Baguio Central University‘s Dean of the Graduate School and International Relations Officer, Dr. Genevieve B. Kupang, carried BCU’s name onto a national stage on September 4, 2026, delivering a keynote address at the 14th National Student Leadership Assembly and Talent Fair of the Association of Philippine Private School Administrators and Mentors (APPSAM), held at Hotel Henrico in Legarda, Baguio City.
Baguio Time, World Reach. Minutes before taking the stage, Dr. Genevieve B. Kupang paused in the lobby of Hotel Henrico Legarda, standing beneath a row of clocks reading Baguio, Seoul, Paris, Los Angeles, New York, and Tokyo. It struck her as a quiet, almost providential backdrop. Her desk sits here in Baguio, but the work of building bridges as an International Relations Officer has taught her that reach is never bound by geography. It felt especially fitting this month. September opens the season of the 4th World March for Peace and Non-Violence and Integral Regeneration, a march that will soon trace its own path through cities not so different from the ones ticking quietly on that wall.
Dressed in the pink of the day’s sisterhood and wearing the sash of a resource speaker, Dr. Kupang offered a simple peace sign to the camera. It was a small gesture, but it carried the same message she was about to bring into Marigold Hall: no matter what hour or hemisphere finds you in the middle of a setback, a comeback is always still on the clock. So too is a world at peace, if enough of us keep marching toward it, one time zone at a time.
Speaking during the Second Plenary Session of the three-day gathering, Kupang addressed student leaders, mentors, and administrators from fourteen private schools spanning Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Among them were: 1) Enfant Cheri Study Centre, Inc., Butuan City; 2. General De Jesus College, San Isidro, Nueva Ecija; 3. HSL Braille College, Inc., Taguig City; 4. King Thomas Learning Academy, Inc., Sipocot, Camarines Sur; 5. Makati Hope Christian School, Makati City; 6. Olivarez College, Parañaque City; 7. Philippine Cultural College Caloocan, Caloocan City; 8. Philippine Cultural College Manila, City of Manila; 9. Siena College of Taytay, Taytay, Rizal; 10. Silliman University, Dumaguete City; 11. Southernside Montessori School and Colleges, Inc., Muntinlupa City; 12. Sto. Niño de Novaliches School, Inc., Quezon City; 13. University of Negros Occidental Recoletos (UNO-R), Bacolod City; and 14. University of Perpetual Help System DALTA, Las Piñas City.
Her talk, titled “Turning Setbacks into Comebacks: Building a Growth Mindset,” was introduced by Jane Erish J. Lao of Philippine Cultural College Manila and drew a full house of young delegates gathered in Marigold Hall on the second morning of the congress.
Jane Erish J. Lao, Philippine Cultural College Manila, steadies her voice as she introduces Dr. Genevieve B. Kupang to the plenary floor.
A Message Anchored in the Assembly’s Larger Vision
This year’s assembly carried the theme “Empowering the Youth: Leading with Purpose in a Changing World,” set by APPSAM under the leadership of its President, Dr. Helen S. Losbañes, and Managing Director, Dr. Loureli Carreon Siy. Kupang’s session built directly on that vision, following the previous day’s keynote on empowering youth leadership and preceding the congress’s culminating talk on character and values. Her presentation was framed around four of the UN Sustainable Development Goals featured throughout the assembly’s materials. They were the following: SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being, SDG 4: Quality Education, SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, and SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities, situating resilience and personal growth as motivational themes and as foundations for the kind of leadership the SDGs themselves call for.
Dr. Genevieve B. Kupang steps off the stage into the crowd, mic in hand, making space for APPSAM student leaders to share their own stories of setbacks and growth.
Kupang invited the young delegates to reconsider the setbacks they encounter: academic disappointments, failed candidacies, and moments of self-doubt, as potential and raw material for growth. Drawing on the language of a growth mindset, she encouraged the students to see struggle as information, and to treat every stumble along their leadership journeys as data that could be studied, learned from, and transformed into strength.
Cross arms for fixed, raise a fist for growth. Dr. Genevieve B. Kupang turns the theory into a hands-on gut check, asking student leaders to physically sort their own self-talk. It is one thing to explain a growth mindset from a stage. It is another to watch a room full of student leaders catch themselves, mid-sentence, choosing which voice they want to become.
Comebacks as a Way of Seeing
Central to Kupang’s message was the idea that a “comeback” is less a single dramatic event than a daily discipline of reframing. She spoke to the students about the habits that separate those who are derailed by setbacks from those who are, in time, strengthened by them: the willingness to ask what a failure is teaching rather than only what it has cost; the courage to try again in public after having stumbled in public; and the humility to seek mentorship and feedback rather than face difficulty alone.
