SUNDAY 3 JUNE, 2018 – UWI TODAY
3
EDITORIAL TEAM
CAMPUS PRINCIPAL
Professor Brian Copeland
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS
Dr Dawn-Marie De Four-Gill
EDITOR:
Vaneisa Baksh • email:
AG. EDITOR:
Shereen Ann Ali • email:
CONTACT US
The UWI Marketing and Communications Office
Tel: (868) 662-2002, exts. 82013 / 83997 or email:
FROM THE PRINCIPAL
PROFESSOR BRIAN COPELAND
Campus Principal
“No, I d i dn’ t f e e l
l i k e Bi l l Ga t e s
….
Honestly, I didn’t feel
like a UWI student at
an undergraduate level
could impact the society
in this way.”
Three years ago Jesse
Saitoo, a Department
o f E l e c t r i c a l a n d
Computer Engineering
final year student, was
overwhelmed at the outpouring of delight and
gratitude from the beneficiaries of an app he had
produced. For the visually impaired in Trinidad and
Tobago, his app -Maverick - gives them independence
in financial transactions. The app, based on facial
recognition algorithms, allows the visually impaired
to identify local currency without assistance from
the sighted.
Jesse’s app is a perfect example of social innovation
– a novel tool that benefits people’s lives. And, yes, this
is happening right here at the St. Augustine Campus.
At just 22, Jesse truly understood what it meant to
innovate not just for profit, but tomeet pressing unmet
needs and improve the lives of people.
Our vision here at St. Augustine of an education
system for sustainable development has driven
this Campus’ initiatives to reform its curriculum
and pedagogy, to overhaul its supportive business
processes and to change Campus culture to one that is
more entrepreneurial in outlook. By seeing ourselves
as innovators and entrepreneurs, we are committed
to using research, knowledge, and innate creativity
to deliver solutions to issues plaguing Trinidad and
Tobago, the Caribbean, and the world.
Kevin Chika Urama and Ernest Nti Acheampong,
in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (Summer
2013) argue that
“a prosperous society consists of
economic prosperity and social prosperity combined”.
They put forward the case – if one were needed – for
social innovation:
“Rarely has the need for new ways of thinking
been more glaring. From the sluggish economic growth
and financial instability of the last several years to the
perennial issues of political upheaval, resource crises,
hunger, poverty, and disease, people have come to realize
that the old ways of doing things no longer work.”
Take, for example, our research outputs in
agriculture. There can be no disagreement that
agriculture should be the backbone of any society. If
strategically engaged, agriculture could, at the very
least, provide an effective level of food security but
could also be a strong export earner. In times such
as these, where foreign exchange is exceedingly
scarce, it is therefore imperative that our focus on
innovation, entrepreneurship, and commercialisation
in strategically determined areas, such as agriculture,
is sharpened and given the support it desperately
needs.
Another example of collaboration on this Campus
for social innovation is AgriNeTT - an Agriculture
ICT project, funded byThe UWI-Trinidad & Tobago
Research and Development Impact (RDI) Fund.
AgriNeTT, a collaboration between The
UWI’s Department of Computing & Information
Technology, the Faculty of Food and Agriculture as
well as representatives of industry in the agriculture
sector, provides yet another example of social
innovation. AgriNeTT is an Agriculture ICT project,
fundedbyTheUWI-Trinidad&TobagoResearch and
Development Impact (RDI) Fund.Theproject engages
in research and development on Intelligent Decision
Support apps for Enhancing Crop Management.
AgriNeTT apps can be downloaded from the Google
App Store and include
AgriExpense
for managing
finances andmonitoring crop production,
AgriMaps
that provides soil characteristics of any identified
parcel of land and also enables the user to make
informed decisions on the best crops for planting
on the identified area, and
AgriPrice
for monitoring
the daily crop prices. The benefits to the agriculture
industry are clearly nothing less than tremendous.
Then there is ‘Project mFisheries’, conducted
by the Department of Electrical and Computer
Eng ineer ing and funded by Internat iona l
Development Research Centre (IDRC). The focus of
‘mFisheries’ is on support for the small scale fisheries
industry in the Caribbean, with particular emphasis
on Trinidad and Tobago. It is developing capacity in
the Caribbean to pursue opportunities arising from
the provision of innovative mobile-enabled services
for small scale fisher folk, and providing related
empirical data and analysis to inform Caribbean
policy and regulation.
My final example looks at how we are redefining
our social outreach and engagement within our
fence-line community of Farm Road, St. Joseph.
For 70 years, this regional University has been
a tool for sustained Caribbean development. And,
for 70 years, the St. Augustine Campus has been an
integral part of the Tunapuna/Piarco region.
It is only fitting that, in celebrating our seven
decade tradition of service to the Caribbean, the St.
Augustine Campus include a main constituent. This
line of thought led to the launch of The UWI/Farm
Road Collaborative Project, a story in this issue of
UWI Today.
Through this collaboration, UWI is developing
an innovative model of social work education and
practice. Our social work students are given the
opportunity to complete their practicum hours in
the community through hands-on service-learning,
with the goals of developing the students’ skills and
commitment to community service while developing
a mutually beneficial relationship between the
University and the community. Through this model,
students in the entire University community can
participate in in-service learning and engagement in
a community.
According to research estimates, 70% of the
population in FarmRoad falls within the at-risk range
of 12-29 years of age. It is a young community. The
UWI/Farm Road collaboration will work to improve
the education, health and well-being of residents in
the community by empowering them to enact social
change through training, research, and community
mobilization.
Together we – UWI and Farm Road - will forge
a unique participatory model of intervention over
the next five years. The result of this will be a locally
designed
and
tested interventionmodel for university/
community/civil society partnership, which can
be replicated in communities with similar needs in
Trinidad and Tobago.
This collaboration is not about tokenism. It is
about achieving a shared sense of community spirit
and cohesion. Indeed, community members already
assist in planning and coordinating activities. In time,
we expect that a community liaison committee will be
formalized to ensure the continued life and strength
of the project.
This is academia in action, moving theory into
practice.
We are UWI and we are building a nation and a
Caribbean that are both economically and socially
prosperous.
Do enjoy the issue!
Academia in Action
