Dean- College of Arts and Letters
Mary Acel D. German holds an MA degree in Anthropology from the University of the Philippines, Diliman, and a BA in History from the University of the Philippines, Visayas. Her academic career kicked off in the early 1990s as a researcher to visiting scholars and government and non-government organizations, mostly researching local history and cultural anthropology. UP Visayas absorbed her to teach history courses under the College of Arts and Science's Division of Social Sciences.
In 1998, the University of Makati (UMak) invited her to join the Institute of Integrated Development Education (IIDE). She taught social sciences and humanities at the College of Arts and Science (CAS) prior to her first admin assignment as Executive Director of UMak's Center for Performing and Digital Arts (CEPDA), a designation she held for nine years from 2005 to 2014. When CEPDA evolved to Center for Broadcast and Digital Arts (CBDA) in 2014, she continued to helm the unit as Dean until it became known today as the College of Arts and Letters (CAL).
As Dean of CAL, she advocates the restoration of the Liberal Arts' unique place in the academe. Her research interests are ethnographies of mountain communities and anthropological inquiries on identity formation in physical and virtual communities.
Professional Affiliations:
Board of Trustee - Animation Council of the Phils., Inc. (ACPI)
Member - Ugnayang Pang-Aghamtao (UGAT)-The Anthropological Associaton of the Philippines;
Philippine Historical Association (PHA); Philippine Association of Communication Educators (PACE); Philippine Communication Society (PCS).
Welcome to the College of Arts and Letters.
We are home to over 500 students taking advantage of our multidisciplinary programs:
1. BA Multimedia Arts (film and animation tracks)
2. BA Communication Service Management
3. Associate in Customer Service Management.
On top of our program offerings, CAL offers General Education (GE) courses in humanities, social sciences, and communication. Our fields of inquiry cultivate students' to become creative, critical, socially engaged and sensitive, communicative, entrepreneurial, and highly adaptable to the rapidly-changing workplace. We transcend disciplinary boundaries to deliver a solid liberal arts foundation through these GE courses, which we believe are critical drivers of UMak's mission.
Studies revealed that graduates today will have careers in multiple fields across the span of their professional lives (Ertaz 2015; Lyon, Schweitzer & Ng, 2015; Scherman, 2018). Hence, our students' career success will not be just upshots of their technical knowledge. It will stem from their leadership skills, social and emotional intelligence, cultural understanding, and capacity for strategic decision-making. CAL breaks away from inflexible, binary choices of whether a student will be a "STEM person" or a "HUMSS person." We are done arguing whether "hard" or "soft" skill is more critical in employability and national development. We are poised for the challenge to collectively generate graduates with values, skills and knowledge to innovate, lead, and thrive in an ever more complex and volatile global environment.
We are grateful to the faculty members, both organic to CAL and adjunct professors from other disciplines. They are the cornerstone of our student's academic experience. They have shaped CAL into a learning hub that permeates diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives with depth to bear on broad engagements across areas and fields of specialization. In everything we do, the Office of the Dean is driven by the desire to grow a stimulating, innovative, collegial, and relevant teaching and learning environment. As our late President Tomas B. Lopez has incessantly reminded: "We must never forget who we are, whom we are for, and what we have to do for those for whom we are."
Thank you.
MARY ACEL D. GERMAN
Dean, College of Arts and Letters University of Makati
CAL traces its roots from two vibrant academic units: the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) and the Center of Broadcast and Digital Arts (CBDA.)
The CAS precedes CBDA for a decade. It was born in 1990 initially as an institute. It used to offer traditional baccalaureate degrees in arts and sciences, i.e., English, Political Science, Sociology, Biology, and Mathematics.
The CBDA, formerly known as the Center for Performing and Digital Arts (CEPDA), was born in 2001. Its thrust was to advance education and training in arts (visual, literary, and performance), new media, and digital technology. The name change transpired in 2014 following the implementation of new curricular programs in the said year.
Developments in the education landscape in 2017 prompted the management to effect an organizational restructuring that led to the split of the CAS. The behavioral science, natural science, and mathematics departments now comprise the College of Science (COS). On the other hand, CAS's languages, humanities, and social sciences departments merged with the CBDA, giving birth to the College of Arts and Letters, or CAL.
CAL today boasts of competitive students and an array of remarkable students' achievements in Film and Animation. Their festival performance has dramatically improved since 2015, with more than 20 multi-awarded short film titles from national and international competitions.
Dean
College Secretary
Chair, Department of Languages
Chair, Department of Social Sciences, Philosophy and Humanities
Chair, Department of Multimedia Arts