North Valley College Foundation, Inc. (NVCFI) brought together distinguished scholars, scientists, researchers, and public health advocates from across the Philippines and abroad for the NVCFI Public Health Forum, held on August 3, 2026, at the NVCFI campus.
Anchored on the theme of advancing knowledge, ethical reflection, and global collaboration in public health, the forum positioned NVCFI as an emerging academic institution committed not only to local educational excellence but also to contributing meaningfully to conversations shaping the future of global health.
The forum featured Prof. Dr. Nima Rezaei, one of Iran’s leading scientists from Tehran University and the Founder and President of the Universal Scientific Education and Research Network (USERN), as its keynote speaker. His participation provided the gathering with a distinctly international dimension and underscored the importance of connecting Philippine higher education institutions with global scientific and academic networks.
Joining Dr. Rezaei were distinguished Filipino scholars who served as plenary speakers: Dr. Christopher Ryan Maboloc of Ateneo de Davao University, Dr. Ian Garampiel of the University of Southern Mindanao, and Dr. Rogelio Bayod of North Valley College Foundation, Inc. Their presentations provided interdisciplinary perspectives on public health, bringing together scientific, ethical, philosophical, social, and community-based approaches to understanding health and human well-being.
The forum also became a venue for presenting emerging scholarship from different parts of the country. Four paper presenters came from NVCFI, demonstrating the institution’s growing research capacity and its commitment to developing a culture where faculty members and students are not merely consumers of knowledge but active producers of scholarship.
Other researchers and scholars presented their studies from Bohol Island State University, Mindanao State UniversityโIligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT), University of Southern Mindanao, Holy Cross of Davao College, and the University of San Agustin in Iloilo City. The diversity of participating institutions reflected the forum’s broader objective of creating an academic space where ideas, evidence, experiences, and perspectives can converge across geographical and disciplinary boundaries.
More than an academic gathering, the Public Health Forum represented a significant step toward building a research community that transcends institutional and regional boundaries. It recognized that contemporary public health challenges from emerging diseases and health inequities to climate change, technological transformation, ethical dilemmas, and the social determinants of health, cannot be adequately addressed through a single discipline or institution.
From Local Institution to Global Academic Participant
The forum forms part of NVCFI’s continuing institutional initiative, particularly through its Quality Assurance and Research Offices, to strengthen the college’s academic and research systems and position the institution within the wider national and global academic community.
For NVCFI, quality assurance is not understood merely as compliance with accreditation requirements. Rather, it is envisioned as a culture of continuous improvement, intellectual accountability, innovation, and social responsibility. Research, in turn, is being cultivated not simply as an institutional requirement but as a mechanism through which the college can participate in addressing real-world problems confronting communities and humanity.
This direction signals a deliberate shift: from an institution that primarily receives knowledge to an institution that contributes knowledge.
Through research conferences, scholarly forums, faculty development, external partnerships, publication initiatives, and engagement with international scholars and networks, NVCFI is creating pathways through which its faculty and students can enter conversations that extend beyond the boundaries of North Cotabato and the Philippines.
The presence of an internationally recognized scientist such as Prof. Dr. Nima Rezaei, together with scholars from leading Philippine universities, demonstrates the potential of a regional higher education institution to become a meaningful participant in global academic exchange.
Bringing Mindanao into the Global Conversation
For a higher education institution situated in Mindanao, this aspiration carries particular significance.
Mindanao is often discussed in relation to challenges such poverty, conflict, displacement, inequality, environmental vulnerability, and gaps in access to health and education. Yet its universities and communities also possess rich intellectual traditions, indigenous knowledge, community experiences, and locally grounded solutions that deserve recognition in national and global conversations.
NVCFI seeks to contribute to changing that narrative.
The Public Health Forum reflects an emerging institutional philosophy that globalization in higher education should not mean abandoning local realities; rather, it should create opportunities for local knowledge and scholarship to enter the global arena.
The goal is therefore not simply to bring global scholars to Mindanao, but also to ensure that Mindanawon scholars, researchers, students, and communities have a voice in shaping global discourse.
Through its Quality Assurance and Research Offices, NVCFI is working toward an academic culture where research responds to community realities while meeting international standards of rigor, relevance, ethics, and scholarly communication.
The Public Health Forum is one expression of that vision.
It demonstrates that a college in Kidapawan City can convene scholars from Iran, Davao, Iligan, Cotabato, Bohol, Iloilo, and other academic centers, and create a common intellectual space where the pressing questions of public health and human well-being can be discussed.
Toward a Culture of Global Scholarship
The success of the forum reinforces NVCFI’s emerging institutional aspiration: to become a regional academic institution with a global intellectual footprint.
This means investing in people, strengthening research governance, developing quality systems, nurturing scholarly networks, supporting publication and dissemination, and encouraging faculty and students to engage with questions that matter not only to their communities but also to the wider world.
Ultimately, the NVCFI Public Health Forum was not simply a one-day academic event.
It was a statement of institutional direction.
It affirmed that excellence can emerge from the margins, that meaningful scholarship can come from regional institutions, and that the global academic conversation becomes richer when voices from Mindanao are heard.
As NVCFI continues to strengthen its quality assurance and research systems, the institution seeks to move beyond the traditional measure of academic success. Its ambition is to build an institution where quality is lived, research is purposeful, knowledge is shared, and scholarship serves humanity. From Kidapawan to the world, NVCFI is beginning to claim its place in the global discourse not merely as an institution that teaches about the world, but as an institution that contributes to shaping it.
