 This is Elizabeth Arventura, PhD, former Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, and Chair of the Department of Psychology, who has devoted her entire professional life to the university and has taught and practiced psychology in the Philippine context. Her many contributions to the field of psychology have been focused on three major areas. One, developmental psychology, two, psychological assessment and measurement, and three, health psychology, all firmly anchored in the Philippine setting and context. Dr. Arventura has also significantly contributed to the university in various capacities, as department chair, college dean, headed the counseling section of the UP Pahinubun system when it first began. She has been involved in addressing important organizational and pedagogical concerns, such as the evaluation and improvement of the set, the UP CUT, the GE program. Two, the development of the syllabus and textbook for the social science one GE course, one of the early prototypes for interdisciplinary and team taught courses in the university. Three, university outreach efforts, particularly in responding to national disasters in the area of psychological health and well-being. And I am Maria Cecilia, Gestardo Juanaco. I was, I'm professor emeritus currently and I was Betty's former student in the longtime student and collaborator of the Department of Psychology. So Betty, shall we begin? Please tell us a little about your personal background. First, perhaps about your early socialization and education in Baguio that may have implanted the stimuli for your later years. What or who were your early influences and how did these direct your perspectives of work in the fields? Okay, well maybe I have to begin with the fact that I grew up in a large extended family. So relatives were always coming in and out of our house. Some of them stayed for years. Others would come during vacation time. But early on I was exposed to a variety of people and maybe it was these diverse types of individuals that made me early on reflect on individual differences. The reason why I used to word reflect is I spent a lot of time alone reading, reading everything that was available to me at home, simply because the sibling I had of me was five years older and the one after me was three years younger. So I really had enough time I think to be a reflective individual which I think is very important as a psychologist because you have to be reflective and empathetic and dealing with all kinds of people who sometimes would bully you, who sometimes would fight with you or show you affection. So I was exposed to also a variety of reactions early on and maybe the fact that this extended family that was coming in and out of our house didn't really stay long enough for me to get to know them but I had to deal with them and so that taught me also to be more responsive to strangers. So it was really the interaction? The interaction that was part of my socialization but I think my parents also had an influence in what I eventually became. My mother was really the sounding board for all the problems of relatives and I could see how she would empathize and try to help them. She was also spiritual not in the sense of religious but to me as a child she seemed like she was in touch with everybody to the point of sensing what they needed and sensing who was in trouble even if they were not present. Like she knew and she sort of sensed who of my siblings needed help at that point or that they were in trouble and she didn't even know what it was all about. So all of these things that are let's say not really ordinary experiences for other people and the fact that I had to be alone and think about things that were happening around me helped me to really be interested in other people too. She was also a storyteller so at night she would tell us stories. I think some of these were invented by her and they always tried to communicate a value or a lesson to us. She was so good in storytelling that we cried when it was a sad story and we were really afraid when it was you know some sort of a horror story. My father on the other hand was in charge of everything in the development of the electrical system the water system of Baguio. So he really had a big big work working and I could well from him I think I learned lessons about how to manage people and how to deal with crisis situations because we were in Baguio and during summer there would be a sudden influx of people coming around so we would be short on electricity. He built the hydroelectric plant of Baguio situated in Asin. So all of these things not just how he managed people and I could see some of them were fearful of him some of them showed affection towards him but I remember that he was also a counselor for the marital problems of his workers. I remember one woman running into our house and diving under our dining table because her husband was running after her and he was violent with respect to her. That was one thing that I really appreciated from my father. He could not stand people making a pay to women because even my brothers they would be punished if they physically hurt us the girls in the family. So he was protective of women and sometimes he wasn't a doctor in the sense that he would punish his workers who violated some of the things that were expected of them. So that was the context of my early socialization. But much of this was really like implicit learning you know from observing their role models your mother and your father and reflecting on it. And then now maybe we can move on a little bit too. Is there anything else you would like to say about the influence as a family? Also the emphasis on individual differences was very clear in my experience with my aunts who who were very different from each other. I had one of them as my Nina. She was very demure soft spoken. What else? Did all the right things. But on the other hand her sister smoked drunk and was really sort of loud in a way and I remember her showing me her