Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it.
Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far
and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
"The Old Poets of China" by Mary Oliver

Dr. Jaime Galvez Tan, Dr. Caroline Hau To Address the Graduates of the UP Asian Center and Tri-College


Photo: Dr. Jaime Galvez Tan (L) and Dr. Caroline Hau (R)

The Tri-College PhD Philippine Studies Program and the UP Asian Center are pleased to announce their distinguished guests of honor for their respective online recognition programs on 26 July 2020. Dr. Jaime Z. Galvez Tan for the Tri-College’s and Professor Caroline Hau for the UP Asian Center’s.

Dr. Jaime Z. Galvez Tan

Dr. Jaime Z. Galvez Tan has the rare combination of the following expertise: solid grassroots community work in far-flung doctorless rural areas; national and international health planning and programming; a faculty of colleges of medicine and health sciences; clinical practice combining North American European medicine with Asian and Filipino traditional medicine; national health policy development; national health field operations management; private sector health business development; research management; and local government health development.

He has worked with NGOs, international development agencies, the academe, and government agencies. Dr. Galvez Tan is a Professor of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine; and the President of Health Futures Foundation, Inc. He was Vice Chancellor for Research of the University of the Philippines Manila and Executive Director of the National Institutes of Health Philippines from 2002 to 2005. He served as Regional Adviser in Health and Nutrition for East Asia and the Pacific Region of UNICEF in Bangkok in 1996. He served the Philippine Department of Health as Secretary in 1995 and as Undersecretary and Chief of Staff from 1992-94.

Dr. Galvez Tan is co-writer of  four books: Our Health, Our Lives (1982), a guide for community health workers; Fruits and Vegetables with Medicinal Properties (1981), and Hilot: The Filipino Traditional Massage (2006) and Community Managed Maternal and Newborn Care (2006). He has also authored 40 published papers on diverse subjects in medicine, health and development. His life history has been incorporated in two books: Revolution from the Heart by Niall O’Brien, 1987 and Beyond the Hospital: A Concept of Community Based medical Practice and Community Based Health Program by Grace De La Costa-Ymzon, 1994.

He acts as a consultant to WHO, UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, ILO, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, AUSAID, JICA and USAID, bringing him to Europe (8 countries), Asia (14), Pacific (4) Africa (4), Latin America (4), Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Kazakhstan and Russia.

Caroline S. Hau

Caroline S. Hau is Professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Japan. She received her BA in English Studies from the University of the Philippines and her MA and PhD in English Language and Literature from Cornell University.

She is the author of six books and editor of seven anthologies, including Necessary Fictions: Philippine Literature and the Nation, 1946-1980; The Chinese Question: Ethnicity, Nation and Region in and beyond the Philippines; Elites and Ilustrados in Philippine Culture; and (with Kasian Tejapira) Traveling Nation-Makers: Transnational Flows and Movements in the Making of Modern Southeast Asia.  She has also published a novel, Tiempo Muerto, and two collections of short fiction, Recuerdos de Patay and Other Stories and Demigods and Monsters: Stories. 

About our Graduate Programs

The Asian Center offers M.A. degrees in Asian Studies with four fields of specialization: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. The Center also has an M.A. program in Philippine Studies that allows students to major in Philippine society and culture, Philippine foreign relations, or Philippine development studies. As its Secretariat, the Center offers a Ph.D. program in Philippine Studies in conjunction with the College of Arts and Letters and the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy.

The Asian Center offers M.A. degrees in Asian Studies with four fields of specialization: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. The Center also has an M.A. program in Philippine Studies that allows students to major in Philippine society and culture, Philippine foreign relations, or Philippine development studies. The Center offers a Ph.D. program in Philippine Studies in conjunction with the College of Arts and Letters and the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy. The Asian Center also publishes Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia.