ISUFST@3: A university still becoming

By Herman M. Lagon

January has a way of forcing institutions to look at themselves in the mirror. Not the flattering kind, but the one that catches what has changed, what remains unfinished, and what still needs courage. When Iloilo State University of Fisheries Science and Technology (ISUFST) turns three as a university this January 10, 2026—celebrated a day early in its Dumangas Campus—it does not feel like a ceremonial birthday. It feels more like a checkpoint. Three years is short in calendar terms, but long enough to reveal whether a school is merely wearing a new name or quietly becoming something else. ISUFST, for better and for worse, chose the harder path: growth that shows its seams.

Long before universityhood entered the conversation, ISUFST already carried a stubborn sense of purpose. Its story began in 1957, when a high school in Barotac Nuevo was converted into the Central Iloilo National School of Fisheries through Republic Act 1925. The setting mattered. Fisheries was not a fashionable field; it was practical, coastal, rural, and tied to survival rather than prestige. When land was donated in the Tiwi Site in the early 1960s and collegiate programs followed, the school grew alongside communities whose lives depended on water, weather, and work that rarely made headlines. Over decades, the institution evolved—becoming a regional school, then a state college—expanding programs in fisheries, agriculture, marine transportation, education, management, administration, science, and technology. Each change was incremental, often slow, sometimes interrupted, but always anchored in service rather than spectacle.

The years that followed were marked by persistence more than polish. Presidential decrees, program expansions, satellite campuses, leadership transitions, and compliance cycles shaped ISCOF’s identity. It survived integration with other institutions, navigated shifting national education policies, and endured long stretches where ambition outpaced resources. When attempts at university conversion fell short due to compliance gaps, the lesson was humbling but necessary: aspiration without groundwork collapses under scrutiny. Those decades matter because they explain why ISUFST’s rise feels earned. This was not overnight reinvention. It was institutional muscle built through repetition, failure, and recalibration.

The real pivot came quietly between February and December 2022. When Dr. Nordy D. Siason Jr. assumed the presidency, the work ahead was unglamorous: program audits, documentation, faculty qualifications, facilities, governance structures, and compliance across campuses. There were no shortcuts—just grit, grace, grasp, and group effort. By January 10, 2023, when CHED officially approved the conversion of ISCOF into ISUFST, the moment felt less like triumph and more like relief. Universityhood arrived not as a finish line but as permission to do harder work under brighter light. Groundwork laid over time—shaped by RA 10604 (2013) and energized through RA 11012 (2018), filed by 4th District Rep. Ferjenel Biron—set the move toward universityhood in motion; meeting CHED’s requirements in late 2022 made it official in 2023. From then on, expectations tightened. The margin for excuses narrowed.

What followed surprised even insiders. In just three years, ISUFST moved with a pace that felt unfamiliar to many state universities. Across five campuses (Dingle, Dumangas, San Enrique, Barotac Nuevo-Main Poblacion and Tiwi), it now offers 27 undergraduate and 16 graduate programs, with four more baccalaureate and four graduate degrees in the pipeline. Serving over 8,500 students and supported by 280 faculty members—half of whom hold doctorate degrees—the scale of the work began to match the weight of university expectations. All undergraduate and graduate programs secured COPCs. Accreditations were sustained. Licensure exam performance remained strong. Recognition followed—not as vanity metrics, but as external mirrors. CHED ICONS awards, regional quality citations, ISO certification, and inclusion in global rankings such as UI GreenMetric and the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings signaled that something systemic was shifting. For a university serving mostly Ilonggo rural families outside urban privilege, these markers mattered. They quietly challenged the old assumption that excellence belongs only to loud, city-centered campuses.

Yet ISUFST’s most distinctive strength is not numerical. It is conceptual. It remains the first and only fisheries university in the country, a distinction that is neither decorative nor nostalgic. Fisheries anchors the institution in realities that Filipino families understand deeply: food security, climate risk, coastal livelihoods, and sustainability that must work on the ground, not just in policy papers. This grounding shows up even in the logo—one of the most thoughtfully designed seals in recent memory. It refuses the usual circular symmetry. Instead, a fish carries an atom for science, circuitry for technology, a leaf for sustainability, blue fins for balance, and a flame for learning’s restless drive. It looks forward without denying where it came from. Like the institution itself, it is functional, symbolic, and unapologetically different.

None of this suggests perfection. ISUFST, like all state universities, is a work in progress. Processes still lag behind intention. Bureaucracy sometimes outruns urgency. Old habits surface when pressure mounts. Universityhood does not erase history; it rearranges it and asks everyone to negotiate space again. Some adapt quickly. Others hold on tightly. This tension is not a flaw unique to ISUFST; it is the cost of transition. What matters is that the institution does not pretend otherwise. Growth here has been allowed to be imperfect, visible, and honest.

What makes the work bearable—and often meaningful—is the people. Here, integrity, social justice, discipline, and academic excellence are not slogans. They show up in daily choices—who gets helped, who gets heard, and how work is done when no one is watching. Students arrive carrying ambition and constraint in the same backpack. Many are first-generation college learners, navigating poverty with quiet discipline. Faculty and staff work with limited margins but steady resolve, teaching, researching, and extending service in ways that rarely make noise. In classrooms, extension sites, and meetings, questions about fairness, access, power, and responsibility surface not as talking points, but as practical concerns tied to real lives and nearby communities.

What ISUFST has become in three years is not a finished university, but a credible one. It is a school that can hold global conversations while staying rooted in provincial realities. It offers free tuition and fee exemptions while demanding academic rigor. It earns awards without mistaking them for identity. It speaks of excellence while keeping an eye on who gets left out. In a higher education landscape often torn between branding and mission, ISUFST has managed, so far, to keep both in the same frame.

Three years in, the most honest tribute is this: ISUFST is still becoming. Its rise has been swift, but not careless. Its flaws are real, but not fatal. Its identity is clear, but not closed. As it marks its third foundation year, the institution stands not as a finished monument but as a working promise. And perhaps that is the point. In a country where many systems ask people to wait endlessly, ISUFST has shown that progress—when anchored in integrity and social justice—does not need to be loud to be real. It only needs to keep moving.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.