The Quest for Academic Excellence

(An analysis)
Academic excellence connotes the quality of being very good, distinguished and outstanding in the field of learning. Webster defines it as learning of valuable qualitysuperior and eminently good. For Thabiti Lewis, it is a bold, experimental collaborative effort between ideas explored, expressed, discussed, conveyed and researched. In other words, academic excellence is the core of what we do.

Academic excellence gives a person that state of superiority among others in the different areas of higher learning especially in the field of the sciences, mathematics, language, literature, arts and music, and information technology. A person excelling accidentally is adequately equipped with vast knowledge and skills necessary in his quest for advances, in research and breakthroughs and ultimately-success. However, success does not the entirely depend on the students intelligence and determination to learn. There are other factors to give credit to.

Certain factors to be considered are the excellent degree programs that could reap the sharpest of excellence, a quality learning

environment, and competent faculty members. An institution should contain these factors to help in the promotion and enhancement of this excellence especially for the youth. These excellent teachers are experts in their fields with degree earned from local and international institutions that could enhance success in your future career and can make you globally competitive. Every academic institutions designed in excellence should welcome the challenge of education and development in the post-modern times by providing students with a standard curricula, quality instructions, adequate facilities, a good environment, updated technology and programs and activities that enhance the students maximum intellectual potentials and other talents and improve their personal growth towards achieving the degree of greatness in education.

Academic institutions of eminence dealing with higher education would have this quality in abundant measure in the main spheres of their activity, namely, teaching and research. Their good name and standing enables them to attack capable and illustrious faculty and students. Their academic programs are relevant, varied and challenging. The syllabi are not stagnant. There is continual change in response to development taking place. This is especially true of institutions dealing with science and technology such as IITs. There would be many active research groups in these of interdisciplinary interactions among its faculty and students. In

these institutions, good teaching, proper teaching methods and good research go hand and hand. Rigid, ineffectual hierarchies are churned. There are frequent visits of scholars and researches from elsewhere. Interacting with these visiting scholars, listening with the seminar talks and learning about their work, first hand, is an attractive feature of the academic community. It is common to see in this institution the widespread feeling that important things are being pursued and achieved. Institutions of academic excellence know that a good strategy for promoting overall excellence is to nurture high peaks of outstanding achievement. Thus, they take special pains to tract eminent scholars and researchers to join them as faculty members.

Academic community is, by and large, self-directed. Each faculty member has, of course, his assigned duties to carry out. They are, basically, teaching assignments, advising research students and some amount of academic administration. Apart from this, he is pretty much on his own.

The passion and commitment a faculty member brings to his profession depend on factors in his life to govern these factors. The impelling force that governs his dynamism is the urge to make his mark in a competitive environment. It is difficult in the recruitment process of faculty to

gather information about the personality traits and maturity of individuals under consideration, apart from their professional competence and use this information in decision-making. However, good academic institutions attach much importance to this exercise and do use the information gathered in deciding about offers of faculty positions.

A young faculty member not only brings his value system to the institution, but also comes under the impact of the culture and ethos of the institution. If the institution, for example, is not very concerned about the quality of performance of its academic personnel, then, in course of time, it may not be totally unexpected to find and discouraging substandard performance are of permanent importance to this institutions.

For many young faculties, a disconcerting aspect of their early careers is that they leave to be self-detected. Many are confused regarding what choices they should make and what their long term and short-term commitments should be. People without a clear focus drift and fritter away their professional at lives. And given that generally bright, young persons are selected to faculty positions, failure to perform well is mostly due to his lack of focus and commitment. Such persons can get increasingly frustrated and unhappy as time passes and many cease to be of any valve to the institution on to them selves. The earlier young faculty member

realizes this, the better it is for them is building successful careers. The commitment may be, for example, to develop a new course, to write a book or a research monograph, to develop an instructional laboratory, to study the background material and the published work in an evolving area, to secure research funding and execute a research project. etc.

