Visayas State University

Located at the island of Leyte in central Philippines, flanked by a high mountain range and the Camotes Sea, VSU is a leading global university in agriculture and allied fields. Its flagship campus in Baybay City is widely considered the most beautiful educational campus in the Philippines.

VSU’s commitment to relevant and quality education in agriculture and its allied fields has catapulted it to national and international prominence. Through the years, it has produced countless leaders in different fields of human endeavor. Today, VSU is considered as one of the best agricultural universities in the Philippines.

A wonderful mix of highly qualified faculty, competent research and administrative staff, state-of-the-art facilities, low cost of living, and a warm community atmosphere make VSU an excellent haven for learning and a perfect place to mold students into healthy, creative and mature professionals.

VSU continuously upgrades its manpower capabilities by sending and endorsing its faculty and staff for graduate scholarship programs in reputable universities here and abroad. The university has an international tie-up with Erasmus Mundus of the European Union and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), which gave way for several VSU faculty and staff to obtain overseas study grants. From ViSCA’s humble beginnings with only three (3) teaching staff, VSU’s current teaching force is powered by almost 300 faculty members, and 400 research and support staff with a great number of doctoral and master’s degree holders.

VSU constantly produces quality graduates that land as topnotchers in various licensure exams administered by the Professional Regulations Commission (PRC). Presently, VSU offers 29 undergraduate and 46 degree and non-degree graduate programs distributed in the 12 colleges of the VSU system. From the original forty-six (46) students in 1924, we now boast of a strong population of more than six thousand (6,000) students in the Main Campus alone. 

RESEARCH

Research is at the heart of what VSU does in the last 92 years. Research propelled VSU to become recognized nationally and internationally. While most Philippine universities focus heavily on instruction, VSU produces relevant and responsive research initiatives, not only as input to instruction, but also to advance agricultural technology and help develop the countryside.

VSU formulates research programs that aim to develop, improve, and verify appropriate farming and socio-economic technologies through basic and applied research adoptable at small-farm level in the country. Our research focuses on the needs of the Visayas region, to provide farmers with opportunities to acquire knowledge and skills for the improvement of their productivity, efficiency, and well-being.

With this, VSU’s research endeavors concentrated on crops identified with the poor, like root crops, abaca, and coconut. This led to VSU establishing three national research centers: the Philippine Root Crops Research and Training Center (PhilRootcrops), the National Abaca Research Center (NARC), and the National Coconut Research Center in the Visayas (NCRC-V).

Through time, VSU established additional research institutes to respond to the current needs of the region. These include the Ecological Farm and Resource Management Institute (ECO-FARMI), the Institute of Tropical Ecology (ITE), the Plant Oil Technology Center (POTC), the Renewable Energy Research Center (RERC), and the Regional Climate Change Research Center (RCCRC).