 “It’s time to say goodbye. It’s time to say goodbye,” the children sang, mimicking the clapping of the teachers and guardians leading them in song. It was “Teacher Appreciation Day,” and The UWI’s Family Development and Children’s Research Centre (FDCRC) had two special visitors.
Seated in front of a performance troupe of energised four year olds was the new Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education, Dr. Heather Cateau and her predecessor, Professor Funso Aiyejina. And though the children’s song was meant as a farewell to their guests, it carried another meaning for Professor Aiyejina, who after six years as Dean and well over two decades as a member of the Humanities Faculty, is retiring this year.
Award-winning short fiction writer, poet, playwright, educator and intellectual, the professor has arrived at the retirement age of 65. He looks almost identical to when he taught me creative writing some 20 years ago. Still as vital, still driven by his deep love of the humanities and his confidence in their importance to society, he spoke with UWI Today.
UT: Professor Aiyejina, what’s the next step for you?
FA: I’m going to return to my creative writing. I will still do some teaching for the Department (of Literary, Cultural and Communications Studies) such as the Creative Writing programme which I started in 2004 and I want to see continue. I’m back on post-retirement contract to keep that going. That and my own writing is what I will be doing.
UT: So we can look forward to a new anthology?
FA: Hopefully soon.
UT: What do you think Dr. Cateau will bring to the position of Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education?
FA: Dr. Cateau has been part of the management team in the faculty since I became Dean and she has worked very closely with me. She knows the ins and outs of the faculty. She is a very dedicated worker, very focused and she shares the vision that all of us have at the faculty. So I am positive that she is going to take the faculty forward to greater heights. I have total confidence in her leadership.
UT: And what is that vision of the faculty?
FA: We want to remain central to the intellectual, philosophical and cultural development of the community. As the Faculty of Humanities and Education, we see ourselves as the ethical centre of the society. We believe we should lead the way in making the community better able to assess itself, to understand the details of its identity they need to cultivate in order to develop as a multicultural society.
When you look at all the various disciplines within the faculty and their role in society you realise that while we may not be seen as a “dollar and cents” faculty like engineering and medicine and so on, without us the society would be empty. We would have all the material but we would be lacking the ethical and intellectual understanding of what is of vital importance to the society.
That is just one area in which I am particularly happy with the kind of synergy between our faculty and the Faculty of Engineering for example. The dean of that faculty, Professor Brian Copeland is very aware that the best engineers are those who are culturally grounded. We are always talking about how we can collaborate. I don’t know how many people know that in the development of the G-pan and the PHI (innovative, electric versions of the steelpan developed by Professor Copeland) he had the help of the Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA). That synergy is very important. The more the society recognises that we should not have a dichotomy between the hard sciences and the humanities, the better we will be for it.
UT: You spoke about the overall vision for the faculty, but I’m sure you as dean brought your own stamp to that vision.
 FA: You’ll have to ask other people that (laughter). Everything I touched on before is in line with my outlook for the faculty – which is in essence the centrality of the humanities to the development of society. When this country celebrated its 50th anniversary of independence, one of the things the History Department did was to take all the discussions to the various communities instead of keeping them on the campus. We were all over the country having seminars – Tobago, San Fernando, Caroni, Port of Spain. I always believe personally that any intellectual who wants to be effective has to be a public intellectual. Not a closet intellectual, not an ivory tower intellectual. And I have practised that in my involvement with education all my life.
I started the Campus Literature Week, which has grown from strength to strength over the years. I started the (Master of Fine Arts in) Creative Writing programme. I am very involved with the Cropper Foundation’s workshop for emerging writers. I am part of the team that started the Bocas Lit Fest. That is my way of taking the university out there and making the community feel the impact of what we do. It’s not just a question of coming here and teaching students on campus. It is also about asking what do we as a university have that we can take out there to the community. In all these initiatives you will see a similar collaboration between the university and the larger world. My colleagues, such as Dr. Merle Hodge, who has worked with me on the Cropper Foundation since 2000, understand the power of that collaboration.
If you want me to typecast my vision, it has always been that the university must always be relevant to the community it serves, what I call the “enabling community”. The community out there enables us to be who we are and we must always be relevant to them. It doesn’t mean that we will always do exactly what they want us to do. We are in a community of ideas and we have to work together to ensure that the ideas we go forward with are good ideas.
UT: Are there things you would have liked to have done during your tenure that you were not able to do?
FA: Oh yes. My greatest regret, my greatest sadness that I have in leaving the deanship is the fact that the Department of Creative and Festival Arts does not have a suitable home. It is something that we have tried over and over to get done. I wouldn’t put it down as a failure it is just something I could not get done because of the cost and the financial situation on campus at this moment. It is the saddest thing I can think of that up to now we have not been able despite all the efforts of the faculty and the university that we have not found an appropriate home for the department. I would like to add however that we have not stopped. We are continuing and the new dean is going to fight to get it done.
UT: Retirement must be bittersweet for you. You have been at The UWI for the last two decades.
FA: I believe in process. The process is clear: I’m 65 and it is time to retire. So I was ready for retirement at 65. Anything other than that would be defeating the process. And retirement is not going to stop me from doing any of the things I do anyway. I did exactly the same things I did at the university that I did before I got to the university. I have always been in the arts. I was always about seeing how best to help other people. It doesn’t mean now that I am retired that I can’t be instrumental in the development of the arts. Not at all. The Cropper Foundation is outside of my university commitment, Bocas is outside of my university commitment and I will continue with them.
As a matter of fact, it means that I now have more time to devote to these things and more time to devote to my own creative writing. I haven’t written any significant work for awhile now. My last collection of poems would have been published in 2006 or so. It is time for me to go back and do my own writing. Also, one thing that I am happy for with my retirement is thank God I have no more meetings to go to (laughter). We have too many meetings.
UT: Professor Aiyejina, is there anything you would like to add?
FA: Yes. I believe in The UWI. I believe UWI is a great institution. I think that anybody in a leadership position at UWI must always keep that at the forefront of their mind – this is a great institution that people have sacrificed to build and we have to make our own sacrifices to ensure that the future inherits something that is greater than it is now. I tell people all the time that the only constituency I have is The University of the West Indies. I do anything to make sure that that constituency remains relevant and self-respecting, that we do not prostitute ourselves for anything, because as an intellectual institution we must set the bar for others to follow. The moment we forget that, we are destroying a great legacy that has been given to us.
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