News Releases

UWI St Augustine Campus names eight Honorary Graduands

For Release Upon Receipt - July 30, 2012

St. Augustine


ST. AUGUSTINE, Trinidad and Tobago – The University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine Campus will confer eight honorary degrees at its annual Graduation Ceremonies to be held from Thursday 25th to Saturday 27th October, 2012. On October 25th, the Faculty of Science & Agriculture will process in the morning, and the Faculties of Engineering and Law in the afternoon. The Faculty of Social Sciences will process on October 26th, both in the morning and afternoon, and on October 27th, the Faculty of Humanities & Education and the Faculty of Medical Sciences will process in the morning and afternoon respectively. Morning ceremonies will begin at 10am and afternoon ceremonies will begin at 4pm.

The honorary Doctor of Law degree (LLD) will be conferred on Mr Ronald Harford, Father Clyde Harvey, Mr Alloy Lequay, Mrs Maureen Manchouck, Mr Michael Mansoor and Mr Deokinanan Sharma. Mr Davan Maharaj (Journalist) and Mrs Therese Mills (Journalist) will receive the Doctor of Letters degree (DLitt).

Mr Ronald Harford is chairman of Republic Bank Ltd, where he has worked for 47 years. Apart from being a career banker, for which his contribution was recognised in 2010 with the Chaconia Medal (Gold), Mr Harford has been an exemplar in terms of mobilising corporate support for national development programmes. The first phase of the Brian Lara Promenade was funded from the country’s five commercial banks with his encouragement. He was also the driving force in the formation of the Bankers Association of Trinidad and Tobago and Infolink Services Company Ltd, which saw all commercial banks cooperating to provide shared services. A Fellow of the UK Chartered Institute of Bankers, the Institute of Banking of Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean Association of Banking and Finance, Mr Harford is also Chairman of the Barbados National Bank Inc, Republic Bank Trinidad and Tobago (Barbados) Ltd, Republic Bank (Grenada) Ltd and The University of the West Indies Development and Endowment Fund.

Father Clyde Harvey steps out of the pulpit often as he crusades to bring a voice of wisdom and reason to a society that often needs it. He entered the Seminary at St John Vianney in 1967. His undergraduate work at The UWI was in Politics and Sociology and his Master’s degree in Theology came from the Catholic University of Louvain. Father Harvey’s post graduate work was in comparative religion, and in June 1976 he was ordained as a priest by Archbishop Anthony Pantin.

He is perhaps best known as a caring and outspoken priest, deeply involved in the communities which he serves.  He has often commented in newspaper articles on matters of religion and society. In 1979 he worked with Lucy Gabriel in founding LIFELINE which has become a hotline helping the suicidal and despairing.  He co-founded two HIV support organizations for persons infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS, Community Action Resource (CARe) in the north, and South AIDS Support. 

Since 1993, he has been chair of the Morris Marshall Development Foundation, a community-based NGO which provides educational and personal development opportunities for the people of Laventille. 

In 2007, he became parish priest of Holy Rosary/St.Martin’s and with that post came the  chairmanship of Community Intervention for Transformation and Empowerment(CIT+E), one of the partner organizations for the Pride in Gonzales Initiative.  In this position and as parish priest in East Port of Spain, he has been playing a challenging role in confronting the decaying social situation of crime and violence. 

Two of his most recent projects are the East POS Mentoring Project, which works with boys most at risk in that area, and the Rosary Association of Street Persons, which seeks to help street dwellers find and maintain their dignity.  The former is a partnership between the Morris Marshall Development Foundation and the Scottish Free Masons of Trinidad and Tobago. Highly regarded as a preacher of the Gospel and a friend to the poor and powerless, he is for many today one of the beacons of Church and society. In August 2011, he was awarded the Humming Bird Medal Gold for religion and community service.

Mr Alloy Lequay has been a sports administrator since the 1940s, and has given political service to this country for many years. He has documented these periods in the genres of autobiography, sport history and political narrative, leaving useful and informative accounts for posterity. He has contributed towards the organisational structure of table tennis and cricket, being one of the founders of the Table Tennis Association, a member of the West Indies Cricket Board of Control and head of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board of Control. His remarkable administrative skills pushed him as a natural choice for the many bodies he supported: he was a member of the National Sports Council, Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Best Village Olympics, and a member of the Task Force appointed to draft a national sports policy in 1998.  He has served as a Member of Parliament (South Naparima 1966), and was twice nominated to the Senate.  

