Counsels the earliest of the hymns: “Marching down before you comes the Normal,/ Forever shouting to the air the Blue and Gold;/ Oh let us rally to the flag of the dear Normal,/ The faithful, loyal brave and true with hearts so bold…” During the pre-war years, “normal” referred to the Normal Training Department or the Provincial Normal School because in S.Y.1921-1922, Leyte High School, established in 1905, was tasked to train high school students through a two-year normal course to become elementary teachers. As teacher training institutions all over the country were called normal school the name was retained. Mrs. Jesusa Araullo Brillo served as its first supervisor. Classes were recited at what is now known as the Brillo Hall.
In 1938, during the Commonwealth Period, 17 years later, the school became Leyte Normal School (LNS), mandated to offer a two-year collegiate general normal course. The pioneering batch received an Elementary Teacher’s Certificate on graduation day, March 28, 1940. Eventually the Bachelor of Science in Education, major in Elementary Education, was offered in 1952, but was revised by virtue of R.A. No. 975 promulgated on April 13, 1954, which authorized the Director of Public Schools to confer appropriate degrees upon students graduating from the four-year teachers’ curricula. Mr. Jose B. Ledesma headed the LNS and Mrs. Jesusa A. Brillo was the Supervisor of the Training Department then.
Commonly practiced then among the normal schools in the country was the summer vacation school. In S.Y. 1948-1949, the Leyte Vacation Normal School (LVNS) was offered for the first time to enable the faculty to do further study, an opportunity opened to students much later. Under the LVNS, the Library Science program was launched in 1956.
On June 14, 1976 LNS was converted to Leyte State College by virtue of Presidential Decree No. 944, which virtually contained the same provisions for the conversion of Bukidnon Normal School, Cebu Normal College, and Northern Luzon Teachers College into Bukidnon State College, Cebu State College, and Northern Luzon State College, respectively. Dr. Magdalena Separa Ramo was designated the first President of Leyte State College (LSC).
The school retained the LSC name for 19 years. Then the Hon. former Congressman of the first district of Leyte, Cirilo Roy Montejo, authored House Bill No. 22, co-sponsored in the Senate by the Chair of the Committee on Education, Hon. Leticia Ramos Shahani, proposing for the conversion of the college to a university. On February 25, 1995, the bill was signed into law as R.A. 7910 by President Fidel V. Ramos converting Leyte State College to Leyte Normal University. Dr. Crescencia Villarino Chan-Gonzaga steered the academic community as LNU’s first University President.
Spanning some 61,089 sq. m. (6.11 hectares), Leyte Normal University is located at P. Paterno Street, Tacloban City, Leyte. It houses more than 15 buildings including the historic 104-year-old Brillo Hall and the massive Human Resource Development Center, the first of its kind in the Visayas.
(Left: First Aerial Photography of Leyte Normal University; Right: Present Satellite Image via Google Earth)
Major events have made it an institution with a history embedded in the Nietzchean sense of “monumental history” of Leyte and the Philippines.
Admittedly, the establishment of Leyte Normal School, as one of the earliest schools, before World War II contributed immensely to Tacloban’s becoming a center of not only trade, but also education and culture in the province.
When the Japanese forces landed in Tacloban City The Fiske Building during World War II on May 25, 1942, the Brillo Hall, formerly known as Fiske Building, built in 1908, was made into a Japanese garrison or concentration camp, where captive Filipino soldiers were imprisoned. The Fiske Building was named
Jesusa A. Brillo
Supervisor
1921-1956, 1959-1962
Jose B. Ledesma
School Principal
1946-1949
Obdulia R. Cinco
Superintendent
1962-1975
Magdalena S. Ramo
College President
1976-1986
Purificacion M. Flores
College President
1986-1991
Crescencia V. Chan-Gonzaga
University President
1991-2005
Evelyn C. Cruzada
University President
2005-2013
Jude A. Duarte
University President
2013-2021
Evelyn B. Aguirre
University President
2021-2025
Gil Nicetas B. Villarino
University President
2025 - Present
Infrastructure development has risen rapidly at LNU since the 1920s when the institution put up the Fiske Building, Girl’s Dormitory, and Sherman Building – now Brillo Hall, Center for Teaching Excellence Building, and College Building. After some time, rose the Home Economics Building, now the place where the Administration Building stands. Today, more than 15 buildings dot the university campus.
Academic programs have evolved and increased in number from a two-year normal course for elementary teachers offered to high school students in the 1920s, a two year teacher certificate program in the late 1930s, a four-year bachelor’s program in the 1950s and eventually to the graduate education program in the 1960s. Three decades later, it already had programmed non-teacher education courses such as Library.
Science, Liberal Arts, Tourism, and HRM and even more graduate offerings such as DA in Language Teaching, PhD in Social Science Research, and Doctor in Management, all accredited by the Accrediting Agency of Chartered Colleges and Universities in the Philippines (AACCUP). So by the third millennium, the academic programs at Leyte Normal University would have considerably matured, getting better at every change.
The early years of Leyte Normal School recorded some 13 faculty members of Leyte High School – five Americans, six Philippine Normal School graduates, and two went to the Los Baños College of Agriculture. In succeeding years, the number of faculty in the varied disciplines has dramatically increased.