legs and telling me that she had nice legs which my Nina would never do. So even as a child you would ask yourself why are these two so different when they share the same you know context and so on and so forth. Of course I didn't have the answers then but you know so I actually am thankful for having a large extended family. Okay provided a lot of the questions for your later science. Yes yes. Well then then you went to school you started in Baguio right? Yes I studied I'm a public school product. That was the time when public schools were the best schools I think. So that was just after the war. So I went to public elementary school. It was called New Baguio Central School because there was an old Baguio Central School. I graduated valedictorian. My teachers said that I could read when I was already in grade one and my siblings said I started reading at four. Oh anyway so reading was very important to me and I sort of I think read more than my classmates and so on. So my elementary years my teachers didn't have that much influence on me I think but in high school I had teachers who encouraged me to write. I remember they gave me a one of them gave me a book and she said they're dear Elizabeth as an inspiration because you can write. Okay so because of that kind of reinforcement I started thinking maybe I should be an English major okay well in college okay in college. So academically I really continued to do very well in school. I edited our high school paper. I wrote short stories and stuff like that. So my English teachers were very influential in terms of you know I looked up to them and so on but so from there I went to college and it was the time when New P Baguio opened for the first time. Okay so I had my first year in New P Baguio and my classmates then were from the classical you St. Louis had a classical curriculum they called it classical. What how is that? Well the only thing classical there was they learned Latin they had a subject on Latin. Okay so anyway so that's where we were classmates with General Plengas. So you took English your first year? Yeah and well G.E. everybody had G.E. But you were already an English major? No no you were not major. Because since you were starting I don't think they could talk about majors. So it was just like the university college. Okay so then I came to Dileman. Wait let's wait a little bit. You mentioned there were some major influences teachers at Baguio who kind of you know pushed you along the side. Yes Dean Rola was an English teacher there at that time she was and Professor Arbisu, Lourdes Arbisu also from the English department. Yes actually let me see do I remember his name became the chair of Zoology here he was my teacher in Zoology 11 which I already took the first. And you mentioned Dean Rola I mean over the years I've known you actually you mentioned her quite a bit the kind of influences you pick up on her. Well actually Dean Rola over the years was trying to when when she became the chancellor of UP Visayas tried to recruit me to go there but she couldn't find an item that was that would equal already my position here in Dileman. And then we did a lot of work together eventually in her consultancies in chair she always involved me so that was where I exercised my writing skills. Okay but that was after that was after now that was after now. Okay so anyway how did I get into psych? So then you moved to UP Dileman? And yes how did I get into psych? Yes I got interested in psych my teacher in psych then was because he was a double major sociology and psychology at the same time. Professor Bonifacio Manuel Bonifacio so I got interested I got interested and I was thinking actually I didn't ask anybody's opinion I just maybe it's a product of my thinking by myself alone independently over the years I didn't consult anybody I just decided I wouldn't go into English because maybe I didn't believe enough in my my capability to write fiction etc so I went into psych and the rest is. But how was the the studying of psychology Dileman in the early years of training? Who were the major influences? Okay when I started taking my psych major courses the most influential at the undergrad of course aside from Dr Alfredo Lagmae who was my teacher in experimental psychology and perception. The other one that was really quite influential was Asun Sean Mitteria Austria. She's Austria is her marriage. She was my teacher in psychological testing, psychological interview and child psychology so she was she was really a good teacher and she was the one who actually made me experience what psychologists do outside of academia because she for psychological interviewing we were required to go to leton textile mills which was in Marikina at that time to interview the workers okay I would have to write a paper about that particular interview and then for psychological testing she made us write case studies on specific children from UPIS okay so the child that I chose turned out to be a gifted child that started my interest in giftedness okay so she I administered the Wexler the Stanford Binet and some personality measures which I don't really recall right now and wrote up the case study about that child so it gave me a taste of what psychologists can do outside of academia okay and then her her interest in psychology I remember she wanted me to assist her in a piece of research which now now I think it was just a replication of Piaget's experiment but it was so wonderful to see that Piaget really was being very factual about cognitive development the usual you you should be a patient tasks you want to tell us a little bit about conservation conservation but then because we did those things I could see that there were age differences even among very young children that you could see the cognitive changes okay so these are experiments that have to do with conservation of matter conservation of length can you say conservation of meaning that's a term of Piaget it means can the child really understand comprehend what the things