UP Mindanao School of Medicine — Founding Class

Before there is a tradition,
someone has to start one.

This year, UP Mindanao's School of Medicine welcomes its very first class. There is no alumni network yet. No mentors three years ahead. No fraternity brothers or sorority sisters in the wards to call on at 2 a.m. Phi Kappa Mu and Phi Lambda Delta are being asked to be that scaffolding — for the first class Mindanao has ever produced entirely on its own soil.

Est. ΦΚΜ 1933 · ΦΛΔ 1969 — Founding Sponsors, UP Mindanao SOM

Mindanao trains its doctors. It rarely keeps them.

A new medical school does not close a healthcare gap by existing. It closes the gap if its first class survives the hardest years of training with enough support to stay, specialize, and return to serve the island that raised them.

1-in-3
Mindanao provinces fall below the WHO-recommended physician-to-population ratio.
A gap a single founding class cannot close — but can begin to.
0
Upper-year mentors, alumni networks, or fraternity brothers currently in residence at UP Mindanao SOM.
Every founding class trains without one — unless someone shows up first.
150+
Combined years of UP medical training tradition between Phi Kappa Mu (est. 1933) and Phi Lambda Delta (est. 1969), ready to be the first ones in the room.
Phi Kappa Mu and Phi Lambda Delta.

Two organizations. One founding obligation.

Phi Kappa Mu and Phi Lambda Delta are brother and sister organizations within the UP College of Medicine tradition — bound by ritual, by shared service, and by decades of producing the surgeons, internists, and public-health leaders who built Philippine medicine's reputation. Neither has ever stood at the very beginning of a school before. This is that moment for both.

ΚΜ

Phi Kappa Mu

Brotherhood · Est. 1933, UPCM

Generations of UPCM-trained physicians, now practicing across nearly every specialty and every major hospital network in the country. A roll of loyal sons who know what it costs to make it through medical school without a name in the building yet.

  • Decades of UPCM alumni now serving as attendings, chiefs, and department heads
  • A standing tradition of mentoring younger brothers through residency and beyond
  • Members across surgery, internal medicine, OB-GYN, and allied specialties nationwide
ΛΔ

Phi Lambda Delta

Sisterhood · Est. 1969, Sister Organization to ΦΚΜ

The sister house to Phi Kappa Mu, with its own roll of women physicians who built parallel careers in medicine while carrying the same founding obligation: every first-year class deserves someone who has already walked the path.

  • A sisterhood of women physicians across pediatrics, OB-GYN, internal medicine, and more
  • Shared rituals and shared service commitments with ΦΚΜ since founding
  • A natural fit to mentor UP Mindanao SOM's first cohort of women medical students

A founding class does not need two fraternities competing for attention.
It needs one coordinated act of sponsorship — and that only happens if both houses show up together.

Every founding class gets a first page. This is UP Mindanao's — filled in as students are sponsored.

This is the founding roll — a record of first-year students matched with sponsoring members of Phi Kappa Mu, Phi Lambda Delta, a sponsoring group, or a PHI Scholarship. Click Edit Roll to fill in a student's name, choose the Sponsor Type, then enter the actual name of that Phi Kappa Mu brother, Phi Lambda Delta sister, sponsoring group, or scholarship detail in the field beside it. Every row left as "Seat open" is a seat someone has not yet claimed.

No.NameSponsor TypeSponsor's Name

Sponsorship can mean a named scholarship seat, a standing mentorship commitment, or a recurring contribution pooled across both houses — the format follows whatever the alumni association and UP Mindanao SOM agree is most useful this cycle. Edits made here exist only in this browser tab; export or transcribe the roll to your records once confirmed.

What standing with the first class actually looks like

01 — GIVE

Support the PHI Scholarship Program

Fund tuition, board, or instruments for one first-year student under a named Phi Kappa Mu or Phi Lambda Delta scholarship line.

02 — MENTOR

Be the upper year that doesn't exist yet

Commit to remote or in-person mentorship through the pre-clinical years — the exact role an upper batch would normally play.

03 — TEACH

Guest-lecture or precept

Bring clinical experience from your specialty into UP Mindanao SOM's curriculum, in person or by video, even once a term.

04 — HOST

Open a clinical rotation

If your hospital or clinic can take a Mindanao-based student for observership or rotation, you are solving a logistics problem no policy memo can.

05 — CONVENE

Bring this to "One Big PHI"

Raise this at the next Phi Kappa Mu or Phi Lambda Delta gathering. Founding sponsorship works only if it is a house decision, not one alumnus acting alone.

06 — ADVOCATE

Open doors at your institution

Hospital affiliations, equipment donations, and elective placements often move faster through a personal introduction than a cold request.

"PHI's destiny in Mindanao begins today."

The first page of UP Mindanao's history is being written this year.

Phi Kappa Mu and Phi Lambda Delta have the standing, the specialties, and the numbers to make sure this founding class is not training alone. What's missing is simply who steps forward first.