The best gift of gratitude to a person deceased is remembrance, but Bai Matabay Plang is not just a memory to be dunked into every USM student as a founder. She is a woman, an educator, a mother, and a founder who went above and beyond to make MIT-USM a reality.

The Sangguniang Panlalawigan of North Cotabato finally approved Provincial Order No. 624 in its 119th Regular Session held on March 12, 2019 which sets April 13 as Hadja Bai Fatima Matabay Namli Plang Day. This recognizes her as a champion for education, advocate for the integration of the tri-people and just peace, model for compassion to the needy and poor families, respectful and contributor to the preservation of cultures, and an epitome of women empowerment.

University of Southern Mindanao ranked 44 among 267 Higher Education Institutions in the country and 11,257 among 25,000 universities worldwide. This report is based on the January 2019 edition of Webometrics ranking of worldwide universities.

USM advanced 47 places on the list compared to the 2018 data where it ranked 91. The ranking is based on web presence, impact, openness, and excellence as reported by the Spanish National Research Council’s Webometrics, a ranking system that evaluates the performance of websites of more than 22,000 universities in the world.