Looking Beyond: UWI 2012
by Professor E. Nigel Harris
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In Teaching and Learning, there is an expectation, too, of sweeping change with an effort to transform the coursework of all courses to make them more learner-centred, promoting analytical and problem solving skills utilizing more experiential learning opportunities. To enhance teaching skills, all new academics (and the established ones, too) are required to get a postgraduate Certificate in Teaching – this represents an initiative that occurs in few universities in the world where academic staff are required to acquire good teaching skills.
Many of the enabling areas are receiving attention, the most important being the areas of Administrative Reform to better streamline and make more customer-friendly the services provided by the University, Marketing and Branding – whose work products during the 60th Anniversary were exemplary, and Financing the Enterprise, which we shall discuss later.
One area gaining more attention is that of Regionality and International Partnerships. This may be depicted in three concentric circles, the innermost representing efforts to enhance the cohesion and integration of the University, a middle circle that reaches out to universities and community colleges in the broader CARICOM and Caribbean and an outer circle that reaches internationally. Within the inner circle, the initiation of cross-campus meetings of the Faculties of Social Services, Pure and Applied Sciences, Humanities and Education, and in recent times, Medicine, promises to enable greater collaboration and synergy in teaching, research and outreach. In the middle circle, UWI has initiated substantial partnership efforts with the University of Guyana, the (Anton de Kom) University of Suriname and the University of Puerto Rico (UPR). In the first two instances, UWI can support postgraduate programmes, academic development, enhancement of library and IT services provided by those institutions and research collaboration. In the case of UPR, substantial collaboration in postgraduate and research programmes in areas such as Public Health and Clinical Research, Environmental Studies, Climate Change and Alternative Energy is anticipated. An OAS-sponsored effort to explore linkages with some universities in Haiti is also being pursued. Collaboration with national universities in UWI contributing countries is evidenced in many respects – joint degree programmes with the University of Trinidad and Tobago, and collaborative research with the University of Technology in Jamaica in the area of Agriculture.
If UWI is to deepen and expand its postgraduate and research programmes, linkages with international universities – the outermost circle – becomes a necessity. Each of our campuses is reaching out in multiple ways. Examples include development of a Public Health degree programme at St. Augustine in collaboration with the University of Alabama; linkages between the UWI Mona School of Nursing and Duke and Emory Universities in the USA and Ryerson University (an online Bachelor of Nursing degree programme); and a possible collaborative research programme in Alternative Energy that involves all three campuses with the University of Flensburg in Germany. It is my view that we must aggressively pursue opportunities for our postgraduate students and post doctorate fellows to do one- or two-year stints at leading international universities and institutes – with preference given to those who are likely to join our academic ranks or to fulfill leadership positions in regional or national organizations.
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