that you can manipulate for example with length that would that they could they could already see that even if you manipulated it there was no difference okay so the same so yeah so we say that the child conserved if he was able to see that even with that manipulation the value didn't change at all okay the mass didn't change the length didn't change the volume didn't change and this is an indicator of progression yes progression you could really see it was wonderful to see that there were really age differences and you were doing this with that made me really get interested in okay so professor metaria actually started you thinking about measurement and child development well yes yes yes so that was a big influence then for dr. legmine experimental psychology uh first he it wasn't just doing the experiments but he exposed us to the philosophy behind it like positivism operationalization you know how a very abstract concept can actually be observed by having appropriate manipulations so dr. legmine was the yes how your science is honed and their doctor legmine yes yes uh it's sort of disciplined my thinking it's sort of disciplined my thinking made me more critical made me more systematic uh in what i was doing and thinking about but you also work with dr. legmine shortly after uh well after i graduated i taught for one year in u p tarlock and then dr. legmine recruited me to teach but while i was teaching in u p tarlock i already enrolled in the graduate program so like i i i was working as his assistant at the same time and that continued after after my full-time teaching in u p deliman so and what is the nature of your work with dr. legmine well dr. legmine developed the philippine thematic perception test which consists of 21 pictures uh that were drawn by um uh an artist who drew uh situations philippine situations as described by dr. legmine so that you had a variety the way he explained it to me he thought about situations where you are alone where you are with another person and where you are with a group so he sort of increased the number of people and and some of them didn't even have people so from zero to a group so uh and these were typical of philippine situations so uh what i what he conceptualized the development of philippine thematic aperception test by looking again in this reinforced my early learnings with uh professor austria um he wanted us to systematically sample the stories uh based on gender so made female based on age from children to adults okay based on uh location urban uh rural okay our rural uh context was uh laguna it's because it was really rural at the time you know you we would have to ride in uh in this bus that that's that doesn't have doors and you know you have to have a bandana because the wind would be blowing right and left uh so it was also a very good experience for me because i had to deal with people that i was meeting for the first time and within a short time i had to establish rapport so that they would be willing to really reveal something of themselves in uh in that interaction uh the the conceptualization of the methodology was very good aside from looking at the different sectors he also looked at uh whether like people were abnormal or pathological so we had to really search for people who would fill up the cells in his sampling plan yeah how was that so well it was it took a long time it took a long time but the social sciences and humanities research council continued to fund him uh so it took it took some time for us to gather the data okay did you use this for your thesis was this part of your thesis my thesis was on the stimulus ambiguity of the philippine thematic aperception test which is very technical in a way i used uh factorial design for i maintained the the gender as well as the language language what i manipulated was language the stories in english the stories in philippine okay so my my goal was to for each of the pictures we would have a value for its ambiguity because the principle in projective techniques is the more ambiguous the stimulus the better it is because it will elicit a variety of responses okay okay so if it's very structured then it usually you just have one one story coming out okay and then what is the outcome of this what are the impact of your work with Dr. Lagmay on the PTAT the impact on myself well yourself the discipline well uh i think the the impact on the discipline is actually doctor we can say that Dr. Lagmay really pioneered in personality assessment in the philippines and uh that he's uh the cultural context was very very important i don't know if the cultural thing also impacted on me while i was gathering data because uh some of the people in uh los baños who accompanied us brought along a pakistanis and who was also doing field work on the PTAT and then we uh well you know how it is in the rural area you have only one one trail okay and here here comes a farmer walking with his dog coming down coming down from the mountain coming down the same trail and we had to we had to meet him and then the dogs started you know snarling parking you know what the pakistani did he held me by the shoulders and used me as a shield so it was really a very cultural thing for me that the women are dispensable okay okay so the philippino men who were with me were very angry with him because they would never they would protect me and not use me as a shield so okay you know cultural factors really matter a lot okay but this is also lesson number two in your gender training from your father to this yes yes yes okay so for you you you worked on the PTAT then that was part of your continued work yeah i gathered data for Dr. Lagmai and then we scored yeah uh the the it wasn't just the PTAT because he wanted it validated against the rar shock and the sentence completion things so there were three tests that we administered when we went up so you helped him validate his uh his record i i i understand that you also helped prepare the the manual for the PTAT subsequently actually i