THE SOCIAL Sciences building was once home to the different departments of the School of Social Sciences. Now, in its new incarnation, it is no longer just home to SOSS departments. It also houses several offices formerly located at Berchmans and Bellarmine Hall.

Vice President Ma. Assunta Cuyegkeng, Ph.D., announced this move last February. Beginning April, departments and offices started moving to SocSci.

Closer to the community

The Registrar’s Office, previously in Bellarmine Hall, is now in SocSci’s first floor. University Registrar Joaquin Julian Agtarap, MBA, said that with the new location of the Registrar, “…[students] don’t have to walk all the way to Bellarmine to get the services that they need.”

Heads of the Placement and Guidance Offices, and the Education Department, said, however, that the transfer might make it difficult for students to reach them. “We find that we are so far removed from students. We would have wanted to stay closer to the students,” Placement Office Director Chit Concepcion said.

Bigger spaces

Both the Guidance and Placement Office on the second floor have been given larger areas in SocSci compared to their previous offices.

Guidance Office Director Christopher Washington Garcia, Ph.D., said their office is now more integrated. Previously, the Guidance Office had an annex, a separate testing room, and a conference room located in Alingal Hall. Now, all these facilities are together in one room at the SocSci building.

“[The students] also see that the place is a little bit bigger than the old one,” said Garcia. He said their new location allowed more privacy for the students who would want to visit the Guidance Office.

The new office is less noticeable to people compared to when it was in Berchmans, hence it would make students less shy to visit, Garcia said.

Concepcion said she was happy with the larger Placement Office, since it allows her to accommodate guests who are sometimes executives of different companies. “My room was just one-third of this one,” she said.

Since the Registrar’s Office is just a floor below the Placement Office, Concepcion said it would be easier for them to reach the Registrar in case there are inquiries, such as how the curriculum looks like.

The challenges

Despite the move of the various offices and departments, the SocSci building is not yet fully constructed as of press time.

The Education Department, located in the third floor, faced a problem on utilities.

Education Department Chair Ma. Celeste Gonzalez, Ph.D. said that when their department had first moved in, the restrooms were not yet ready, so they had to use the restrooms in Leong Hall for a while.

“It was really dusty and you could smell the varnish. There was a certain discomfort for a good one or two weeks,” Gonzalez added.

Back to being classrooms

Garcia said the old offices in Berchmans and Bellarmine will now return to being the classrooms that they were in the past.

“When I was a freshman here, I remember most of my classes were in Berchmans,” he said. “The older buildings were really meant to be classrooms…because [those] buildings have better acoustics and ventilation [for classroom use].”

Other offices to move to SocSci include the Health Services in the ground floor, as well as some facilities of the Psychology Department. The Communication Department also transferred to the third floor across the Education Department.