News Releases

The UWI appoints Professor Stafford A. Griffith as Interim Pro Vice-Chancellor

For Release Upon Receipt - August 19, 2019

UWI


The University of the West Indies (The UWI) has appointed Professor Stafford A. Griffith as Interim Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of its Five Islands Campus located in Antigua and Barbuda with effect from August 15, 2019 until July 31, 2020. Professor Griffith will lead the Campus for its initial year of operation, which is expected to welcome its first cohort of students in September. An official launch of the Campus with The UWI Executive Management team is also planned in that month.

Established to provide a development platform for Antigua and Barbuda, the new Five Islands Campus will also function as a hub for the OECS and serve to expand The UWI’s regional capacity in the delivery of higher education for the 21st century. It will begin with three schools—the School of Health and Behavioural Sciences, the School of Management, Sciences and Technology, and the School of Humanities and Education. Approval of the regional university’s newest campus was announced by Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, during a media conference held on Wednesday, 26 June, 2019. 

Professor Griffith previously served as Regional Director of the University’s Office of Online Learning (OOL) since October 2017, Director of The UWI’s School of Education and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the Mona Campus from August 2012 to September 2017. He has spent more than 35 years of his career at the professional and senior management levels in fields covering educational measurement and evaluation, programme planning and management, curriculum development, and teaching. The holder of a Professorial Chair in Research, Measurement and Evaluation, Professor Griffith’s postgraduate qualifications consist of specialised study in research, measurement and evaluation, and curriculum development. He also holds an LLB degree and has completed graduate studies in the areas of Political Science and Development Studies.

In addition to academia, Professor Griffith’s career spans multiple roles, among them:  Director of the USAID-funded Caribbean Centre of Excellence for Teacher Training (CCETT) headquartered at The UWI Mona Campus, Pro-Registrar of the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC), having previously served the Council as Assistant Registrar as well as Head of a Project Unit; Consultant/National Coordinator of a World Bank and Ministry of Education Reform of Secondary Education (ROSE) Project, Jamaica; Director of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and The UWI Institutional Strengthening Project; and Senior Education Project Manager of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Regional Development Office/Caribbean. 

He has also served as a resource person in a number of regional and national curriculum development, teacher training and measurement and evaluation activities, and as a consultant to a number of regional and international institutions and organisations, including the Ministry of Education (Guyana), the University of Guyana, the Caribbean Examinations Council, the Norman Manley Law School (Jamaica), the Eugene Dupuch Law School (The Bahamas), the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), TECSULT International Limited (Montreal) and the Van Leer Foundation (Holland).

Professor Griffith boasts an impressive record of public service, research and scholarly work. He has served on a number of national boards, committees and commissions and currently serves as the Chairman of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Caribbean Examinations Council. His research and publications include at least 90 items comprising journal articles, scientific/scholarly papers, technical reports, book and book chapters, and monographs in areas related to various aspects of education, including innovations in education, educational reforms, educational measurement and evaluation, and online learning.  His book on School-Based Assessment in a Caribbean Public Examination (UWI Press) received the Principal’s Research Award in 2016 for Best Research Publication (book category) in the Faculty of Humanities and Education, at The UWI Mona Campus.

 

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Note to the Editor

Related news:

Statement issued by Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hilary Beckles announcing the establishment of the Five Islands Campus: http://www.uwi.edu/featured-story/fiveislandscampus.asp

Recorded broadcast of the media conference on the establishment of the campus: www.uwitv.org/featured-videos/five-islands-campus-press-conference

 

About The UWI

For over 70 years The University of the West Indies (The UWI) has provided service and leadership to the Caribbean region and wider world. The UWI has evolved from a university college of London in Jamaica with 33 medical students in 1948 to an internationally respected, regional university with near 50,000 students and four campuses: Mona in Jamaica, St. Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago, Cave Hill in Barbados, and an Open Campus. As part of its robust globalization agenda, The UWI has established partnering centres with universities in North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa including the State University of New York (SUNY)-UWI Center for Leadership and Sustainable Development; the Canada-Caribbean Studies Institute with Brock University; the Strategic Alliance for Hemispheric Development with Universidad de los Andes (UNIANDES); the UWI-China Institute of Information Technology, the University of Lagos (UNILAG)-UWI Institute of African and Diaspora Studies and the Institute for Global African Affairs with the University of Johannesburg (UJ). The UWI offers over 800 certificate, diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Food & Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science & Technology, Social Sciences and Sport. 

As the region’s premier research academy, The UWI’s foremost objective is driving the growth and development of the regional economy. Times Higher Education ranked The UWI among the top 1,258 universities in world for 2019, and the 40 best universities in its Latin America Rankings for 2018. The UWI was the only Caribbean-based university to make the prestigious lists.  For more, visit www.uwi.edu.

(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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