wrote it by myself because upon the request of Dr. Lagmai that i write the manual okay but did he get to see the manual no oh he never did get to see the manual okay so that is mainly your effort now and that's still being used marketed it's being used and marketed so it's still widely used in what areas clinical psychology generally but i keep telling my students it's really meant as a personality measure although we have data on on pathologies but mainly it's really how personalities organized in terms of needs and process process meaning situation okay so the interaction between situation and needs is very clear when you use the PTAT okay but this is not the only test and uh this is not the only measurement that project that you've had right subsequently uh subsequently uh subsequently Dr. Lourdes Calaudi Desma and I collaborated to come up funded by UNICEF to come up with the early child care and development checklist so it's focused now on children from zero to five zero to seven zero to seven okay and and how is this test we have national norms for it so we went out into the field to the field we had a pool of items and after item analysis we selected the ones that really discriminated very well in terms of age differences okay okay so the test is now available the test is now available in fact it's available nationwide because UNICEF published it and it's for free it's for free okay okay but we trained we trained people okay on how to use it and then these trainers were supposed to train others okay who is using this test it's supposed to be used in every barangay daycare center because it can serve as a screening tool for disabilities okay so the idea is once you administer that and you see that the child falls below the norm you can refer to a psychologist who will do more extensive assessment and then interventions because the basic principle in their psyche actually is the earlier the intervention the better and has it been used for that it has been used it's supposed to be used continuously and according to the SWD who manages the whole barangay daycare center system they have been using it and that they also evaluated how it's being used but they never gave us the research but it's a nationwide thing so if the impact is really nationwide that's that's kind of interesting because it's supposed to have really major implications for early childhood intervention yeah very major but we don't know whether it has actually yeah well maybe that's one thing Dr. Ledesma and I can do again yeah we also developed another instrument this time it's really for looking at child development generally not as a screening tool anymore but to look at what they the so-called normal child is able to do okay okay so we we we completed that it was also a nationwide norming yeah and our faculty we involved our faculty yeah they went out in pairs remember okay yeah we involved our faculty in gathering the data yeah but I don't find out about the effect non-self whoever presented it represented it and then actually maybe this is one of the issues maybe I don't know we should have involved depth ed from the start because it was supposed to be an input on the development of the curriculum in early child education okay and they were they were saying that they couldn't believe that children at this particular age could do some of the cognitive tasks they were saying they were so biased against it in a way so those are some of the if there's a change in policy you have to involve the people who will implement it from the start that's the lesson to be learned because when you began the work with with Wally it was really an academic project where we were commissioned by UNICEF to develop this so he didn't connect with the implementing agency so one was implementation by DSWD the other one was implementation by depth ed so what could have been what can you do now at this point to sort of make sure actually I have been encouraging my students to to extend uh because you you can extend in what what uh because what we did was preschool yeah what we did was preschool so to extend into other age groups other age groups which I think is very very important mm-hmm has anybody done it and if I any of your PhD students not yet okay although some of them have used the eccd as part of their like what is the eccd the adwords or eccd is early child care early child development okay that's not local um what's her name now the one the one who died in in uh Hawaii she she used the eccd for her thesis oh aisa yeah aisa valera yeah she was my advice oh what's she doing yes yes and that's the one that you and Wally developed she used it with uh no barangay children she used it yeah okay so I guess yeah so I you know some of these ideas you have funded by an outside agency for the good of the community but you know means on the link up is not too solid but your students have been trying to work on it then that's I guess is another positive well my students have used them but uh what I'm trying to do is for them to extend the norms which is actually quite expensive but you do a lot of testing now with children I see you do you use your your instruments well that's really for my advocacy for um children with disabilities so I assess them for free on Saturdays yeah but you're not using those tools are you I am I am you are oh okay yeah tell us a little bit about that uh your this advocacy of yours yeah well actually um my advocacy impact actually um I work with public school children who are in the SPED program uh and they belong to really poor poor families actually um there was one very good community worker who approached me if I could assess the children in her barangay okay so uh for some time I was just concentrating on that group of children uh and then word spread uh so the other other uh SPED classes also wanted to be assessed that's why most of public school well the result of the assessment that I make gives a situationer on where the child is and then the teachers have to plan the interventions