Generally, competitions promote academic excellence. Competition to attract the best students and faculty, in securing projects and research funding, to win awards and honors and to be known as institution attach great importance to the professional development of their faculty as good teachers and researchers, and would assist, through formal and informal ways yours faculty members in their development. They would have a system for evaluating the individuals, departments and research centers, and the institution as a whole. They would take steps to identify and to overcome the limitations. Only the meritorious would be rewarded. These institutions would exert to provide proper infrastructure support for the activities of its faculty and students.

True academic success can only be measured by the use of testing, or assessment procedures. A teacher never really gives much thought about the impact that tests he is giving on the course he is teaching. But test are important especially in the Mathematics which contributes to the

individuals personal advancement. It is important in our everyday life, many forms of employment, science and technology, medicine, the economy, the environment and in public decision-making. Because a student has to do Mathematics in order to really learn Mathematics. It is important for students to stand and deliver, to borrow a term that Hollywood has forever linked to the teaching profession, for no matter for how much students seem to appreciate classroom exposition, it is truly in testing them that they discover what they were truly getting.

Test, in other words, are the validation of the contract between teacher and student, the proof that learning had taken place. They are best addressed from the viewpoint of selecting what appears most valid in allowing students to show what they have learned thus they are regarded as the most meaningful and legitimate indicator of a schools instructional effectiveness.

Testing and evaluation, or to others assessment then, is a call to challenge the ideas or lack of ideas, on a teaching career. Whether it is a Scholastic Aptitude Test or a Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), International English Language Testing System (ELTS), Advanced Placement Caculus Test Development (AP calculus test) or any other testing procedures, the real emphasis is placed on the premise of learning

had taken place. Teachers feel that they have a right to know what would be tested because after all, it is there for to prepare their students for the test.

The rule is simple. Teachers should show the students what to do and how to do things; then they should let them practice it for a whole, and then give them a test to see how closely they can match what was done. The teachers contribute the teaching while the students contribute the learning.

To improve matters in the classroom, a number of possible strategies ca be taken. The primary way is to test what a student value and no value what he test. It is also necessary to assess the students improvement with different kinds of assessment procedure. The teacher should also give meaningful and prompt feedback.

In order for the testing to be effective, the teacher must explain all assessment goals and strategies to the students. Creativity and collaboration should also be encouraged. In Mathematics, the teacher should refrain from doing many exercise, rather, let the students do the job. Improvement should also be encouraged and bad habits should be discouraged. And most of all every student must be kept in the teachinglearning game.

In general, the finger is pointing at the youth- the students, who should better be aware about the importance of academic excellence. As it has always been said, the youth is the hope of the Fatherland. The future is in their hands. To be academically excellent should not only be the goal of every person but every mentor and every institution in this country as well. It is the role of the institution and faculty to guide the students to higher learning- where they could not only generate the best among themselves they can also lift the quality of life and become excellent person in their respective fields and be globally competitive.

In the Philippines, various study programs in leading universities greatly support the aspiration towards academic excellence. Government institutions such as the Commission for Higher Education (CHED), Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges and Universities (PAASCU), and the Department of Education (DepEd) support students in aiming towards the level.

More and more schools such as the University of the Philippines (UP), University of Santo Tomas (UST), and the De La Salle University (DLSU) are adapting the curriculum that gives emphasis on the study of Science and Technology, English and Mathematics. These are the

subjects that need to be mastered because they are most essential for quality education. Many Filipinos nowadays strive to achieve higher learning and earn awards, medals, citations, and honors. The students must be given incentives for encouragement and motivation. This incentives will stand as challenges for them to strive to be good if not better, and better if not the best.

The students today engage in the battle of supremacy across the globe equipped with the gift of knowledge and wisdom and the quest of higher learning and development. Excellence, true excellence, is something we prize but seldom see. It can be achieved with good learning strategies and testing hoping to increase or improve the standard of education in all its aspects. Hand in hand, the students themselves, the institutions, the teachers and all the other concerned citizens of our world can work together towards achieving their goal of attaining academic excellence which will definitely lead to success.