This piece came out on the front page of the Philippine Star on September 8, 2011, less than a year after I started work at Ateneo de Manila University as Editorial Head for it's University Communications and Public Relations Office. 

Environment physicist gets Ateneo top job

By Julie Javellana-Santos

MANILA, Philippines - A Jesuit priest who was part of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be installed today as the 30th president of the Ateneo de Manila University.

Little did Fr. Jose Ramon Villarin, SJ, know at the time that this would come in handy someday, just like his winning the 2000 National Outstanding Young Scientist award from the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST).

Villarin’s being on the board of the Manila Observatory would also help him make quick decisions on school matters.

No wonder that when classes and work at the Ateneo were suspended on June 25 due to inclement weather, students and staff attributed this to “Fr. Jett,” as he is more commonly known.

Unknown to many, the environmental physicist in Fr. Jett was consulting with the Manila Observatory on whether or not to suspend classes in light of the government weather bureau’s inadequate estimation of typhoon Falcon’s strength and of its accompanying rainfall.

Villarin had spent many years holding different positions at the Manila Observatory after his “mentor,” immediate past president and mathematician Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, SJ, instructed him to pursue further studies in Physics at Marquette University in Wisconsin, a Jesuit-run university known for its strength in science.

This was in 1985, after Fr. Jett completed his novitiate but before he took his final vows. In light of the political turmoil in Manila, Fr. Jett expressed a desire to stay and take part in protests alongside his classmates. Fr. Ben, who was the Provincial Superior of the Philippine Jesuit community, gave him a physics book and said, “You go to Marquette University and study.”

“Had I not gone, I would have lost my interest in science,” Villarin says, although he sorely wanted to join his classmates who were out rallying with the rest of Metro Manila during the People Power Revolution in February 1986.

Villarin obtained his master’s degree in physics in 1987 and went home “knowing that four years later, I would again be sent out to study.”

Armed with a master’s degree, Fr. Jett completed his theological studies and was ordained a priest at Sta. Maria Della Strada in April 1991. It was only after this that he again went abroad, this time to Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, for further studies.

In 1997, Villarin returned to Loyola Heights and worked his way up the hierarchy at the Manila Observatory. He eventually became associate director for research before the Jesuit Provincial, his old friend Fr. Danny Huang, SJ, in 2005 named him university president at Ateneo de Cagayan or Xavier University.

Fr. Jett served in Cagayan for almost seven years and is now Ateneo de Manila’s 30th president, succeeding Fr. Nebres. 

During the time he was serving at the Manila Observatory, Villarin was almost totally immersed in the climate change phenomenon such that old-timers call him “Manila Observatory’s authority in climate change.”

But it was his work in global warming and climate change which won him acclaim. He was the Global Change scholar at Georgia Institute of Technology even before he got his doctorate. He had the distinction of winning in 1997 Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences’ Best Graduate Student Research Award.

In 2000, Villarin was awarded National Outstanding Young Scientist by the NAST. In 2007 NAST also awarded him its Outstanding Book Award for “Disturbing Climate.”

He is also an active member of several local and international environment and climate committees, such as the United Nations’ Consultative Group of Experts for Developing Countries, and the Inter-Agency Committee on Climate Change, among others.

Villarin later joined the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a team which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

On June 29, 2010, Fr. Nebres elected him to be the next Ateneo de Manila president while he was serving as president of Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan. His first term as university president is from June 1, 2011 to March 31, 2014.

Fr. Jett has big plans for the Ateneo, making it a part in the country’s development. After all, he once said clean energy or CE is “our competitive advantage because it is the one resource we have in abundance in the tropics. For me, CE will be one of the greatest equalizers of the 21st century because the resources that will be needed for CE will come from the tropical belt of this planet.”

“By CE, I mean energy from water, sun, wind, geo-heat, tidal forces and biology. We are a poor country sitting on all that energy capital. And we are poor because we seem unable - or disabled - to mobilize this energy capital into assets that will power our development,” Fr. Jett once said.

At the moment, the environmentalist in Villarin is making a few changes and the first concerns the Ateneo Loyola Heights campus’ landscape - he intends to reclaim Ateneo land used for parking spaces. But he said the change should not stop there.

After all, he says, “Many of our alumni are now in positions of power, of leadership. We can make a difference. I am sure that change is on the way. And therefore let us be open to change as well. I hope that the Ateneo can truly make a difference in the lives of our people.”