from from that data so I make recommendations about what to concentrate on what they can do I make suggestions okay and you know what yes they come back because after one year they come back for more assessment or for more assessment and then the teachers also give me feedback okay and that one has grown because I see you still with all these kids and weekends yeah and it's still free yeah of course no okay well they're they're they're really in financial you know uh in dire need um one mother was telling me she has to save for their fare to come over save money so she can pay for their fare they're they're as poor as that okay where do they come from they're these people from everywhere oh well Metro Manila Metro Manila okay yeah and these are the on the disabled side or on the gifted side uh both okay yeah yeah so you also get some it's so nice to find among the poor that there are people really with strong potential you have done work with a gifted right I mean you this is one of your advocacy still can you tell us a little more about that well um Dr Perlas Santos Ocampo um created or developed uh the Philippine Association for the gifted and she invited me together with other well at the beginning I think Wally was also part of it but Wally got to be C and so on and then the developmental pediatricians were also part of the group yeah so that was how I uh started assessing children who were thought to be gifted actually and part of the problem there is sometimes parents think that their child is gifted but they're not they're not so it's very difficult to very deal with that actually how do you deal with the parents of children who are not as gifted as they thought well I tell them that uh generally this is my approach okay because I tell them that children are different from each other yeah and this child uh will benefit from I give the I give the uh interventions I scream it to them etc like what interventions do you well um you well there are specific interventions like for example visual special intelligence you know the three-dimension puzzles uh huh that helps very well so you you part of my exercises you know part of my exercise do they do that in session or they take it home with them or no uh well no they we cannot we cannot do that they cannot make them take it home so they have to come and do the exercises ah so you put on sessions more you screen and then exercises they have to keep coming back for the exercises okay and then um from there the parents can pick up okay do you ever see I mean if you were talking about this some of these people come from really very poor situations do they do they ever do you do you like innovate for you know you know some of my insights insights from my experience is our family planning program has to be fixed because uh women up to now uh get pregnant whether they like it or not okay and then the reality is they attempt to get rid of the baby because they feel like you know uh how can I how can I feed this additional mouth etc etc and then they don't succeed of course when the child is born it's born with disability already so you know it's it's a vicious cycle and and I think the intervention cannot be after the damage is done cannot be only that it has to be government policy social policy uh has to change okay okay have you tried to deal with this issue I mean how have you tried to deal with this I mean you know it is the government I know but have you done any lobbies or whatever uh I well no unfortunately yeah but maybe that's one thing that well it cannot be just one person cannot be just one person we have to we have to approach uh a champion in congress we have to work with them because actually women's lives are not really that great especially when especially when they are financially challenged yeah you know I cry I really cried when I did some field work on family planning and I uh encountered this woman living in a hut you know soil you know and then I told her uh well I was really interviewing her about how she was trying to control for her pregnancies and she said that uh she's taking the pill and I had I asked her to describe how she does it just to be sure that she's doing it right away you know she told me she halves the pill and takes half of it before contact with the husband so it really makes you cry there's the desire to control but you know yeah yeah we we have done some of that correct together yeah okay but maybe maybe continuing on from there because you're talking about women in poverty no choices um you you have related to that you're talking about health for them and their children like you know you got involved in a lot of health research too right the health research I'm involved with actually how did you get the effect the poorest of the poor oh yes okay like Hansen's disease this is leprosy commonly referred to as leprosy these are the really poor people who get it and um but you can also see the values of Filipinos they are very protective of their family member who has Hansen's and uh they don't uh they try to isolate because you have to educate them also about how it's transmitted but they they do their own interventions already that like they they segregate all of the things that he he or she would be using some of them even construct a hut beside the house and so on just to minimize contact with with the Hansen's disease yes why did you get involved in these things why because it's one of the diseases that has not been controlled or at that time we were doing the research it wasn't controlled and it was basically because people had false beliefs about it but where did they start with some government of course the government statistics showed that it was something that could be because we it's an age old problem even in the bible it's there no yeah but uh you know we have tala tala leprosarium we have the one in Palawan you know it was something yeah Kulion there's one in Zipu and then there's another one in Cebu it's closed down but anyway one of the interesting things