New chancellor for UP Los Baños named

LOS BAÑOS, Laguna, Philippines – The University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) has a new chancellor starting Nov. 1.

He is Dr. Rex Victor Cruz, current dean of the UPLB College of Forestry and Natural Resources.

He was elected and proclaimed the eighth chancellor of UPLB by the Board of Regents, the UP System’s highest policymaking body, during its meeting last Sept. 29. Six others aspired for the position.

Cruz, 55, will succeed Dr. Luis Rey Velasco.

Founded in 1909, UP Los Baños is one of the seven constituent (autonomous) universities of the UP System. The others are UP Diliman, UP Manila, UP Open University (also in Los Baños), UP Visayas, UP Mindanao, and UP Baguio.

Cruz has envisioned UP Los Baños as “One University, One Goal, One Destiny” guided by his five-point thematic agenda.

“The essence of UPLB as a national university,” he said, “is being and will be defined by individual commitment to the country and the willingness to work together as one university pursuing one goal toward a common destiny as a genuine public service university, a relevant research university, and a growing graduate university.”

Cruz earned his BS in Forestry in 1978 and his Master’s in Forestry in 1981, both from UPLB. He finished his doctorate (Watershed Management) at the University of Arizona (USA) in 1990.

A group of alumni from UPLB and senior foresters in the country acknowledge Cruz as an internationally recognized scientist, having actively participated in world forums on climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Notable among these was in the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a scientific body established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program.

Cruz was among scientists from various parts of the world, five of them also Filipinos, who were members of the IPCC Technical Working Group II, which assessed the impacts of climate change and presented mitigation and adaptation measures.

The panel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for its efforts “to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

The IPCC shared the award with former United States Vice President Al Gore, whose documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth” generated global interest in the alarming impacts of climate change.