State Colleges and Universities (SUCs) of North Luzon gathered at the university closed gym on November 18-19 to present best practices and innovations of their schools.

     The "North Luzon Showcase of SUC Innovations and Best Practices" funded by CHED was conducted to identify promising practices to be replicated, encourage benchmarking, avoid reinventing the wheel, save costs through better productivity and efficiency and to improve services to students and other clients.

     "The overall goal is actually the small brother-big brother sharing of best practices and innovations by SUCs," said CHED Commissioner William C. Medrano in a press conference.

     In his keynote speech on the first day of the forum he related why he clustered SUCs and hold common board meetings prior to the individual SUC board meetings.

     "During the common board meeting, SUCs under one cluster are requested to present the profile of their school and what they have been doing. The so-called "smaller SUCs, those that are just beginning became more aware of what the "bigger" SUCs are doing and how they are doing it," he said.

     "It was not only the smaller SUCs learning from the bigger brother SUCs, some bigger SUCs also found new ways of doing things from the "smaller" SUCs," he added.

     The concept of the forum was from National Economic Development Authority Region II Director Milagros A. Rimando. It was also facilitated by NEDA Region II and funded by CHED.

      There were 30 best practices and innovations presented by the 16 participating SUCs of North Luzon covering five major areas, instruction, research, extension, production and governance. These practices were screened out of 150 submitted.

      BSU presented four practices and innovations in the forum namely: "Internationalization of R&D" presented by BSU VP for Finance Dr. Darlyn Tagarino; "Development of Sweet Potato-Based Candies for Commercialization" presented by NPRTRC researcher Prof. Esther Botangen; "Potato Varieties for Organic Production in the Northern Philippine Highlands: Selected Through Participatory Approach" presented by CA faculty Dr. Belinda Tad-awan; and "Rotations with Broccoli: A Sustainable Alternative to Soil Chemical Fumigants" presented by STVRDC Director Dr. Luciana Villanueva.

     Other practices and innovations presented in the forum will be published in a book and in a knowledge portal in the web.