COTABATO CITY—Two academicians based in this city will receive recognition for exemplary achievements during the 6th Asia-Pacific Luminare Awards Night in Manila in November.
Prof. Sema Dilna, president of the Cotabato State University (CSU) and Dr. Susana Anayatin, peace advocate and a member of the Bangsamoro Parliament, will be bestowed recognition for achievements in their respective fields of endeavor.
Information reaching the Manila Standard said the awarding ceremonies slated on November 23 will be hosted in Manila by the Kiwanis Club International, the SMNI News Channel, the OKADA Manila and the Luminare Events.
Dilna is being cited by the Asia-Pacific Luminare Awards organizers as Asia’s Most Exemplary University president and researcher.
Anayatin, described in the nomination info-graph card as a public servant and humanitarian advocate, will be recognized as Asia’s Most Outstanding Public Servant and Empowered Peace Educator and Humanitarian Advocate of the Year. She is one of two Catholic members of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) Parliament.
She is often acknowledged in the academic circles as one of the architects of peace and development education as a post-graduate doctoral program. Military and police officers were enthusiastically induced into it, and took the challenge of navigating this distinct academic field in her tutelage, following the signing of the peace agreements.
Dilna became the last president of the Cotabato City State Polytechnic Colleges and was the first president of the CSU after having served as vice-president for academic affairs of the CCSPC (2015 – 2020); and as the dean of the CCSPC Graduate School (2012 – 2015).
He also headed the CCSPC Graduate School Master of Arts in Education Program (2006 – 2011) and an executive assistant to the CCSPC VP for Academic Affairs (2005 – 2006).
Dilna finished high school at the Notre Dame of Dulawan High School in Datu Piang, Maguindanao, with Honors.
Prof Dilna graduated cum laude from the Mindanao State University in Maguindanao with the baccalaureate degree of Bachelor of Secondary Education.
He earned his Master of Arts in Education at the CCSPC in 2002, and completed his doctor of education program also from the CCSPC—both with the citation of Meritus. Behind the erudition in academic achievement, Dilna is a sportsman, a basketball varsity player for the schools that he went to—where he has been cheered as “three-point” shooter.”
As a student, Dilna exuded early academic excellence when he graduated valedictorian at Kudaranggan Elementary School in Midsayap, Cotabato – Valedictorian. Trivially, Kudaranggan will remain in the Map of Education ever in the History of the Bangsamoro. Dilna’s alma mater stands on a territory ceded to Spain by Sultan Bangon Marajanun in 1808, through the representation of Padre Jose Fernandez Cuevas, who claimed to be the regent of the Queen of Spain (Reina Regente).
The padre had a colonial map in which he labelled “Reina Regente” the Palaw Sa Kabalukan (Kabalukan Hills) and its periphery areas, which he wanted to buy from the Sultan for the Queen of Spain who, according to him, wanted a school built in the area for the Moros. The Sultan declined the priest’s offer-to-buy and instead ceded that part of Kudaranggan.
Even the American colonial government was confused at first by the Spanish colonial map left by Padre Jose Fernandez Cuavas, that U.S. authorities initially designated a “Reina Regente District” in the first Official Map of the Moro Province. Later, however, this historical anomaly was corrected through the help of Datu Piang, and that the U.S. Colonial Administration instead designated the District of Dulawan when Governor-General Leonard Howard Taft, then concurrent head of the Philippine Commission, visited Cotabato and met both Datu Utto Anwaruddin and Datu Piang in 1901. Both datus sought to correct by repossession the territories anomalously and spuriously “ceded to Spain” in the colonial map of Padre Fernandez.
The Americans then established the old Kudaranggan Agricultural School in that same territory (prior ceded to Spain in his time by Sultan Bangon Marajanun). It was the school where Moro children and youth were first taught western education by American mentors that included
the historically famed Thomasites. Established in 1902, it was indisputably the oldest western school established in Cotabato, though it no longer exists. On the other hand, the Upi Agricultural School,founded in September 1919 (also by American educators) still exists and holds that title of being the oldest school in the region.