News Releases

A campus for the times and a campus for the future: The UWI Open Campus turns five

For Release Upon Receipt - July 8, 2013

St. Augustine


ST. AUGUSTINE, Trinidad & Tobago – On July 4th, the newest campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), the Open Campus, turned five. It started off in 2008 with a dream that all the original outreach and social development departments of The UWI would consolidate to take further advantage of developing technologies and advances in pedagogy and andragogy to become one UWI entity that better served more rural and underserved areas of the Caribbean community, especially in Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Belize, the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent & the Grenadines. 

The UWI has focused on serving all member states of the Caribbean Community since its 1948 formation. In its quest for the ongoing development and empowerment, it has consistently sought to reduce the ad hoc offering of adult, continuing and professional education, distance education and community research and development to the countries and communities within the Caribbean region beyond the boundaries of the residential campuses in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago.  

A key driver of The UWI Open Campus initiative was that high-quality and technology-driven university education should be open and available to all people who wish to reach their full potential both inside and outside of the Caribbean region.  

The Campus was formally launched on July 4, 2008 at the Council of the Caribbean Heads of Government annual meeting in Antigua & Barbuda. At that launch Professor Hazel Simmons-McDonald, Pro Vice Chancellor and Principal of the UWI Open Campus, dubbed the new entity “a campus for the times and a campus for the future, contributing to the development of human capital of the region and to the positive transformation and enhancement of Caribbean societies.”

Several online undergraduate degree and graduate programmes were developed to specifically respond to Caribbean needs, such as community policing, early childhood development and family studies, youth development studies, climate change, and health and family life education.  

The UWI Open Campus is firmly rooted in the vision, mission and core values of the wider University of the West Indies and in Caribbean development and growth.  Two events have made this even more viable. The first was the receipt of a first grant of CAD$20 million from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) for institutional strengthening, online programme development and site technological and physical upgrades of the campus over the next five years.  

The second was the granting of institutional accreditation to The UWI Open Campus by the Barbados Accreditation Council for the period June 18, 2013 to June 17, 2019.  Coming out of the 2012 Self-Study report, this accreditation is a significant achievement for the campus, a mere five years after its formal establishment. Securing institutional accreditation means that the internal quality assurance processes are approved, and the systems and processes to develop offerings both in the online and face-to-face modalities and delivery of these offerings are of a high standard.   

July 4th therefore marked the celebration of all the significant developments and contributions of The UWI Open Campus to the University, to the Caribbean countries that support The UWI, and the people who access its programmes, courses and services. The UWI Open Campus also marked the outstanding contributions of its leaders and diverse communities of policy-makers, administrators, scholars, students and other key stakeholders. 

It is in this spirit of commemoration and celebration that the Open Campus thanks its Caribbean and international friends and supporters and calls upon them to continue creating a better Caribbean region through higher and continuing education based on the Open Campus tagline, “Online, On site, On demand”.                                           

For more information on The UWI Open Campus, please visit its website at www.open.uwi.edu.

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About UWI

Over the last six decades, The University of the West Indies (UWI) has evolved from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 students to a full-fledged University with over 40,000 students. Today, UWI is the largest and most longstanding higher education provider in the English-speaking Caribbean, with main campuses in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, and Centres in Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, The Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Christopher (St Kitts) & Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent & the Grenadines. UWI recently launched its Open Campus, a virtual campus with 45 physical site locations across the region, serving 16 countries in the English-speaking Caribbean. UWI is an international university with faculty and students from over 40 countries and collaborative links with over 60 universities around the world. Through its seven Faculties, UWI offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science & Technology, Food & Agriculture, and Social Sciences. 

(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.) 

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