Profile
Imee Bren Villalba
4th year, B.S. Civil Engineering
Grantee, Pi Sigma Delta Outstanding Women’s Scholarship Fund
For 20-year-old Imee Bren Villalba, attending classes at the University of the Philippines College of Engineering is a daily challenge. And it’s not only because of the academic demands, or the fact that women are a minority in the course she is taking. Villalba is one of only a handful of women who have managed to make it to fourth year B.S. Civil Engineering, a course that men dominate. She is usually one of five or or six women sitting in a classroom of 30 students, as she does now in subjects like Structural Matrix Analysis or Concrete Analysis.
She was intimidated at first, she said, because she thought “everyone at UP was a high school valedictorian,” more so in engineering, an exacting field of study where everyone seemed to be a math whiz.
But since she herself was the 2005 high school valedictorian of the Eastern Pangasinan Agricultural College, she not only survived the course’s early years, she also managed to make it to the Dean’s list in the six out of seven semesters she has completed at UP. Trying to outsmart the men in class has in fact become something of an obsession.
That, however, is just one of Villalba’s many challenges. Another one is being able to survive purely on scholarships since her parents simply cannot afford to put her through college.
Villalba’s family shares a predicament many others are now facing: the lack of money to finance their children’s education. Her father is a municipal agricultural technician making P78,000 a year, while her mother makes even less managing a small dry goods store in the town market.
Villalba’s parents knew that money for education would be a problem. Before entering UP, she qualified for a scholarship from the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) but never got it because civil engineering is excluded from the list of courses funded by the DOST. Her father agreed to scrounge around for money to pay for her first two years in college, but since she had three other siblings in school—a sister in college and two siblings in elementary and high school—her father warned her that money was going to run out.
Villalba is one of only a handful of women who have managed to make it to fourth year B.S. Civil Engineering, a course that men dominate. She is usually one of five or or six women sitting in a classroom of 30 students, as she does now in subjects like Structural Matrix Analysis or Concrete Analysis.
She was intimidated at first, she said, because she thought “everyone at UP was a high school valedictorian,” more so in engineering, an exacting field of study where everyone seemed to be a math whiz.
But since she herself was the 2005 high school valedictorian of the Eastern Pangasinan Agricultural College, she not only survived the course’s early years, she also managed to make it to the Dean’s list in the six out of seven semesters she has completed at UP. Trying to outsmart the men in class has in fact become something of an obsession.
That, however, is just one of Villalba’s many challenges. Another one is being able to survive purely on scholarships since her parents simply cannot afford to put her through college.
Villalba’s family shares a predicament many others are now facing: the lack of money to finance their children’s education. Her father is a municipal agricultural technician making P78,000 a year, while her mother makes even less managing a small dry goods store in the town market.
Villalba’s parents knew that money for education would be a problem. Before entering UP, she qualified for a scholarship from the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) but never got it because civil engineering is excluded from the list of courses funded by the DOST. Her father agreed to scrounge around for money to pay for her first two years in college, but since she had three other siblings in school—a sister in college and two siblings in elementary and high school—her father warned her that money was going to run out.
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