For leaders, many of whom had just competed in APPSAM’s talent fair events, essay writing, oration, declamation, extemporaneous speaking, and more, the timing of the message was apt. Not every delegate would return home with a trophy from the written and performance competitions that ran alongside the assembly. Kupang’s talk offered these young people a lens through which competition itself, win or lose, becomes formative: what matters is not simply the outcome of any single contest, but what a young leader chooses to do with the outcome afterward.
A Cordilleran Lens on Resilience
Those familiar with Kupang’s scholarly and cultural grounding will recognize in “Turning Setbacks into Comebacks” a theme consistent with her interest in indigenous knowledge systems and the values they carry about endurance, community, and quiet strength. This is a cross-cultural, values-based lens that Kupang brings to her work in peace education and applied cosmic anthropology alike.
Representing BCU on a National Platform
One Voice, One Mountain of Support: APPSAM Stands for Peace. Resource speaker Dr. Genevieve B. Kupang, Dean of the Graduate School and International Relations Officer of Baguio Central University, joins APPSAM administrators, faculty, and student leaders in a moment that outlasted the applause of the 14th National Student Leadership Assembly and Talent Fair on September 4, 2026, at Hotel Henrico, Baguio City. Together, in one voice, they declared their support for the 4th World March for Peace and Non-Violence and Integral Regeneration: “We, the APPSAM Leaders, send you Peace, Joy, and Love. We support the 4th World March for Peace and Non-Violence.”
Kupang’s appearance at APPSAM 2026 adds to a growing list of national and international platforms on which she has represented Baguio Central University this year, reflecting both her role as Dean of the Graduate School and her work building BCU’s International Relations Office since 2023. Her invitation to address a congress of this scale, one drawing private school administrators, mentors, and hundreds of student leaders from across the Philippine archipelago, speaks to the reach BCU’s academic leadership now commands beyond Baguio City and the Cordillera.
For the Graduate School, the talk is a reminder that the growth mindset Kupang champions for teenage delegates is the same disposition she cultivates among doctoral and master’s candidates navigating the long, often difficult road of thesis and dissertation work: the reframing of a rejected proposal, a defense that did not go as planned, or a data set that refused to cooperate, as material for eventual scholarly comebacks rather than reasons to quit. For the IRO, the engagement reflects the outward-facing, partnership-building visibility that has defined the IRO’s growth since its founding, placing BCU’s name and values in conversation with a national network of private educational institutions.
The Launching of the World March for Peace for APPSAM Leaders
Before the room turned its attention to the 4th World March for Peace and Integral Regeneration, running September 21 to October 4, 2026, Dr. Genevieve B. Kupang walked the APPSAM administrators, faculty, and student leaders through the march’s meaning and its call to action, inviting them to see themselves as part of a global chain of cities standing for peace. She then led the assembly in a moment of reflection, asking each participant to carry that advocacy home, to be a voice for peace and nonviolence in their own school, family, and community. The gathering closed as one voice, reciting together the Ethical Commitment to peace and nonviolence that binds marchers across every continent represented on that spinning globe.
An Ethical Commitment. This closing message, one of the eleven slides in Dr. Genevieve B. Kupang’s keynote deck, distilled her talk into a shared pledge: that the path to a better world is never straight, that every generation rises after it stumbles, and that no fall should go without a hand to help it up.
A Certificate of Gratitude. Dr. Genevieve B. Kupang poses for a souvenir photo moments after receiving her Certificate of Appreciation from the APPSAM officers. From left to right: Dr. Jacinta P. Corpuz, Auditor, APPSAM (Wesleyan University–Philippines); Mrs. Nancy Ann Samaniego, Member of the Board of Directors, APPSAM (La Consolacion College); Ms. Flora L. Aurea, Vice President for Mindanao, APPSAM (Enfant Cheri Study Center, Inc.); and Dr. Marinel R. Bagasala, Vice President for Luzon, APPSAM (St. Jude Thaddeus Learning Center, Inc.).
Looking Ahead
The 14th National Student Leadership Assembly and Talent Fair concluded on September 5, 2026, with closing ceremonies led by APPSAM’s Vice President for Luzon, Dr. Marinel R. Bagasala, and the proclamation of winners across the congress’s written and performance competitions. As the young delegates carried the assembly’s message back to their home schools across Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, Kupang’s contribution offered them something to carry alongside their competition results and new friendships: a way of understanding their inevitable setbacks not as endings, but as the necessary switchbacks on the way up.
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*Dr. Genevieve B. Kupang is Dean of the Graduate School and International Relations Officer at Baguio Central University. She may be reached at genevieve_kupang@bcu.edu.ph.*