that because we all I also went to Cebu then Ilocos for you know the commonalities that I found in terms of the environment yeah yes the pottery why you do pottery yeah there's yeah that area they do a lot of pottery so it's the soil I don't know I don't I'm just think I just it's a thought that crossed my mind that there are some commonalities yeah but how did you get to do that and how did you get involved in well I was invited to join and these teams were uh doctors social scientists department of health department of health okay so you got involved early on with government initiatives specifically also the college of public health my collaborators were from public health that's why our population was also the poor because public health the public health the the focus was really it was more uh it was a quantitative qualitative type of research um what did you do not not just looking at the statistics of leprosy but also looking into the inner world of the the Hansenites you know trying to see their perspective uh so part of it was stigma the stigma that they experienced yeah and then uh no but it was it was also looking at how the family viewed the disease and how many supports so construct the way they constructed the disease in their minds and the way they tried to cope because of those constructions the psychology of the Hansenites looking at the social donations and cognitive aspects okay at the outcome on beds what what what whatever happened to the data was it did go was it fed to some government agency uh it was fed to the and what outcomes I don't know I didn't follow through with the policy but it was you know I think that's what happens to you when you're doing so many things at the same time okay so you you're through with your research you give it to them you give the feedback you give feedback to the community then you go back to teaching I mean you know all of these things are happening all at the same time yeah so it's not like I'm a policy researcher and I have to follow through with it and so on then filariasis affects the farmers who deal with abacca plants this is the common filariasis is uh this is transmitted also by a mosquito and uh like malaria because I've done work also with malaria and these these are the the ones that have uh make your legs big they call it buyong it's either the testicles and large or the the legs and large okay and it's full of the full of the filariasis inside okay and it's the mosquito breeds in the abacca plants but your work on this one has been mainly research right yes yes commission research by a research oh yeah and then the one on malaria I focused on barangay health workers and here again you can well it's a detail but it's an important one in one of the study sites the the barangaya health workers said that the their microscope wasn't working but that my doctor partner in the research uh you know something as simple as the name okay so you've looked at various aspects of the the health programs in the country you know I remember about your leprosy study was your dissertation right yes was that your first foray into health psychology or how did you get into this whole thing and when you were dean yeah they were also there were initiatives I was it you were dean there were initiatives to start the initiatives that I started when I was dean had to do with a grant from WHO for the development of social science and medicine that's why abaya was able to go uh this is our program right in health psychology uh uh join a tv dad for population and then susan for social site uh huh okay so those were WHO scholarships yeah that you were able to work out but that's different from the one when you were trying to start a health psychology program was it in the college that was before your deanship no not not health no the one with those vietnamese coming over no the vietnamese were already recipients of grants uh who I think you were part of it they wanted to learn how to do research yeah so I involved in different departments to train them okay research on health side on on health yeah social science aspects of health okay so you have been very very active in research not only doing your own research but also training about research right and you you you still do that for the military is it you also program with them yes yes uh I uh I taught research methodology in the national defense college uh huh yes and you also did that with the ethics program right yes yes the ethics program of the well yes the ethics program do you still do research now well the last research I did was to do the annual of the pt 80 yeah but what I want to what I want to do and I started gathering my materials is to write about toseri song from a multi multiple intelligence perspective because I think is a good example of multiple intelligence but but this is also the sad thing what research right because the university in fact turns out a lot of valuable research we farmed them out the government the other institutions that could do with them and then maybe they don't have the resources to deal with it but it's also sad and I'd like to go back to my insight about they have to be like we all work we teach our students you have to involve the respondents of your study but you also have to involve the agencies the agencies from the beginning so they will own it yeah have you ever tried that did you ever have any research where the agency came in right from the beginning and how did that work you know uh actually our study with about developing the eccd checklist we involved everybody we involved you know the province the municipality the barangay the city etc yeah and did it work better they were with us all along and then and then well they were very enthusiastic actually and uh some of the the existing teachers because they're not they weren't really trained to be teachers but they were the ones taking care of the kids in the barangay health centers uh they were very enthusiastic and they were giving us feedback about you know they did