THE German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the largest German government support organization in the field of international academic cooperation, has awarded nine more doctoral and master's degree scholarships in the field of agriculture to Southeast Asians, of which three are for Filipinos.
The German government scholars will be able to pursue their Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and Master of Science (MS) degrees at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB). Among the scholarship grantees are three Vietnamese, two Indonesians and one from Myanmar.
The study grants are administered by the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMO) and the Philippine government-hosted Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA).
Gil Saguguit Jr. PhD, SEARCA director, said the scholarship awards were presented to the grantees by the center with German Ambassador Gordon Kricke at a fitting program held at the German Club in Makati City on November 20.
Kricke said some SEARCA-DAAD alumni now hold key posts in government, among them Philippine Competition Commission Chairman Arsenio Balisacan and Indonesia Education Deputy Minister Musliar Kasim.
He challenged the DAAD-SEARCA scholars to excel and contribute to agricultural and rural development in their respective countries and the Southeast Asian region as a whole.
Saguiguit said there are four other DAAD-SEARCA scholars who are studying in Indonesia and Thailand.
They are Antun Puspanti of Indonesia (PhD in Forestry) and Luis Tavares of Timor-Leste (PhD in Animal Science), both at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogykarta, Indonesia; and Yarzar Hein of Myanmar (PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics) and Nguyen Tran Ngoc Tuan of Vietnam (MS in Agricultural and Resource Economics), both at Kasetsart University in Bangkok, Thailand.
He said these new grants bring to 20 the number of Southeast Asians currently being supported by DAAD in prestigious universities in the region.
DAAD has been one of SEARCA's partners in its human resource development program since 1975, with more than 350 DAAD-SEARCA scholarship grants awarded, 94 percent of whom have earned their PhD and MS degrees.