College of Engineering– Two students here have accepted scholarship from the DOST Science Education Institute and the Agham Party List to pursue BS Meteorology.

Reiner Agas, BS Computer Engineering; and Romeo Ganal Jr., BS Agricultural Engineering-both incoming fourth year students-were among five engineering students who were earlier qualified for the scholarship and underwent a six-week bridging program at the Central State Luzon University prior to first semester, AY 2012-2013. Only Agas and Ganal Jr. finally accepted the scholarship.

They will spend the remaining two years of the course at PAGASA and at the Philippine Science High School in Quezon City which, at the moment, can provide the necessary facilities for the course. Their teachers there will be considered affiliate faculty of MMSU but whose salary will be paid by Agham Partylist.

As scholars, they will be enjoying free tuition fee of P6,000 per semester; book allowance of P2,500 per semester; insurance and transportation allowance of P1,500 per semester; and stipend of P40,000 every year.

The offering of BS Meteorology under Project COMET (Consortium for Meteorology Education and Training), is a collaborative undertaking of DOST, CHED, CLSU, MMSU, Western Visayas State University, and Agham Party-List. The consortium, led by PAGASA, has established the first academic degree course on meteorology in the Philippines. It aims to fill the gap in the country’s science personnel and to train scholars to become weather and climate specialists. The schools assigned to offer the program are: MMSU, Rizal Technical University, Western Visayas State University, Bicol University, and CLSU. The schools were selected as these are located in typhoon-prone areas in the country.

For the first year of implementation of the program, the consortium accepted incoming junior-level students taking mathematics, engineering, and science courses and who have general weighted average of 83 or better in mathematics, science, and english. All of the students’ tuition fees will be paid by the government. They will have PAGASA forecasters as lecturers and weather officials as research advisers. After graduation, the students are assured of work in government agencies such as PAGASA.