By Cyrus A. Natividad

Dr. Fernandez during the awarding ceremony.

The (United Federation of Filipino and Filipino-American Educators) UNIFFIED Multidisciplinary Research Conference International during its 2021 UNIFFIED International Virtual Summit USA, awarded the Best Paper Award in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM Strand) 2nd Place to Dr, Stella G. Fernandez, Dean of the CPU College of Arts and Sciences on July 16, 2021 for their paper “Medicinal and Phytochemical Properties of Selected Herbal Plants in Central China and Western Visayas, Philippines. Fernandez also received the Best Presenter Award (1st Place), in recognition of her excellent and noteworthy achievement in presenting their paper. This year’s Virtual Summit theme is “Empowering Educators for the Challenges of the 21st Century”.

The UMRCI 2021 Committee is composed of Filipino – American educators namely: Maximo Gimeno, Jr., EdD -California, USA (Summit Chairman and Professional Development Director); Roel Palo Anicas DA, EdD-Ilocos Sur, Philippines (Summit Co-Chair); Edgardo Dacpano, MAEd (Summit Adviser)-Texas, USA, and Paraluman Castañeda, Summit adviser and UNIFFIED Founding Chairman–in New Jersey, USA.

It was announced that the Book of Abstract of all qualified papers in UMRCI will be forwarded to the National Library of the Philippines. The committee is working to secure requirements for Scopus indexing in preparation for the UNIFFIED-UMRCI Journal.

Congratulatory messages were sent to Dr. Fernandez from her co-authors. Dr. Nicolas Guanzon, Jr. said, “It was a pleasure working with researchers and I look forward to future opportunities for cooperation and collaboration”. “I am very happy that we have successfully completed the first cooperative research project,” said Dr. Guangyu Zhai. Li Ke said “I hope we can have a second and third one, with more meaningful results.” From Li Ming, “I look forward working with the CPU team again.”

The study was a collaboration between Central Philippine University and Zhengzhou University of Industrial Technology (ZUIT), Henan, China.