Skip to main content

About the Center

The University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UP CIDS) is a policy research unit that connects disciplines and scholars across the several units of the UP System. It is mandated to encourage collaborative and rigorous research addressing issues of national significance by supporting scholars and securing funding, enabling them to produce outputs and recommendations for public policy.

HISTORY

In the early 1980s, then UP President Edgardo J. Angara envisioned a policy research unit that will harness the multidisciplinary expertise of UP toward the resolution of the nation’s critical problems. In response, the UP President’s Committee for the Establishment of a Strategic Areas Studies Unit was created and the committee submitted its recommendations on the creation of a university-based think tank.
On June 13, 1985, the UP Board of Regents (BOR) approved the establishment of the University Center for Strategic and Development Studies (UCSDS). The center’s name was soon changed to the University Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UCIDS), and eventually, the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UP CIDS).

MANDATE

As stated in the Executive Order 9 issued on September 24, 1985 by former UP President Angara, the objectives and functions of the Center are as follows:

  • Develop, organize, and manage research issues of national significance. Such issues, because of their importance and inherent complexity, require an integrative and collaborative approach and also more sophisticated research methodologies and skills;
  • Encourage and support research and study on these issues by various units of the University and individual scholars;
  • Secure funding from public and private persons and agencies; and
  • Ensure that the research outputs and recommendations of the Center are published and openly disseminated.

In August to December 2017, following the appointment of Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem, Ph.D. as Executive Director, the UP CIDS revived its programmatic thrust established in the 1990s under the directorship of Ma. Cynthia Rose B. Bautista, Ph.D. Nine programs tackling policy questions on education and capacity-building, development paradigms, the social sciences, as well as the Local-Regional Studies Network were conceptualized.
Pursuant to the UP Charter of 2008 (Republic Act 9500), UP CIDS anchors its endeavors to aid in the University’s role as a research university in various fields of expertise and specialization and partakes in the University’s leadership in public service through the dissemination of research-based knowledge through fora, symposia, and conferences.