September 2012


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Rewarding Premium Teaching

Two years after the Memorandum of Agreement was signed, the first UWI/Guardian Life Premium Teaching Award was presented in 2000. Signatories were the then President of Guardian Life, Mr. Richard Kellman and Pro Vice Chancellor Professor Compton Bourne, Principal of The UWI, St. Augustine. They were supported by efficient teams led by Mrs. Betty Ann Rohlehr, former Programme Coordinator of The UWI’s Instructional Development Unit (IDU) and Mrs. Maria Mc Millan, herself a UWI graduate, and former Manager, Corporate Communications, Guardian Life of the Caribbean Limited.

The awards, under the leadership of Dr. Anna-May Edwards-Henry, IDU’s Director, now occupy a premier position on the Campus calendar.

This year’s awards were presented on September 28 at Daaga Auditorium on the St. Augustine Campus to five members of the academic staff. The awards are given to lecturers who inspire independence, control and critical or original thinking in students; encourage intellectual interests in new students and stimulate senior students to creative work, and exhibit concern and respect for students.

The 2012 awardees are Dr. Geraldine Skeete, Dept. of Literary, Cultural & Communication Studies; Dr. Gelien Matthews, Dept. of History; Professor Surendra Arjoon, Dept. of Management Studies; Dr. Sandra Reid, Psychiatry Unit, Dept. of Clinical Medical Sciences; and Dr. Chalapathi Rao, Pathology and Microbiology Unit, Dept. of Para-Clinical Sciences.

Dr Skeete is co-editor of The Child and the Caribbean Imagination, and has been published in the Caribbean Review of Gender Studies and The Caribbean Teaching Scholar. Dr Matthews is the author of two major publications, Caribbean Slave Revolts and the British Abolitionist Movement and History of the Church of the Nazarene Trinidad and Tobago. Professor Arjoon is recognized internationally as a leading author in business ethics research. Dr Reid has received several international grants for research in substance abuse and HIV, gender sexuality and HIV, and addiction education. She pioneered the Caribbean Regional Certificate Programme in Addiction Studies, and is Director of the Caribbean Institute on Alcoholism and Other Drug Problems. Dr Rao has taught for more than 25 years. He pioneered the pathology museum and clerkship manual at the Faculty of Medical Sciences, which has served as a teaching-learning and assessment resource for more than a decade.