LESLIE UMALY graduated from Miriam College in 2004 and now directs operations at Samarami, a company that designs large-scale events based on the experience of the youth group RockED that uses music and hip media to promote education, responsible voting and other issues.

Umaly also helps promote awareness about the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw).

?I was asked by WAGI to help in Cedaw Youth,? she said. The Women and Gender Institute (WAGI) is Miriam?s advocacy center and is the base of the Gender Mainstreaming Committee for all activities on nonsexist learning.

As a student Umaly recalled having been taught about women?s rights.

?We had teachers who had long been involved in women?s rights and saw (the need) to (teach) gender equality,? she said. ?We, international studies majors, had to analyze international relations theories through the lens of feminism.?

Not just academics

President Patricia Licuanan, in her State of Miriam College Address (Soma), said what made the school ?unique and special? was not just academic excellence.

The school, she said, gave students ?the best possible education in a setting and atmosphere that allows them as women to recognize and develop their God-given talents relatively unencumbered by the sex-role stereotypes? of society.

Miriam gave its students ?a psychological space that consciously and aggressively? emphasized and affirmed the empowerment and leadership of women, Licuanan said.

She said the former Maryknoll College aimed to transform Philippine society through the education and empowerment of women.

Miriam?s founders, the Maryknoll sisters who opened the school in 1926, Licuanan said, ?bequeathed the best of American values and educational philosophy? freedom, democracy, independence of thought, individuality and assertiveness? to the students.

Maryknollers were articulate, outspoken, independent and self-confident, known more for their spunk and spirit and, possibly, for the quality of their English, the college head said.

Transformative

Gender equality is one of Miriam?s core values, together with truth, peace, justice and integrity of creation.

She said the core curriculum included MC 102?Miriam Culture, Identity and Social Responsibility. Part of the College of Arts and Sciences? first year development program, MC 102 focused on the school?s advocacies and on the needs and roles of a woman as a first year student, daughter, sister, member of the community and future woman leader.

The 18-week course covers such topics as ?Knowledge of Gender Issues? and ?Avoidance/Coping with Sexual Harassment.?

Students also get an orientation from WAGI that promotes women?s human rights and gender equality in education, research and development.

WAGI offers a masteral course in migration studies, a certificate course on migration, a research internship program, summer courses on women?s human rights and gender fair education, conferences and colloquia on gender and migration issues as part of its research program that looks into the feminization of migration, among others.

WAGI runs the Annual Young Women?s Leadership Conference for the Consortium of Women?s Colleges that includes Miriam, St. Scholastica and Assumption Colleges.

Miriam is a founding member of the Women?s Studies Association of the Philippines (WSAP) and is on the Women?s Studies/Gender Research Network of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Miriam also hosts the formerly Caribbean-based Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN)-Regional Training Institute. Through Licuanan, the college initiated the organization of the Network in the Development Studies Track of Asian Women?s Universities and Colleges (NAWUC).

The network aims, among other things, to initiate an education with a feminist orientation or one that is centered on women?s self-valuation and empowerment to make them better agents of change.

Licuanan told delegates to the Asia-Pacific NGO Forum and the National Women Summit that Miriam hosted recently, ?We are very serious about our vision and mission to form women leaders in service and to transform society through the education and empowerment of women.?