The German government, through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), has awarded nine more doctoral and master's degree scholarships to Southeast Asians, three of them Filipinos, to enable them to pursue their PhD and MS degrees at the University of the Philippines Los Baños.
The study grants are administered by the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) hosted by the Philippine government.
German Ambassador Gordon Kricke and SEARCA Director Gil C. Saguiguit Jr. presented the scholarship awards to the grantees—three Filipinos, three Vietnamese, two Indonesians and one from Myanmar—at a program held on November 20 at the German Club in Makati City.
Kricke noted that there are SEARCA-DAAD alumni who now hold key posts in government, among them Philippine Competition Commission Chairman Arsenio Balisacan and Indonesia Education Deputy Minister Musliar Kasim.
He challenged the SEARCA-DAAD scholars to excel and do what they can to contribute to agricultural and rural development in their respective countries and the Southeast Asian region as a whole.
Four other SEARCA-DAAD scholars are studying outside the Philippines. They are Antun Puspanti of Indonesia (PhD, forestry) and Mr. Luis Tavares of Timor-Leste (PhD, animal science), both studying at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Yarzar Hein of Myanmar (PhD, agricultural and resource economics) and Nguyen Tran Ngoc Tuan of Vietnam (MS, agricultural and resource economics), both enrolled at Kasetsart University in Bangkok, Thailand.
These new grants bring to 20 the number of Southeast Asians currently being supported by the DAAD in prestigious universities in the region. The DAAD has been one of SEARCA's partners in its human-resource development program since 1975, with more than 350 SEARCA-DAAD scholarship grants awarded, 94 percent of whom have earned their PhD and MS degrees.