Senator Maxine McClean’s fond memories of her alma mater predate the very existence of the Cave Hill campus.

The Government senator, who serves as Barbados’ Minister of Foreign Affairs, grew up in Black Rock “under the hill” a stone’s throw from the university’s ground-breaking site and was fortunate to see dignitaries turn the sod to signal the start of construction of the campus which came into existence in 1963.

She later entered Cave Hill as a part-time undergraduate student in 1974 in what was then the Faculty of Arts and General Studies to study History. In 1975 she switched her course of study to public administration and graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree (upper second class honours) in 1978.

After working for about a year as a budget officer with what is now the Barbados Port Authority, McClean was awarded an Organisation of American States (OAS) fellowship to Ohio University in the United States, from which she graduated in 1981 with a Master’s degree in International Affairs and in 1982 with an MBA.

While still in the United States she was offered a temporary position as a lecturer for one term at the Cave Hill Campus, an offer which led her to become fully engaged at the campus for 18 straight years.

Since returning in January 1982, Senator McClean maintained an association with Cave Hill “in some form or fashion” – including the presidency of the UWI Alumni Association (Barbados) chapter – until she joined the Cabinet of Prime Minister David Thompson’s Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Government in 2008.

As her love for teaching grew deeper, the lecturer in management who had previously set her sights on a career in accounting and/or human resource management, also found herself getting more deeply involved in community service.

One area in which she quickly developed a reputation was in the then fledgling credit union movement. Even in that Cave Hill played a major role, she explained, because it was a group of young people, including students on campus, who got together and decided to form the City of Bridgetown Credit Union, of which she became the 122nd member.

For more than a decade straight Senator McClean gave dedicated service to COB and the Barbados credit union movement generally, including serving on the board of directors.

Having grown up in the shadow of Cave Hill, and witnessed or participated in many of its accomplishments, Senator McClean is highly placed to speak of its successes and failures and where its future should be pegged.

“I have seen Cave Hill from its construction… (There are people) who are amazed that wherever I go in the Caribbean or outside the Caribbean I would (meet) people (whom I know). I would tell them they were contemporaries of mine at the university or that during the 18 years (of lecturing) they passed through some course or programme which I taught.

“I am therefore able to speak to the fact that the university, and I speak of Cave Hill in particular, has done much to foster regionalism and develop the human resource capacity of the region… In the early days when I was a student and certainly in the early days when I was teaching, most of the students from the Eastern Caribbean, except for those who did engineering or medicine, came to Cave Hill.

“So there was strong interaction among people from across the region and that allowed people to forge close friendships… I see it every time I travel.”

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