Alumni Spotlight: Dr. Rowena Garcia

This feature is part of UP CAMP’s Alumni Spotlight Series, highlighting the recipients of the CAMP Luminary Awards. Awarded during the College’s Foundation Month celebrations in November 2025, the CAMP Luminary Awards recognize alumni whose exceptional achievements and service have advanced their professions and created meaningful impact in society.

Among the awardees is Dr. Rowena Garcia, recipient of the CAMP Luminary Award for Global Impact – Europe, in recognition of her outstanding contributions to language development research, speech-language pathology, and international academic collaboration.

A speech-language pathologist and cognitive scientist, Dr. Garcia has built an internationally recognized career focused on understanding how children acquire language and how this knowledge can be applied to support communication development. She pursued advanced studies in Europe through prestigious scholarships from the European Union, earning a Master’s degree in Clinical Linguistics and a doctorate in Cognitive Science. In 2024, she received the inaugural Early Career Award from the International Association for the Study of Child Language, recognizing her significant contributions to the field.

Dr. Garcia is known for her pioneering psycholinguistic research on children’s acquisition of Tagalog. Her work has contributed to both theoretical understanding of language development and practical efforts to improve the assessment and identification of language delays among Filipino children. She currently leads national and international collaborations, including the creation of a Tagalog-English communicative development inventory, an important resource for evaluating children’s language skills.

Despite being based in Europe for more than a decade, Dr. Garcia has remained deeply connected to UP CAMP and the Philippine research community. She has provided research training and mentorship to faculty and students and also serves as a visiting professor at UP CAMP. Dr. Garcia has served on CAMP’s Technical Review Committee, and helped establish international collaborations involving institutions in the Philippines, Europe, and the United States. Her efforts have expanded opportunities for Filipino researchers and strengthened the country’s presence in global language acquisition research.

Beyond academia, Dr. Garcia actively supports the advancement of the speech-language pathology profession through her work with the Philippine Association of Speech Pathologists. She has contributed to research capacity-building initiatives, professional development programs, and national efforts to strengthen specialization pathways for speech-language pathologists.

UP CAMP proudly celebrates Dr. Garcia’s remarkable contributions to research, education, and professional service, and her commitment to advancing language science and speech-language pathology both in the Philippines and around the world.