The Ifugao State University (IFSU) Research and Ethics Committee (REC) visited Benguet State University (BSU) to learn from BSU’s practices on May 27, 2025. This collaborative visit supported the development of IFSU’s REC. Dr. Florence Poltic, chairperson of BSU REC, and her colleagues offered a warm welcome to the IFSU team.

Discussions centered on research ethics standards and practices, providing valuable insights to enhance IFSU’s REC processes and operations. These included the importance of proper review of research involving human participants. BSU explained how proposals are checked not only for ethical but also for technical soundness. They explained that research proposals must pass both technical and ethical reviews. If a proposal is not ethically sound, it must be revised.

IFSU gained insights into BSU’s efforts to strengthen its ethics review process such as training ethics reviewers, ensuring that reviewers come from various disciplines like health, social sciences, and other relevant fields and involving community representatives in the reviews for a balanced and comprehensive review of research proposals.

The two RECs agreed to collaborate on developing clearer and more effective ethics guidelines. BSU shared examples of past research cases, demonstrating how ethical issues were identified and resolved through REC processes.

One concern raised was that the REC is still not well known in some parts of the university. This lack of awareness can affect how students and researchers follow ethical research procedures. Despite of these, both universities expressed their commitment to continue improving their research ethics processes and supporting responsible research. BSU accommodates benchmarking activities and field trips from schools, Local Government Units, National Line Agencies, and Non-Government Organizations with the intent to promote collaboration in various areas that may lead to multi-stakeholder partnerships in support of #SDG17.//JR.Banisa-UPAO Intern
EBawayan,LGuzman
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