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 university-hood 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. (To be continued)/PN
