News Releases

Vice Chancellor Beckles travels to Antigua

For Release Upon Receipt - August 22, 2019

UWI


Vice-Chancellor of The UWI, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, will travel to Antigua in the coming days to oversee and participate in activities surrounding the official opening of its new Five Islands Campus in St. John’s, Antigua. This is the fourth landed campus and fifth campus of The UWI, joining its sister campuses in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, and the Open Campus, in providing world-class education as a global university rooted in the Caribbean.

Established to provide a development platform for Antigua and Barbuda, the new Five Islands Campus is also intended as a hub for the OECS and will serve to expand The UWI’s regional capacity to deliver higher education for the 21st century. Its establishment represents the culmination of several years of planning and negotiation between The UWI and the government of Antigua and Barbuda and other regional governments.

According to Vice-Chancellor Beckles, the establishment of this new campus can be seen as a “metaphor for the persistent deepening of Caribbean integration and the consolidation of Caribbean confidence in action.”

During his visit, Vice-Chancellor Beckles will undertake several official duties. On Monday, August 26, he will pay a courtesy call upon Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Mr. Gaston Browne, at the Office of the Prime Minister. He will later meet with senior officials in the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, along with other stakeholders. Discussions will focus specifically on the way forward for the new campus, based on the work mapped out and advanced via the Implementation Committee.

Professor Stafford A. Griffith, who has been appointed as Interim Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Campus from August 15, 2019 to July 31, 2020, will steward the campus in its first year of operations. In the meanwhile, a formal search is in progress to permanently fill the position, along with other substantive posts including that of Director of Academic Affairs and Director of Finance and Administration.

The UWI’s academic year 2019-2020 officially begins on August 25, 2019, and the Five Islands Campus will commence operations offering a suite of programmes across three schools: the School of Health and Behavioural Sciences; the School of Management, Sciences and Technology; and the School of Humanities and Education. As it welcomes its first cohort of students in this new academic year, students from Antigua State College currently enrolled in UWI franchise programmes will automatically be absorbed into the Campus as continuing students.

Student registration begins on Tuesday, August 27 and runs through to Friday, September 13, 2019. Further registration details are available at www.uwi.edu/fiveislands/registration.

 

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Notes to Editor

About the Five Islands Campus Implementation and Oversight Steering Committees

An implementation committee, created to ensure the seamless operationalisation of the campus, and its alignment to The UWI’s governance, academic and administrative policies, is headed by Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Open Campus, Dr. Luz Longsworth and co-chaired by Pro Vice-Chancellor Undergraduate Studies, Professor Clive Landis. Several other academic, professional and administrative staff members serve on this committee, along with representatives from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in Antigua and Barbuda, a UWI student representative, and a representative from the UWI Alumni Association Antigua and Barbuda chapter.

The primary responsibilities of the implementation committee is to provide guidance during the first year to the Campus’ core operational team in refining and implementing the development plan outlined by the Technical Task Force, in areas such as academic affairs, facilities, IT and physical infrastructure, library, governance and legal framework.

In turn, the implementation committee reports into an Institutional Oversight Steering Committee, headed by Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Mona Campus, Professor Dale Webber. The steering committee comprises all UWI Pro Vice-Chancellors and Principals as well as the Ministers of Education of the governments of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados and Antigua and Barbuda.

 

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 and 2019. 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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