, she was particularly into food chemistry and biochemistry. Her interest would serve towards understanding the chemical process that the food we eat undergoes. She found it important to understand how food works once it enters our body given that eating is a basic, most important activity of a person.

For her thesis entitled “Antioxidant and Anticancer Potential of Artocarpus Fruit Wastes”, Estudillo explained that she focused on food wastage and health-related problems. She checked the antioxidant and anti-cancer potentials of the locally-produced fruits in Mindanao.

“Sa industry, daghan og waste during processing so I tried to look into this waste if we can add value to them and tried to work it out with health-related problems like cancer,” she said.

Her entire year of working for her thesis bore good fruit as she is scheduled to present the research at the Food and Nutrition Institute (FNRI) competition in July in Pasay City.

Estudillo believes that a good UP graduate makes tangible and useful for the community whatever it is that she learned in the university. With the FNRI competition, she looks forward to more people getting interested of her research hopefully paving way for policies and further studies to make the thesis more tangible and more beneficial to many.

But the first summa cum laude of UP Mindanao did not spend her years in the university with books and classes alone. She recognizes the importance of participating in organizations and putting oneself out there to be useful.

She is a member of the Rotaract Club of UPMin, Let’s Do It Philippines Youth – Davao, PSALM Ministry of UPMin, For the Unity and Solidarity of Every Student in UP (FUSE UP), an organization gathering all the religious organizations in UP Mindanao. Estudillo also was a soprano singing for UPMin Koro Kantahanay.

During her senior year, she was one of the exchange students under the Trans-Asean Global Agenda Education (TAG) – AIMS Program sent to the University of Tsukuba, Japan from October 2017 to February 2018 together with other students with courses in the Food and Science and Technology discipline.

"Importante na naay mga extra-curricular activities because with these organizations, you learn to follow and you also learn how to lead. You learn to mingle with people which is kana man pud atong tumong after we graduate (that's how we should be after graduation). We serve the people. So as undergraduate pa lang, you should learn how to mingle with them, how to translate our jargon to them, and how we can translate what we learned here in the university to something tangible to them," said Estudillo.

Trending

No stories found.

Just in

No stories found.

Branded Content

No stories found.
SunStar Publishing Inc.
www.sunstar.com.ph