EVERY two years since 2011, the UP Alumni Association (UPAA)–Cebu chapter picks graduates whose achievements have gone beyond personal.
Its UPAA president, lawyer Christine Ligtas-Salva, says it best. “This award goes beyond the UP character of honor and excellence. It is about recognizing that being an Iskolar ng Bayan is about remembering our communities and giving them our service.”
So, last Friday, UPAA honored a dozen alumni as “Tatak UP” awardees for 2015. “Tatak UP” is UP lingo for outstanding alumni.
The sparkling dozen were nominated by peers from their school days, fellow professionals, the industry, and even social and civic circles.
And so, four were chosen for arts, design and culture; three for law, public service and governance; and one each for medicine and public health, for social change and advocacy, for education and research, for business and entrepreneurship, and for culture and heritage.
Understandably, Tatak UP’s awardees are no stranger to awards, reaping them for excelling in their chosen fields. Such is orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Rene Catan, who was also the awarding ceremonies’ keynote speaker.
Manila-based, Catan is a UP Cebu High School graduate. Long aware that ostheoarthritis afflicts 3.64 percent every year of the population 60 years and older, he and his team put up Arthrologic and developed a health technology called “Logic 1.0.”
Logic 1.0 is a medical procedure that dramatically cuts the cost of high-quality knee implant or replacement, and can be done by surgeons in the smallest localities.
Catan has found great acceptability and willingness to learn from the surgeons outside of Cebu City. So he travels much, assisting and mentoring surgeons in these cities.
By this year end, Arthologic will have performed its first 100 total knee replacements, a development Catan finds encouraging whose initial lukewarm response from fellow surgeons once made him wonder if his dream was quixotic.
Among the three awardees for law, public service and governance was the late Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Esteban Gochan who served the country for 10 years from 1986 to 1996.
The posthumous award is an addition to the host of others from the Supreme Court (SC) en banc, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines in Manila and another in Cebu City, the executive judges of Regional Trial Courts in Region 7 and in Cebu, and the Young Lawyers Association of Cebu.
To help fellow lawyers, he wrote for 31 years from 1966 to 1996 the column “What the Supreme Court Says,” first in the defunct “Republic News” and then the “Morning Times,” and later in “The Freeman.”
These digests were compiled monthly and printed in booklet form for distribution free of charge to judges, fiscals, law enforcement agencies in Region 7, Central Bank and the Development Bank of the Philippines, public libraries, government banks, public libraries and law practitioners in the entire country.
He read advanced copies of the promulgations of the SC, and then wrote on these topics for his column. Instead of waiting for the printed books, the bar and the bench, and the public at large got legal education pro bono from Gochan’s columns.
Tomorrow, part 2.
(lelani.echaves@gmail.com)