Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

Awardees

John F. Campbell, Ph.D., Lecturer in the Department of History, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and his Masters of Philosophy at The UWI, St. Augustine, majoring in History. He received his second Masters of Philosophy as well as his Ph.D from Cambridge University, England. Since 2001, John has lectured at The UWI where he specializes on aspects of contemporary Caribbean civilisation and culture. John has received several awards and has written one book and co-authored another, he has written also numerous journal articles, resource reviews, and newsletters dealing with issues of Caribbean affairs and development.

A Nigerian by birth and Trinidadian by naturalization, Dr. Edwin Ikenna Ekwue is a Senior Lecturer in the Biosystems Programme of the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at The UWI, St. Augustine, and has acted as Head of that department on four previous occasions.  Before joining UWI in January 1992, he was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Agricultural Engineering, University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID), Nigeria.  Dr. Ekwue is a member of the Editorial Board of the West Indian Journal of Engineering and was an Associate Editor of the Journal of Arid Agriculture in Nigeria.  He has completed a number of research projects both at UNIMAID and UWI.  He has written 59 academic papers,  34 of which have so far appeared in refereed journals and has also been involved in a number of consultancy and professional activities.

Kit Fai Pun, MSc, MEd, MPhil, PhD, CEng, Eur Ing, CPEng,  RPE, REng, joined The UWI, St. Augustine as a Senior Lecturer in 2001 and became a Professor of Industrial Engineering (IE) in 2004. He has been serving as the coordinator of IE research group and programmes in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering since 2001, and is presently the Deputy Dean of Research and Postgraduate Student Affairs of the Faculty of Engineering. Before joining UWI, Professor Pun held several academic positions at City University of Hong Kong, and worked in industry as operations executive, researcher, engineer and consultant in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom (UK) for 15 years. Professor Pun is a Chartered Engineer in the UK, and a Registered Professional Engineer in Europe, Australia, Hong Kong and The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. He is a member of Caribbean Academy of Science, and is currently the Chairperson of both the Engineering Management Society Chapter of the IEEE Trinidad and Tobago Section and the Mechanical Engineering Division of the Association of Professional Engineers of Trinidad and Tobago. Professor Pun had completed 13 research projects funded by UWI and other overseas universities and governments, and is presently supervising four MPhil/PhD students at UWI. Professor Pun published more than 180 journal articles and technical papers. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the West Indian Journal of Engineering and the Asian Journal on Quality, and is also an ad hoc reviewer of many refereed journals. His biography has been selected for inclusion in The Marquis Who’s Who in the World in 2005, 2006 and 2007 (i.e. 22nd, 23rd and 24th Editions), and Who’s Who in Science and Engineering 2006 (i.e. 9th Edition), respectively.

Dr. Laura Roberts-Nkrumah, B. Sc. Agriculture (First Class Hons.), Ph. D. Agriculture, Diploma (Postgraduate) in Management, M. Ed., started her professional career at the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute and worked for six years as a Project Analyst/Agronomist with the Food and Agriculture Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago. During her postgraduate years, she was a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Crop Science and to which she returned in 1988. She is currently a Lecturer in Crop Production, in the Department of Food Production, with teaching responsibilities for horticulture courses at the undergraduate and post-graduate level. She has also written courses for distance education and is the tutor for one of the courses in the distance-taught M.Sc. Agricultural and Rural Development. Dr. Roberts-Nkrumah’s major areas of research are fruit tree growth and development, germplasm evaluation, cropping systems and horticulture education. She is a member of the management committee of the Horticultural Society Trinidad and Tobago and of the Citrus Industry Task Force

Feature Speaker and Judge: Prof. Stuart Bunt

Topic: Evidence of Teaching Effectiveness at The UWI, St. Augustine

Professor Stuart Bunt, MA, DPhil (Oxon), Professiorial Fellow, Teaching and Learning, University of Western Austrailia (UWA), is a trained Zoologist and was the photographer for a number of expeditions to the Andes, the Seychelles and the far-flung corners of Europe.  Settling down to research in the U.S.A, Prof. Bunt started unique work on the regeneration of the spinal cord, work that continues to this day.  Never one to settle long, or resist a good gadget, Prof. Bunt returned to Scotland to pioneer early studies in the use of CAD software for anatomical simulations. Always a polymath, Prof. Bunt's research has covered areas from the distribution of moths at height altitude, to vision in fish and human cadavers, to art in science, and the use of computer wafers as a substrate for nerve cell growth, to fulfill his ultimate aim of melding his love of zoology with computers.

He is Co-founder with Prof. Miranda Grounds, of the Image Acquisition and Analysis Facility, a biomedical imaging centre and web design unit supporting both research and teaching at the UWA and the state, also of SymbioticA, the first art and biology lab situated in a science department.  Secretary of the UWA branch of the NTEU, and an elected Senator, he has been a participant on two successive CUTSD grants for teaching and hosted both the state HERDSA website and the national site for communication skills in teaching - "Skill City".  In 2002 he founded the UWA spin-off company "Paradigm Diagnostics" financed by venture capital, specialising in the production of biomedical software.