In time for the 54th Charter Day, journalist and content creator JR Lopez Gonzales has recently collaborated with the Institute's Alumni and Career Center (ACC) under the helm of Director Juvanni Caballero, to trace MSU-IIT alumni through a series of YouTube videos and a feature-length documentary which premiered yesterday, July 12.
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| Gonzales started vlogging in 2015. |
In June, Gonzales shared a viral video asking the MSU-IIT community for help in finding their 13 ambushed interview subjects back in 2006. Uploaded in three parts, the video series entitled “ROLF - Youth Alternative Iligan City” was the first MSU-IIT YouTube vlog which was posted on August 16, 2006. In the said vlog, random students were interviewed in a street-style format to get their advice on how an IIT freshman can make it through their first year at MSU-IIT.
He was able to track down and interviewed through Zoom a few of these IITians 16 years after the said historic video was shot on campus. This was possible due to weeks of digital sleuthing and with the assistance of IIT netizens.
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| Original screenshot of the 2006 MSU-IIT vlog. |
According to a Facebook post on the Usap Usap University page, the "Finding IITians" documentary tells the lives of these alumni with the hopes of motivating future IIT freshmen, existing students, and alumni about what it really means to be an IITian.
A call to action for the MSU-IIT alumni to participate in the alumni tracing of the ACC will be included in the final segments of the video series. Gonzales reveals that proceeds of the videos will be donated to the ACC's endowment fund to kickstart a long-term movement of support from the IIT community that would benefit both the studentry and the alumni.
"I am proud of our true-blue IITian alumnus JR Lopez Gonzales, and I thank him beyond words for reconnecting and even meaning to donate to our alma mater. I hope other vloggers, especially IITian content creators, follow suit," said Caballero of Gonzales' initiative.
JR Lopez Gonzales earned his degree in political science in 2009 with flying colors and went on to write popular articles and videos that were published on GMA News, Yahoo!Philippines, CNN iReport, and Esquire, among others. Gonzales is a finalist for his two articles in the Philippine-American Press Club’s Plaridel Awards in 2016 in San Francisco, USA. He started vlogging about social issues and politics in 2015.
Gonzales, a native of South Cotabato, is a second-generation IITian whose family and cousins also studied at MSU-IIT. While his brother and sister received their degrees in 2003 and 2004, respectively, his parents completed their engineering technology degrees in 1981.
NOTE: The article was taken from MSU-IIT News:
https://www.msuiit.edu.ph/news/news-detail.php?id=1470
