The University of the Immaculate Conception has once again produced another topnotcher in the Pharmacists Licensure Examination (PLE). This is the fourth time for the university to come up with a first placer in PLE. Jona Mari Chiong Alinas successfully gained the first place in the examination conducted last January 18-19, 2015. Jona Mari is the daughter of Jose S. Alinas and Maria Chona Chiong Alinas from Valencia City, Bukidnon.
Jona is often described by her classmates as a simple, humble, but a very smart student. Even during the review days, she has already claimed before God to be victorious and a topnotch examinee. Fueled with humble beginnings and diligent undertakings, she was a consistent honor student and a very dedicated officer of the pharmacy program. She finished her primary and intermediate education at Valencia Baptist Christian Academy while her high school education was with Central Mindanao University Laboratory High School.
Indeed, the consistent production of topnotchers by a school may be hard but never impossible. Having a topnotcher among a school’s graduates has tremendous impact on the institution’s reputation. This success can be attributed to a lot of factors like having a well-balanced curricular instruction, sufficient state of the art technology and physical facilities, highly qualified faculty members. These are undoubtedly the ingredients for a perfect formula of success!
The University of the Immaculate Conception (UIC), founded and managed by the Religious of the Virgin Mary (RVM) congregation, is committed to the mission of evangelization by quality education, which has been manifested in the graduates, for instance, of its Pharmacy course offering, the first in the region in 1948. The UIC Pharmacy program had long enjoyed the glorifying title of being the country’s top performing Pharmacy school, harboring 100% passing rate 22 times with an average rate of 91% from 1957 to 2001. Within the same period, it produced four 1st placers, six 2nd placers, seven 3rd – 5th placers, and numerous top 20 placers, bringing UIC and Davao City to prominence as topnotch graduate producer.
Jona’s success has brought awesome joy and happiness to the entire UIC community. UIC has again marked another milestone as a quality school of pharmacy and its recent success brought a glaring high-spirited environment among the administration, faculty and students of UIC. This is another inspiration for everybody in its continuous vocation to provide excellence in pharmacy education.