MANILA, August 22, 2024 – The School of Health Sciences (SoHS) served host as Mapúa University opened its doors to the first-ever visiting scholar from Arizona State University (ASU) since the two universities partnered in May 11, 2022 through the Cintana Educational Network. Dr. Peter Joseph Torres, Assistant Professor, of ASU’s Department of English arrived in the Philippines for a series of research lecturing and networking activities with administrators, faculty members, and students of Mapúa SoHS from August 15 to 21.
Dr. Torres’ research integrates qualitative and quantitative techniques in examining written and spoken discourses on health issues, from policy documents to doctor-patient interactions. More recently, his research focused on the opioid crisis, uncovering the language employed by policymakers in addressing the crisis, as well as the language utilized by physicians and patients to negotiate, reinterpret, and enact such policies during consultations.
After a tour of the Mapúa University’s Makati campus and a meet-and-greet session with administrators on August 15, Dr. Torres’ academic activities at Mapúa officially started on August 16 with two lectures on “Discourse analysis for research in language and health” and “Making the most of video recorded clinical encounters: Optimizing impact and productivity through interdisciplinary teamwork”. Present in the lectures were the deans of Health Sciences, Dr. Lemmuel Tayo, Nursing, Dr. Joy Mejia, and the upcoming School of Medicine, Dr. Malaya Santos. Program chairpersons of SoHS, faculty-researchers, and students were also present to listen and explore research possibilities for faculty and students in these schools.
On August 19, Dr. Torres delivered a public lecture in partnership with the Linguistic Society of the Philippines (LSP) on the “Language and the opioid crisis [in the United States]”, where he discussed methods and findings from some of his most recent publications, including those in high-impact, WoS-abstracted journals Discourse Studies, Applied Corpus Linguistics, and Journal of Pragmatics. The hybrid lecture was attended by more than 200 faculty members, students, and LSP members who also took the opportunity to ask Dr. Torres how his work could inform local studies on the intersections of language and health.
On August 20, a research networking activity was held, where the deans, chairpersons, faculty-researchers, and students of health sciences, nursing, and medicine discussed with Dr. Torres possible areas of future research collaboration. During the networking activity, Dr. Tayo pitched how methods of engineering research, which is one of Mapúa’s traditional strengths, could possibly add rigor to the methods of discourse analysis presented by Dr. Torres. Dr. Torres, in turn, expressed his enthusiasm on the possible future collaborations where he could work as either an external adviser or research panelist of health science research.
In his welcome remarks during the August 19 lecture of Dr. Torres, Dr. Bonifacio T. Doma, Mapúa’s Executive Vice President for International Linkages and Cintana Partnership Executive Director, expressed his pride in Mapúa’s hosting of the ASU visiting scholar. “Dr. Torres’ visit is a testament of the increasing collaboration between ASU and the three Mapúa schools,” Dr. Doma said. At the backdrop of the visit, Dr. Doma expressed, “Mapúa, traditionally renowned in engineering and technical education, partnered with ASU to increase our footprint in the health sciences and business.”
Since the groundbreaking partnership with ASU through the Cintana Educational Network, the three Mapúa schools have enjoyed access to resources from the ASU repository, which are used to enrich health sciences and business courses. Global Signature Courses (GSCs) have been delivered by faculty members of Mapúa, alongside those from other universities under the Cintana alliance. Co-lecturing, where ASU Professors serve as guest lecturers in Mapúa courses, has also been a feature of the partnership. Mapúa-ASU and Cintana faculty mobility activities have seen faculty members visit Arizona State University and other Cintana schools, including those in Malaysia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, and Serbia, in the last two years.
Through the Mapúa-ASU partnership, Mapúa has indeed stepped on the gas in its pursuit of a truly world-class approach in delivering state-of-the-art health sciences and business programs in the Philippines.