 For food and agriculture
Dr Carlisle Pemberton will officially take over as Acting Dean of the new Faculty of Food and Agriculture on August 1, 2012. A Senior Lecturer in the Department of Agricultural Economics & Extension, Dr Pemberton will fill the post for one year. He talked to UWI Today about his vision.
UWI Today: What do you see as the benefits of the split in the faculty?
The new Faculty of Food and Agriculture allows the University to pay greater attention to the problems of agriculture in the region. Also the formation of a new Faculty of Science and Technology on the St Augustine Campus and the renaming of the Faculties on the Mona and Cave Hill Campuses as Faculties of Science and Technology will increase the relevance of these Faculties to Caribbean society by their orientation to a greater technological focus.
But focusing on Food and Agriculture, the formation of the new Faculty will allow the University to concentrate on the development of the new technologies and systems that are needed to revolutionize agriculture in the Caribbean. And I say here the “University”, since the Faculty of Food and Agriculture, although located on the St Augustine Campus remains a single Campus Faculty with responsibility for the teaching of Agriculture for all the contributing countries of the University.
UWI Today: What do you see as the immediate challenges?
- To mould the new Faculty into a force for change in the regional agricultural sector.
- To meet the great expectations of stakeholders for the solution of the various problems facing the regional agricultural sector. For example:
- regional farmers are expecting the University to provide solutions for the rapid death of their coconut trees,
- many Governments of the region want to find solutions to the decline in cocoa and coffee production
- St. Vincent and the Grenadines would like the University to assist in solving the problem of declining arrowroot production.
- CARICOM Ministers of Food and Agriculture are expecting the University to contribute meaningfully to the perennial problem of food and nutrition security in the region, and the areas where the Faculty is expected to contribute are readily identifiable in the recent CARICOM Regional Food and Nutrition Security Policy (RFNSP).
- To attain the highest academic standards within the Faculty and to ensure that all our programmes are internationally accredited.
UWI Today: You are interim Dean, but you must have a vision, would you care to share it?
I look forward to a Faculty offering programmes so attractive to young people leaving high schools and other first-time University entrants from the region and beyond, that we become largely a Faculty of first choice. Also to become a Faculty offering to the region a stream of technological innovations and operational solutions that could assist the region’s agriculture to be a developmental vehicle and a meaningful contributor to the alleviation of our food and nutrition security concerns.
UWI Today: How long have you been at the Faculty?
I was a student in the Faculty since 1967 and after graduating in 1970, I went on to do the MSc (Agricultural Economics) here at the then Department of Agricultural Economics and Farm Management. After doing my PhD in Canada, I returned to the Faculty as a Lecturer in 1976 and I have been here since then, with short stints of teaching at the University of Georgia and Florida State University.
UWI Today: What in your view was the most significant change that took place while you have been there?
I suppose the most significant change has been the increase in the number of females on the staff and in the student body of the Faculty. But academically the most significant change has been the expansion of the range of programmes offered in the Faculty. When I was a student, the only undergraduate degree offered in the Faculty was the BSc (Agriculture) General degree. Now our offerings include programmes in Agribusiness Management, Human Nutrition and Dietetics, Geography, Family and Consumer Sciences, Tropical Landscaping and Environmental and Natural Resource Management. The Faculty also now offers a wide range of graduate degrees.
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