led to the formation of what was then called the "Jungle University" in Malabo, Valencia, one of the localities in the province. University Professor Roy Bell became a major in the Negros Island guerrilla forces, established a Free Government, printed the Victory News, and used his radio transmitter to establish contact with the South West Pacific Area (command). Many students, alumni, faculty members and ROTC officers joined the resistance forces, while theology professors Alvin Scaff, Proculo Rodriguez, Paul Lindholm and James McKinley "carried on pastoral and teaching duties for the resistance soldiers and civilians in guerrilla-dominated territory." The Carson and Bell families, plus other faculty members, were evacuated by the USS Narwhal (SS-167) on February 7, 1944. American and Filipino forces liberated Dumaguete on April 26, 1945. A few days later, the Faculty Emergency Committee took charge over the campus and began preparations for the resumption of classes and the challenge of reconstruction. Post-war years For the first half of the century, Silliman was run and operated by Americans. After the Second World War and until the early 1950s, moves for the Filipinization of the university administration began to come closer to the surface. Filipino faculty members began to assume more important positions and, as more of these faculty members took administrative roles, the board of trustees elected the university's first Filipino president, Dr. Leopoldo T. Ruiz, on August 26, 1952, officially taking office in April 1953. A Silliman alumnus (A.B. 1916) and the University of California at Berkeley alumnus (B.A. 1920), Ruiz had a long experience in higher education and in the foreign service. Before his appointment, he took up graduate studies in sociology at Columbia and Yale, with an M.A. (1924) from the former institution, as well as a Ph.D. (1942) from the University of Southern California. In the same decade of Ruiz's appointment, the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia (UBCHEA) in New York, an interdenominational group, assumed responsibility for channeling all church aid to Silliman. The United Board is an international organization supported by ten Protestant mission boards. Long after Ruiz's appointment, however, Americans and other nationals still constituted a considerable portion of the faculty. Up to the present, American and foreign visiting professors are still regularly assigned in specialized areas. In the early 1960s and toward the beginning of the Martial Law years, the university embarked on a "Build a Greater Silliman" program