Dr Steve McKay
PhD (Sociology)

Dr Steve McKay is an assistant professor at the University of California Santa Cruz in the USA. His main areas of research include labour and labour markets, political sociology, globalization and social change, migration and racial formation, each with a focus on Southeast Asia.

Dr McKay gave a seminar entitled "Born to Serve the World? Racial Formation & the Global Filipino Labor Diaspora.", and addressed the migration of Filipino teachers to the USA among others. The well-received lecture was attended by the faculty members of the Leyte Normal University.

Dr Rhoda Myra Garces-Bacsal
PhD (Clinical Psychology, Minor in Developmental Psychology)

Dr. Myra Bacsal is a Lecturer at the National Institute of Education of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Dr. Bacsal gave a training on performance evaulation of school children at Balud Elementary School. The main goals of this training are to (i) assist teachers in recognizing what the socio-emotional needs and concerns of their learners are, particularly in this global age, (ii) to help teachers gain a greater knowledge of the importance of looking into the socio-emotional concerns of their students, and (iii) to provide the educators with some helpful tools and strategies to address the said socio-affective needs of their learners. The training was attended by teachers from Basey, Samar.

Dr Rhoda Myra Garces-Bacsal
PhD (Clinical Psychology, Minor in Developmental Psychology)

Dr. Bacsal is a Lecturer at the National Institute of Education of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Her research interests include socio-affective needs of intellectually/academically gifted, family relationships of the gifted, educational concerns of the gifted, creatively gifted children and their families, indigenous approaches utilised by family and educators in nurturing giftedness.

This seminar-workshop introduces the concept of gifted children, especially from the less developed setting. It will explain the theories and concepts of giftedness, the various methods of measuring intelligence, and the tools for nurturing such abilities.