The Center for Philippine Studies has engaged in some projects. In 2013-15, it implemented a curricular project to ingest peace education and peacebuilding, with a grant from the US Institute of Peace (USIP). The project has been successfully completed, in cooperation with three campuses of Mindanao State University, in the Philippines. They consist of MSU Main Campus in Marawi City, MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology in Iligan City, and MSU-Tawi-Tawi College of Technology & Oceanography in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi. Forty-five faculty members participated in this endeavor.

In 2019, CPS obtained a grant from the Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad. This program, titled “Mapping Language and Culture in the Philippine South” (also called Project Magsayod) trained 10 K-12 teachers, faculty and students on the Cebuano language and area studies focusing on the southern Philippines (Cebu and “Muslim Mindanao”) for five weeks during the summer. Originally, 12 participants were selected, but two dropped out for some reasons, the COVID-19 pandemic being one of them.

The participants, drawn from Hawai’i and California, immersed in basic Cebuano language (Level I) in partnership with the University of San Carlos, Cebu City during the summer 2022.  The program also included an area studies component to understand the cultural context of the Cebuano language through lectures and field visits in Cebu and surrounding areas.

The project director is Dr. Federico V. Magdalena, an affiliate faculty at the Asian Studies Department, as well as the Deputy Director of the Center for Philippine Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. The project co-director is Dr. Pia Arboleda, Center director.

However, the project’s implementation was canceled twice (2020, 2021) due to the pandemic, which adversely affected the US and the Philippines as well. The GPA project was implemented in summer 2022 in Manila (for an orientation) and in Cebu (for the main Fulbright GPA program).

The FH project came in full swing on July 2022 in Cebu, with the University of San Carlos as collaborating institution.

In 2022, another Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad was approved, also with Dr. Magdalena as Project Director/Investigator. The project co-director is Dr. Pia Arboleda. It will be implemented in summer 2023 in Dasmarinas, Cavite with De La Salle University as host institution. This project was originally planned to be launched in Iligan City with MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology as host. MSU-IIT still remains as an institutional partner together with DLSU-Dasma. Many of the resource persons are, in fact, from MSU-IIT.

In Dasmarinas, the Fulbright training will run from June 8 to July 6, 2023, with 20 Fulbright participants coming from Hawaii and California. (One dropped out on the last minute.) This time around, the participants will learn Filipino language and its socio-cultural background for four weeks, June 8-July 6, 2023, after a pre-departure orientation program on June 5-6. 2023. The trainors come from DLSU, MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology, and University of the Philippines, among others.