USLS sets up broadcast lab with SWEEP grant

[FEBRUARY 17, 2009/BACOLOD] Barely a year after winning the 4th Smart Wireless Engineering Education Program (SWEEP) Innovation and Excellence Awards, the University of St. La Salle (USLS) -Bacolod has put the university counterpart grant to good use.

USLS recently held the blessing and inauguration of its SMART Broadcast and Acoustic Laboratory, using the P500,000 grant that accompanied the win of its student-faculty team in last year’s SWEEP Innovation and Excellence Awards. The USLS entry “Geo-specific Public Warning System Using Cell Broadcasting” had bested 58 other entries during the 2008 nationwide competition which focused on the theme “Going Wireless for Disaster Preparedness”.

USLS Vice President for Administration Bob Bergante thanked Smart Communications, Inc. (SMART) for sharing “a truly wonderful blessing in the exercise of its social responsibility in the area of education.”

“Through the laboratory, our students are given the opportunity for hands-on training in their preparation for real-world situations,” he added.

The laboratory is expected to serve as training ground and simulation facility for Electrical Communications Engineering and Computer Engineering students, and venue for broadcast activities of the Mass Communications program using a campus-based radio broadcasting facility. The USLS campus radio operates on the 103.1 frequency and reaches areas within the vicinity of the university.

Darwin Flores, SMART Public Affairs Community Partnerships senior manager, lauded USLS for setting up the broadcast lab, which “opens wide doors of opportunities for serving the public.”

Through the facility, the university can air programs that will provide helpful tips and information to various members of the community, he said. Psychology students, for example, can help peers on youth issues, Marketing and Accountancy students can share knowledge with small entrepreneurs in the community and Nursing and Medicine students can conduct health information campaigns on air, Flores added.

“SMART is pleasantly surprised by how the university has expanded the use of the laboratory from purely ECE-related subjects to mass media-oriented practice,” he said.

The SMART Broadcast and Acoustic Laboratory is an expanded version of the wireless laboratory that SMART set up in the university under SWEEP in 2003.

The facility will be used by ECE students for their Analog Communications, Broadcast Communications and Acoustics classes and by Mass Comm students for radio production, announcing, scriptwriting and media planning and programming activities.

USLS Engineering Dean Dr. Zenaida Aungon thanked SMART for its “confidence in and recognition of USLS students’ capabilities and potential.” The new laboratory, she said, will be a training ground for future SWEEP winners and leaders in electronics and communications engineering in the country.

Dr. Florita Napallatan, former dean, under whose term the partnership with SMART was started, reiterated her thanks, saying, “With all the benefits derived from our partnership, I say thank you to the smart people of SMART.”

Among those who attended were members of the team that had secured the grant for the university with their win -- Delman Alagao, Mark Paolo Salada, Paul Edward Alvarez, John Kimwell Laluma, Francis Xavier Parcon and their adviser Engr. Constancio Legaspi Jr. As champions of the 4th SWEEP Innovation and Excellence Awards, the team also received a cash prize of P500,000.

Parcon, who also heads the USLS ECE student organization, thanked SMART for the partnership that “enables ECE students to gain first-hand experiences in the communications industry.”

The re-launch of the newly-expanded lab, he said, ensures continuous development of the students since they can now apply the theories they have learned in the classroom through the various equipment in the lab.

(Published 23 February 2009, Smart Communications Inc.)