Dr. Silverio Magallon, Jr., Research Head of CDM gave an overview of the 2-day training workshop and Mr. Edsan Colin Santander, Extension Head of CDM presented the RDE agenda.

Mr. Emmanuel P. Leaño shared his expertise in Research Proposal Writing – A Gap Analysis, Concept Proposal Development, and Writing a full-blown Research Proposal – An integrated Umbrella Program approach. Participants were given a chance to present their outputs after their workshop.

The 2-day activity is anchored on the “Fourth Way of Thinking” that focuses on divergence and convergence of the Design and Futures Thinking approach. “Design Thinking ultimately converges to a concrete concept that is tested, finalized, and brought to market. Futures Thinking, on the other hand, yields a series of scenarios, which are meant to illustrate multiple options for what the future might be without defining an exact prediction”. The think-tanks of CDM can design RDE product concepts for any one of these future scenarios, meaning that the end-point of the Futures Thinking process can be seen as the starting point for the Design Thinking process — one can feed into the other. In the University context, Research proposals can be developed by adopting Future Thinking, and the results are a take-off point in identifying, formulating, and implementing Extension programs; as well as generating impactful technologies; wherein Design Thinking is appropriate. As to the city-building this activity, the team adopted the “Whitecap’s Capacity Building Model”. The model is looking beyond what an individual may learn or do and focuses more systematically across the organization of RDE.

The said activity is part of the effort of the college to meet the national and institutional RDE targets (SAC 02) as stipulated in the University Catch-up Plan.