this they did that and so on so but but I don't know maybe uh it has to be decentralized or the people in the central office have to do something about really helping the communities that's true so part of my dream is to be a barangay good idea because everything because everything happened should be happening in the barangay yeah that's that's true all of the problems I mean they did they help you the data collection and then they started implementing it but the other part is if when they find out that the child has these disabilities it's really to send them off to another set of agencies to deal with it right the screen yeah the screen one of them and the next step is to be you know acting on it so now we know that what to do yeah yeah they know how to do oh yeah and oh you know our problem the problem partly psychology oh what do you mean the problem is psychology we're not really where we are needed uh meaning could you elaborate on everybody is concentrate more or less the one well the in the urban areas because that's where you have paying patients oh yeah okay all right okay so the problem is with psychology also as a profession all right okay so we have looked at your work in measurement in developmental psych in health psychology maybe you'd like to tell us a little bit but you've been an administrator for a long time right you've been dean you've been chair would you like us and they were head of the office of uh the tell us about the initiatives that you have initiated and the impact of that what were the what were the contributors to such things and what were the outcomes maybe as chair as dean as chair as admissions head as chair uh i sort of maybe i was a compromise candidate because it was also putting the second time for electing uh chair this is the 1980s right you were you were the first female chair yes yes but before that um doctor lagmai was displaced by uh it was fg but fg didn't last he didn't like administrative work okay and so he be he he quit no well he there oh and then there also that's why i became the okay all right became the chair and but in a sense but you know um maybe it was also part of my early socialization that if you have to accept responsibility you have to really make good of it make good so uh i started looking at the faculty profile and i realized at that time that the ones who were sent out on the original Rockefeller grants were um already they didn't do any postdoc they didn't do any postdoc so i was thinking maybe uh it's about time uh and at the time i already had the curricula for dev site i owe uh personality philippine site and so on uh so i was thinking about people who would head those or contribute to the development of those disciplines so uh daisy and uh doctor david were funded partly by the leftover of the Rockefeller grant to go again to for their postdoc and then uh because i was thinking of the development of the development of developmental site mrs domingo for aging in harvard and then uh grace uh for the younger group in dev site she went to banks backstreet backstreet in new york who else who was the other one i think there were five of them mita was supposed to go mita was supposed to go but she didn't she she didn't want to go i benefited from that because i went yeah yeah because they they put it out again and then nobody was interested and i said i'm interested i wanted to do the political psych certification programs i did yeah so that was really nice but other than that you were also very involved in the curricular planning not only the department but also the universities at ge is uh oh yes uh well uh social so they were revising the ge at that time the revised ge program so we had social social science one social science two so i was very much involved in social science one which uh tried to be interdisciplinary you know uh psychology sociology anthropology regionally and then the other departments started uh thinking that they should also be there so linguistics got in uh population got in so it was it was a broader introduction to social science one and then i got involved in writing them writing there were also grants for writing uh textbooks for open you yeah that's why i got i got involved in the writing of that and what were the final outcomes how is social science one now social science one i think is fading because no we together with the other uh g courses because they have limited they have limited it to a few but what do you think are the fine i mean in your assessment remove all the certain things i i think i think there's great value in liberal education you know the the things that you you can only find in a ge program because it will help you uh conceptualize better and then have a broader view of the world around you and i well i've had feedback from our graduates who say that they realize when they are already practicing the value of their ge education because that was the mark of a u p graduate before and then the other universities started to think about having their own g programs well what do you think about the idea that anyway you can google everything you know what do i think yes no i think if that's your attitude it's as good as you know maybe for 24 hours and the integration is not there you're just looking at bits of facts here and there so the integration is very very important yeah maybe i ask a little bit more about your time as a administrator that's november what are the issues that you confronted as a woman in the service of the university well how did you deal with this um at that time when i started being chair all the other chairs were male and i saw only female i think what is the effect of that how was that well very young very young not like i am now so um i sort of just waited for everybody to say what they wanted to say they were very noisy so i resorted to writing which was very good i i would write the chair i would write the dean i would write the chancellor or about our needs and you know i can maybe it's boasting or bragging about it i got