Editor's Note

We proudly offer Volume 2, Issue 3: June 2022 of the Journal of Education, Management, and Development Studies (JEMDS). This time, it is a compilation of six articles from the Philippines and abroad. This is an expansion of education and public development management studies, which the Editorial Board pushed through to provide our readers and researchers with an international scholarly journal.  Highlighted in this issue are the studies “The Potential Impact of COVID-19 on the Asian Rural Economy: A Study Based on Asian Countries” authored by Siddhartha Paul Tiwari, “Discourse Markers in an Online Community of Buhînën” by Marlon S. Pontillas and Francis Roi Rañada, “Impact Assessment of Seaweeds Culture of the Interisland Seaweeds Association in Gawayan-placer, Masbate” authored by Jacob Frederick Velza and Alvin Mahawan, “Exploring Codeswitching Occurrences in an Online English Language Learning in a State College, Philippines” by Allaine Agna, Chabelita Molina, Marlon Pontillas and Jeremy Ignacio, “Principal Leadership Vs. Teacher Professionalism: Contribution to Organizational Climate in Islamic Schools in Medan, Indonesia” authored by Muhammad Fadhi, Achmad Patoni and Agus Zaenul Fitry, and “Competencies and Challenges among Newly Appointed Barangay Secretaries in One Local Government Unit of Bicol Region, Philippines” by Teresita B. Salazar.  At last, many thanks to the local and international researchers for trusting our institution to publish their research. We may be rookies in this field, but we have proven a lot in the industry. With the efforts of our power team, the journey to achieving global advancement continues.

Editor's Note

We, the Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges Center for Research and Development (CSPC-CRD), kicked off the third issue of the Journal of Education, Management, and Development Studies (JEMDS), after the successful publication of the previous issues in our efforts to go beyond the mandate of the institution. We'll keep expanding our journal-making capabilities. It's fantastic news that researchers, professionals, scholars, and academicians can now access the journal. As a result, we have the opportunity to collaborate with academics from throughout the country and around the world. We attribute these accomplishments to the authors who entrusted the journal in publishing their ground-breaking research and were patient as their publications were revised. The editorial board, which established extensive protocols to examine the research in a double-blind approach, has also contributed to the sustained success of the journal. The journal is beneficial for sharing information about new research in the fields of education, management, and development studies. The journal is recognized as a genuine reference since the published papers maintain quality and give a more detailed description of the work, notably in the analysis and discussion sections. Their validity, relevance, significance, and distinctiveness are all supported by a peer-review process. On behalf of the Editorial Team of the Journal of Education, Management and Development Studies, it is always our pleasure to serve the academic and professional community through this medium in delivering high-quality papers which contribute to the body of knowledge.

Editor's Note

It is a pleasure to greet everyone with Volume 2, Issue 4: June 2022 of the Journal of Education, Management, and Development Studies (JEMDS). We have ended the year with a worth-reading journal issue. This is another productive and accomplished year for the journal editorial board. In this issue, we have the study titled “Evaluation of Esperanza Seaweeds Culture-Enterprise Federation: A Livelihood Project in Masbate, Philippines,” authored by Alvin M. Mahawan, Roger Y. Ibañez, Jr., and Jacob Frederick F. Velza. Also, we proudly offer the study “Documentation of Cultural Properties in Tabaco City, Philippines through Cultural Mapping,” written by Edgardo Besmonte, Al Besmonte, Alwin Calig, and Michael Cobilla. One of these issues highlighted research is the “Implementation of the BUMABANGON Posttraumatic Growth Intervention Program among the Grieving Parents by Traumatic Loss in Bataan, Philippines” by Jayvie Villazor and Rosalito De Guzman. In line with these is the study titled “Compliance of Engineering Programs to CDIO Standards: A Case of a State College in the Philippines,” authored by yours truly with Francia H. Tomenio and Keith Marlon R.Tabal. Lastly, this issue includes the paper titled “Seasoned Teachers’ Digital Skills Readiness in the Online Learning of Selected.” by Joy Therese Villon, Joevin B. Balon, and Auriane A. Aranilla. We swore in the upcoming years to publish articles with pertinent information that is development-driven and covers a broad spectrum of novel concepts. We are making every effort to be active and present across various industries to provide our partners and the public with the high-quality output they deserve. I want to thank every one of you for your steadfast support