Mrs Maureen Manchouck is the current president of NIHERST (the National Institute of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology), a post she has held since 1994, when she moved from being acting president from 1990. She has been a driving force behind the popularisation of science and non-formal science education, overseeing such ventures as Yapollo, the mobile hands-on science exhibit, and the Caribbean Youth Science Forum which has become an annual event for sixth-form science students, and Sci-TechKnoFest, a science fair for all ages. At NIHERST, Mrs Manchouck was key in developing national statistics on science, technology and innovation, which feed international and hemispheric databases, and which had not been done before in the English-speaking Caribbean. In 2003, as vice-chair of Trinidad and Tobago’s Vision 2020 Sub Committee for Science and Technology, she was instrumental in reshaping the national development of science, technology and innovation. In tertiary education, she was part of the management team that oversaw the establishment of COSTAATT (College of Science, Technology and the Arts of Trinidad and Tobago), the Accreditation Council of Trinidad and Tobago and the Association of Caribbean Tertiary Institutions.

Mr Michael Mansoor, a former Chairman of the Campus Council at UWI St. Augustine, is a banker by profession. He is currently the Executive Chairman of CIBC FirstCaribbean International Bank Ltd, and is based in Barbados. Trained as a chartered accountant, Mr Mansoor has worked in very senior positions at Ernst & Young and ANSA McAl Ltd, as well as CIBC West Indies Holdings, where he was President and CEO, before moving to his current position. Mr Mansoor has done national service in various capacities. He was an Independent Senator from 1987 to 1995, where his main area of concern was legislation relating to economics, financial and business matters. From 1996 to 1998, he was chairman of the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission and then at Powergen.  

The recipient of a Humming Bird Gold medal for his cultural contribution, Mr Deokinanan Sharma, was a founder of the Divali Nagar and was a major force in the birth of the National Council of Indian Culture, where he has served as President since 2000. His contribution to cultural development spans a number of activities, such as the funding of an Indian orchestra in Debe in 1955. He has been an executive member of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha and the National Hindu Youth Organisation and was co-founder of the St Patrick Lions Club. Mr Sharma was trained as a civil engineer and worked for nearly 40 years in that capacity.

Mrs Therese Mills became the first female editor of a national newspaper in Trinidad and Tobago when she was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the Trinidad Guardian in 1989. After decades as a journalist—from reporter to senior feature writer to editor—she retired from that newspaper and began another chapter in her career. In the paper she founded in 1993, Newsday, Mrs Mills injected not only formidable energy, but her considerable experience and almost 20 years later, the paper’s phenomenal success is a tribute to her. Mrs Mills was a founding member of the Commonwealth Journalists Association, and has won many regional awards during her pioneering career. Her service to journalism was recognised with the national award of the Humming Bird medal in 1987, and a Long Service to Journalism Award in 1997 from the Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago. She has published several books for children and young readers. She is the executive chairman, editor-in-chief and director of Daily News Ltd, publishers of Newsday.  

Mr Davan Maharaj began his career in journalism at the Trinidad Express in 1980. After tertiary studies in the US in Political Studies, followed by a Masters’ Programme for Studies in Law at Yale Law School, he settled at the LA Times, where he had begun in 1989 as a staff writer for the Metro and Business sections. Two years later, he was promoted to Africa Bureau Chief, where he ran the Nairobi and Johannesburg bureaus, and wrote the award-winning series: “Living on Pennies” about life in poverty for hundreds of millions of Africans. He then spent a year as Assistant Foreign Editor, where he edited stories about Russia that won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. For two years, he was Deputy Business Editor before taking over as Business Editor in 2007. From 2008 to 2011, he was Managing Editor of the paper, a news operation with a newsroom of more than 700 people and a budget of US$100 million. He oversaw the coverage of two wars, the global financial crisis and the historic presidential election in the US. In 2011, he was made Editor of the Los Angeles Times, one of the world’s largest newspapers.

A total of 20 Honorary Graduands have been named by the regional University. The degrees will be conferred by UWI Chancellor, Sir George Alleyne, at graduation exercises beginning with the Open Campus ceremony, to be held in St Kitts on October 13th; the Cave Hill Campus ceremony, in Barbados on October 20th, the St. Augustine Campus ceremony in Trinidad and Tobago from October 25th to 27th, and the Mona Campus ceremony in Jamaica on November 2nd and 3rd. As is customary, honorary graduands will address audiences at various graduation ceremonies.

For the latest UWI News, click http://sta.uwi.edu/news.

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, 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 over 50 physical site locations across the region, serving over 20 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, Pure & Applied Sciences, Science and 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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