CTU wins national civil eng’g quiz

THE Cebu Technological University (CTU) edged out 60 other schools in the country as it swept the top awards in the National Civil Engineering Quiz (NCEQ).

The teams from the CTU won the grand championship and second place in the national engineering quiz held at the University of the Philippines – Diliman campus last September 7.

Schools sent two teams with Team A composed of Dovann Arrabis and Ralph Mahusay; and Team B Francisco Onde Jr. and Chad Java.

Onde and Java were declared grand champions and took home the P60,000 prize. Arrabis and Mahusay were in second place with P10,000.

It was CTU’s second time to join the NCEQ and they did not expect to beat prestigious universities in Luzon this time. They failed to get a prize the first time they joined.

The secret to their success, said CTU coach Alex Mayor said, is making sure that that his students were armed with knowledge before going to the contest. For him, it was the students’ hard work that made them clinch the top prizes.

Onde, 21, is the fourth of seven children. His mother runs a sari-sari store while his father, a field engineer, has been unemployed for seven years.

As a college freshman, he doubted he could continue because of financial constraints. He sold his drawings to his classmates for P15 – P20 and in his second year, applied as a working scholar in CTU.

He spends at least five hours in studying his lessons. In 2012, he became a regional champion in the Civil Engineering quiz bowl.

Java, for his part, treated his studies like one would treat a girlfriend: spend lots of time. The third of six children, he studied three to five hours each day.

“I treat studies as a relationship and I put God in the center of it because with God, you can do everything,” Java said.

Java’s mother is unemployed while his father is a jeepney driver, and with that, Java has proven that poverty is not a deterrent to being successful.

The CE department in CTU was opened only in 2007. It has produced only two batches of graduates so far.

In May 2012, CTU had a 100 percent passing rate, producing a fourth placer in the board exams. In November 2012, they had an 83.3 percent passing rate with 15 students who passed out of 18 and produced a 10th placer.

In May 2013, CTU had a 93.33 passing rate with 14 students who passed out of 15, including a 9th placer. CTU got the third spot of the top 20 CE schools in the Philippines, with De La Salle University on top of the list. /Christine Emily L. Pantaleon, Correspondent