Ateneo de Davao University

About

The Ateneo de Davao University (AdDU; Filipino: Pamantasang Ateneo de Davao) is a private Catholic basic and higher education institution in Davao City, Davao del Sur, Philippines. It is run by the Philippine Jesuit Province. The university has five undergraduate schools: the School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Business and Governance, the School of Engineering and Architecture, the School of Education, and the School of Nursing. The aforementioned schools also run the graduate programs. The College of Law is a separate unit within the university. The university also runs a grade school and both a junior high and senior high school.

The university was granted "Institutional Accreditation" by the Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges, and Universities, an honour only granted to six universities. It also received an autonomous status from the Philippine Commission on Higher Education.

Before the Jesuits assumed administration of the school in 1948, it was known as St. Peter's Parochial School. After taking over, the Jesuits renamed the institution Ateneo de Davao, following their tradition at the time of naming Jesuit-run schools "Ateneo" (Spanish for "academy" or "learned society"). The Ateneo de Davao is one of nine schools in the Philippines bearing the Ateneo name. At the request of Bishop Luis del Rosario of the Archdiocese of Zamboanga, which then included the Davao region, fellow Jesuit priests assumed control of the existing St. Peter's Parochial School and founded the Ateneo de Davao in 1948. Theodore E. Daigler, one of the priests, served as the first rector of the school. When the school opened on June 28, 1948, it enrolled students from the fifth grade through the third year of high school. There were 71 elementary students and 131 high school students who started in a wooden building on a six-hectare lot in Matina. The Jacinto campus (3.5 hectares) was acquired in 1951 with the support of the Most Rev. Clovis Thibault, P.M.E., Bishop-Prelate of Davao. The campus provided classrooms for high school students in the daytime and college courses in the evenings. College course offerings then were liberal arts, commerce, education, associate in arts, pre-law, secretarial and an elementary teacher's certificate program. The College Department opened in July 1951 with 130 male students. College classes were held in the wooden Bellarmine Hall. In 1953, the Ateneo de Davao College became co-educational. By that time, there were nine collegiate course programs offered. The Ateneo de Davao became one of the centers of student activism in Mindanao during the period of martial law under Ferdinand Marcos. Some people would later be added to the Philippines' Bantayog ng mga Bayani Wall of Remembrance, which honors victims of the resistance against the authoritarian government of Ferdinand Marcos.

Ateneo de Davao University operates three main campuses in Davao City: the Emilio Jacinto Street campus, the Matina campus, and the Bangkal campus, each supporting specific academic and research units. The 4-hectare Emilio Jacinto Street campus, located in Davao City's central business district, was acquired in 1951 and initially measured approximately 3.5 hectares. In 2012, an adjacent 5,000 square meter lot (0.5 hectare) was added to the existing campus. The undergraduate and graduate schools, and the College of Law, are housed in this campus and have a combined student population of around 8,000. The grade school and high school units are located in a 7.2-hectare campus in the Matina district, a residential area south of the downtown district. The Matina campus was originally a 6-hectare lot, and an adjacent 1.2 hectare lot was added to the campus in 2012. In June 2018, the Senior High School opened in the Bangkal district. At four hectares, this campus features four school buildings and one administration building with 4 stories each.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.