News and Features
Visayan Students Top Smart Quiz Bee Tilt
By Lils Liwanag
[April 1, 2007/ Manila] - Academe-industry linkages couldn’t be stressed enough to hone tomorrow’s leaders. More than ever before, these linkages are being emphasized in preparing today’s youth to acquire relevant skills and experience, and after graduation, to join the ranks of a competent workforce. This is because the ICT revolution has given rise to the youth’s increasing interest in technology and engineering-related courses as a stepping stone towards a promising future.
For instance, companies like Smart Communications Inc. (SMART), through its Smart Wireless Engineering Education Program (SWEEP), has partnered with higher learning institutions throughout the Philippines to take an active role in preparing the country’s future electronics and communications engineers towards being a world-class breed.
In the recent 3rd SWEEP Innovation and Excellence Awards inter-collegiate competition organized by the company at the Music Hall of SM Mall of Asia, one of the highlights called PalaECEpan pitted the intellectual prowess of 40 electronics and communications (ECE) students from SWEEP partner schools. The quiz bee tested the wits of the country’s brightest engineering students on the following topics: general engineering, SMART trivia, signaling, data communication, TCP/IP, transmission, wireline technologies, wireless technologies, and ECE laws.
After going through two elimination rounds and the final round likened to passing through the proverbial eye of the needle, two 5th year ECE students from the Visayas proved to be the smartest of them all: PalaECEpan winner Rodney O. Sia from the University of St. La Salle (USLS) in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, and runner-up Nene Mercedes dS. Velasco from the University of San Carlos (USC) in Cebu City. What made PalaECEpan more fun and exciting this year was the introduction of the quiz bee format similar to the popular noontime game shows on TV.
More than just winning the quiz bee, Rodney and Nene agree that the experience of competing against the best of the best in the Big City has been rewarding for them. Rodney recounts that he was encouraged by his fellow PalaECEpan nominees from USLS to represent the school because of his inclination towards communications.
“My coach, Engr. Constancio Legaspi, then gave me some materials to study, but I did most self-studying for 4 months through research and the Internet,” Rodney shared. “Luck played a part in my winning, I guess. The topics covered during the contest became familiar to me because of my own research.”
“Thanks to Smart, my SWEEP experience has been simply amazing,” gushed Rodney, who was accompanied in Manila by Engr. Edgar Altarejos, ECE program chair at the USLS.
Nene, as the lone female PalaECEpan finalist, did not go without putting a good fight against fellow male finalists from USLS, Adamson University (Manila), University of Cebu-Banilad, and Saint Mary’s University (Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya). Veteran of several inter-collegiate engineering quiz bee competitions in Metro Manila, Nene shared that the PalaECEpan experience was “tense and pressuring, but the excitement is always there. By joining, the experience has also been helpful in preparing for the upcoming ECE board exams.”
For both Rodney and Nene, joining SWEEP has transcended the thrill of competition as they got to bond with new friends from other schools, apply and interview for jobs in the PLDT Group of Companies, and be entertained by the hottest acts in town such as Chris Cayzer, Dennis Trillo, Kitchie Nadal, Sponge Cola, and Verve. As Napoleon L. Nazareno, SMART president and CEO stressed to all SWEEP participants, “All of you are winners.”
And winners they all have become, as these engineers of the future emerged from the contest -- smarter, wiser, and stronger. Watch them succeed. @