Editor's Note

One of the journals of the Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges, Philippines - Center for Research and Development (CSPC-CRD) is the Journal of Education, Management and Development Studies (JEMDS). The goal was to use research as a platform for community and industrial growth and development while offering exceptional and high-quality service to the general public. JEMDS was developed as a result of research conducted by several higher education institutions, industry, and other research institutions in the Philippines and abroad. Topics relevant to this present time that are new and novel were given the opportunity to be published. With this, commitment to contributing to the body of knowledge and addressing societal issues had been possibly achieved. The journal is designed to publish cutting-edge research papers in various fields of study. A special issue with a compilation of studies on a certain theme is also a future target. This includes conference documentation that is linked to the journal and the associated organization. Involved in this process are the authors who submit their papers and the resources needed for page setting. Also, the editorial board and associate editors, national and international agencies and organizations, and the reviewers who lend their expertise and time, giving their ideas for further improvement of the papers. The reviewers’ comments are valuable in helping the Editorial Board in decision-making concerning the acceptance of a submitted paper by providing criticism that underwrites the authors' papers as well as maintaining the excellence and relevance of the journal. These are the key elements that the JEMDS adhere to when it comes to pledging and maintaining the greatest level of integrity

Editor's Note

Introducing and welcoming everyone to Volume 2, Issue 2: June 2022 of the Journal of Education, Management, and Development Studies (JEMDS) is an honor. Upholding our function as a whole element of the institution, we aim to work on publishing articles with relevant content. Our top priority in the publication is research that provides a wide range of new ideas and is development driven. We have five articles to showcase to our readers and researchers in this issue. As we published this journal, we aimed to be diverse, and this time, we offer practicable articles from economic, social, and environmental perspectives. Of course, this was compiled with the assistance of the respected reviewers. With the Editorial Board, I hope to provide details on the concept of viewpoints from trade and industry, community, and environment. My sincere thanks to all the people behind this journal

Editor's Note

As the Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges-Center for Research and Development (CSPC-CRD) achieves its goal of publishing volumes quarterly with the Editorial Board, we present Volume 2, Issue 1: March 2022 of the Journal of Education, Management and Development Studies (JEMDS). The fourteen articles in this issue span education, the environment and natural resources, health sciences, social and behavioral sciences, public management, business management, entrepreneurship, and gender and development. Also, this includes research on sustainable development from interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary viewpoints at the regional, national, and international levels. We strive for engagement and accessibility; with this, we are still an open-access journal. The journal can be used without asking the publisher or the author's permission and is free to use as a research resource. We make one of the most accessible research procedures available to everyone by doing this. This journal keeps expanding its reach abroad. This achievement is demonstrated by the volume of papers written by foreign authors. We regularly perform a double-blind evaluation of the submitted articles to adhere to the standard as we establish our credibility in this industry.  In the academic world, our standing and exposure are growing. We further reassure our researchers that the editorial process is being conducted, and the papers are reviewed and improved to offer excellent content. The CSPC-CRD promises to develop its operations over time to deliver a high-quality journal that can keep up with modernization

Theoretical smoothing frameworks for general nonsmooth bilevel problems

Bilevel programming has recently received a great deal of attention due to its abundant applications in many areas. The optimal value function approach provides a useful reformulation of the bilevel problem, but its utility is often limited due to the nonsmoothness of the value function even in cases when the associated lower-level function is smooth. In this paper, we present two smoothing strategies for the value function associated with lower-level functions that are not necessarily smooth but are Lipschitz continuous. The first method employs quadratic regularization for partially convex lower-level functions, while the second utilizes entropic regularization for general lower-level objective functions. Meanwhile, the property known as gradient consistency is crucial in ensuring that a designed smoothing algorithm is globally subsequentially convergent to stationary points of the value function reformulation. With this motivation, we prove that the proposed smooth approximations satisfy the gradient consistent property under certain conditions on the lower-level function.Comment: 30 page

Accelerated projected gradient algorithms for sparsity constrained optimization problems

We consider the projected gradient algorithm for the nonconvex best subset selection problem that minimizes a given empirical loss function under an $\ell_0$-norm constraint. Through decomposing the feasible set of the given sparsity constraint as a finite union of linear subspaces, we present two acceleration schemes with global convergence guarantees, one by same-space extrapolation and the other by subspace identification. The former fully utilizes the problem structure to greatly accelerate the optimization speed with only negligible additional cost. The latter leads to a two-stage meta-algorithm that first uses classical projected gradient iterations to identify the correct subspace containing an optimal solution, and then switches to a highly-efficient smooth optimization method in the identified subspace to attain superlinear convergence. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed accelerated algorithms are magnitudes faster than their non-accelerated counterparts as well as the state of the art.Comment: 33 page

Graduate Recital: Jan Varney, Viola; Harold Gray, Piano; February 10, 1971

Recital Hall (CE)February 10, 19718:15 p.m