everything i wanted i've got you know that's why i cannot appreciate now administrators that are having problems about getting this or that funded i because i think upi has so much money maybe it's a matter of presenting it presenting your needs and so i did it in writing i just kept quiet during the meetings yeah i remember one of because i couldn't compete with the shouting of the males oh and i didn't want to do that yeah yeah i remember one of your initiatives and you were dean remember remember that nice program we had with uh young young faculty doing a series of lectures older faculty also having a series of lectures you know money from up to now um the the young faculty who went through that yeah always tell me they really appreciated it yeah because we every it was a weekly thing they would present a paper and we provided the myrianda uh it yeah and then some of them ended up using that paper for their thesis it was it was a nice yeah it was a really nice program actually i i liked and then there was the compliment with the senior faculty and presenting also their works it was like because before they were the junior faculty were also feeling oppressed yeah yeah the the junior faculty were complaining about not having a chance to you know and then their tenure was also in question because they didn't have their ma for so i i wrote i wrote the chancellor asked for funding and it was approved and then the senior faculty who already had some papers to present also had their opportunity but they were separate because the junior faculty i think also felt more confident talking to their peers rather than you know being scrutinized by the senior faculty that's true yeah it started the another the group of young faculty actually there was an organization i know what's the name what's your name i forgot the start of the k i know it started like hey why can't remember another two of us cannot remember what advice would you give female administrators balancing admin work with research and teaching and maybe family life i mean how is work life balance achieved is that is that even a valid question these days uh these days yeah well uh we have to make some assumptions like like uh do you live nearby you don't have to go through the traffic because that really obstructs from the uh from the family life so much no because you have to stay in traffic for at least four hours a day two in the morning two at night uh but uh so let's assume that you are able to have campus housing and uh my advice would be do as much of your work as you can during office hours and when you're at home don't concentrate on concentrate on your children don't do any other type of work until they're asleep oh is that what you did yeah that's what i did that's what i did that's why my son said uh do you want to go into psychology and he said no i don't think so because when i go to bed you're reading when i wake up in the morning you're reading so okay but you know that's that's one one advice i can i can share which i did with my own family so you have to do your work around your life oh what a struggle yes your land my contributions to the field that's uh well in in measurement um pk80 because i i made the manual philippine thematic a perception test i wrote the manual for that and then uh the eccd checklist because it's supposed to have nationwide impact the early child care and development checklist which is supposed to have a nationwide impact because it's supposed to be there and everybody died uh for uh uh well right now i consider it very significant that i am able to be of service to the poor children who have disabilities so i i see them regularly um uh well for the university i think i initiated the development of the different areas of psychology uh more areas than what was in the mind of dr lagmai and i um yes well the development of the faculty also supported our phd supported their phd's uh and in terms of supporting the faculty the female faculty i got a small grant from unicef to have a nursery yeah have a nursery for the nursing mothers yeah that was an epidemic one of them were pregnant at the same time and so and babies are the same so yeah so we had a little room yeah but now it's gone but maybe they will need it again because there are a bunch of people getting married getting married yes but also betz you you were the first head of the admissions office you must have set that up oh okay um we the admissions office i think my contribution there uh was actually the excellence equity admissions system it was a change in policy that president have here wanted to have uh so as to nationalize the population again of u b because before you buy all of the valedictorians and salutatorians would get in uh so it was his dream to have uh the equity part was there's a palugin for every province so that at least that province will be represented but they had to have unacceptable uh so there's a palugin it wasn't the the cut off but may contain palugin so they would have the opportunity to get in yeah but we changed that right and they they reverted that did they reverse that again uh well actually president was supportive of it but you were also a party to the beginnings of right yes uh well it was lady lady career yes but you are very involved me and i was involved in debriefing the volunteer teachers who who went to the really really really remote areas but they they were very nice stories that uh that we got from them and we're resurrecting pehinumod right yes they're resurrecting so that that's it and this is the university's advocacy program right i mean this is like going giving back to the community yeah yeah last word so what would you maybe what what would you say to the academic just starting at up perhaps yeah or advice to the current generation of up academics uh the current generation of up academics i hope you stay on and uh be inspired by the traditions of the university which are honor and excellence maintain your integrity and do your work the best way that you can