March 2012


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Annual Report 2011

What we did last year

At the annual Campus Council meeting of the St. Augustine Campus of The UWI, the Annual Report is presented. This meeting, chaired by Central Bank Governor Ewart Williams, is scheduled to take place on March 27. Discussions will include a review of the reporting period, 2011, and plans for the year ahead. The following is a summary of some of the activities of 2011, which form part of the Annual Report.

Expanding Access

The UWI has a mandate to expand access to communities across the region. In February 2011, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago granted 100 acres of former Caroni sugar lands for the construction of what will be the St. Augustine South Campus. Located in Debe, construction was scheduled to begin this year with the first intake of students from the Faculty of Law to come in August/September.

There were important developments in Tobago as well, albeit not as dramatic. Students in Tobago have for many years been able to pursue programmes at the UWI St. Augustine using distance learning technology. While it has made tertiary education more affordable and accessible, it is not the ideal. The campus expanded the number of face-to-face options available to persons interested in pursuing the Diploma in Education, and for the first time, the International Master’s in Business Administration (IMBA) was delivered this way in Tobago.

Regionally, using distance learning technology, the first “Summer Programme” in the OECS (St. Kitts) was offered and the number of programmes delivered in conjunction with universities in Suriname and Guyana continues to grow.

Relevant Research

In 2008, in implementing our 2007-2012 Strategic Plan, we paid particular attention to the need to improve support for and supervision of our graduate researchers and to encourage more students to choose to pursue postgraduate research degrees. While progress was steady in the first two areas, in 2011, despite only minor fluctuations in the overall campus population and the number of postgraduate students (increases of 3% and 7% respectively), the number of graduate students pursuing research degrees was up 33%.

We have sharpened our research focus on projects that are relevant to the current and future demands of our region and where there are potential partnerships – local, regional and international. Two excellent examples of such partnerships in 2011:

DERPI
After testing almost 70,000 school children aged 5-17 years in Trinidad during 2009 for urine glucose, the findings of the Diabetes Education Research and Prevention Institute (DERPi) Project were presented. The Project was established through a $5m grant from Mrs Helen Bhagwansingh to provide information about the prevalence of diabetes among children and adolescents in Trinidad and Tobago and to determine early preventative measures. With the incidence of childhood diabetes increasing three-fold locally over the last decade, this important partnership between private sector donors and The UWI has the potential to save the lives and improve the quality of life for thousands across the Caribbean.

m-Fisheries
The m-Fisheries project, a collaboration between the UWI and MIT, put smart-phones in the hands of more than four dozen fisher-folk and created mobile applications that could help them catch more fish, get better prices on the local market, and maybe even save their lives.

Call and Response
During the 2011 reporting period, current students, graduates, employers and readers of publications like STAN, Pelican and UWI Today were surveyed to find out more about them and how they could be better served. New partnerships were formed with organisations such as the Trinidad & Tobago Bureau of Standards and the ACCA and earlier partnerships bore fruit with the introduction of new programmes in Education, Journalism, Accounting and Creative Design – Entrepreneurship.

Within the UWI family itself, the St. Augustine Campus has been working closely with our colleagues at Mona on the establishment of a Faculty of Engineering there to meet the growing need for qualified persons in that locale.

Finances
The Campus understands the financial constraints facing regional economies and the effect that is having on our key funding agents and supporters, staff and students. We continue to focus on increasing efficiency in both academic and administrative areas, and while sacrifices have been asked and made, we have not compromised the quality of our output or our level of service to our stakeholders.

Our ability to meet the challenges we face depends heavily on our staff and our ability to transform the leadership and culture of the campus. In one related initiative the Works Department has been designated the Facilities Management Division, with its new Director expected to have a different approach to the maintenance and management of the physical infrastructure of the Campus. Another seemingly unrelated change was the removal of almost all of the fences on the main campus. The physical effect has been to bring administrative support staff into more direct contact with students. Administrative changes ranged from campus tours as part of our recruitment drive, to testing an online examination system and the introduction of a new cost-effective IP/Voice PBX solution.

Committed to our students
Staff have been enrolling and qualifying in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning programmes at a steady pace and attendance at workshops seminars related to Instructional Development continues to be high. This should result in a steady improvement in teaching and learning.

While work continues on the construction of teaching spaces, new CCTV cameras are helping to improve on-campus security, an ambulance service has been introduced, and digital screens installed at key locations on the Main Campus and at Mt. Hope now provide students and the general campus population with up-to-date information on admissions, registration, examinations, services and events.

Committed to our Staff
During the period under review, wage negotiations were concluded with the West Indies Group of University Teachers (WIGUT) representing Academic, Senior Administrative and Professional Staff. Negotiations with the Oilfields Workers Trade Union (OWTU) representing Administrative and Technical Services Staff (ATSS) are ongoing.

Recruitment and retention of academic staff remains a challenge, particularly in areas such as Medical Sciences and Engineering and among staff recruited internationally. One new initiative in this regard is a partnership with the Ministry of National Security to quickly resolve immigration issues. This facility is also available to international students.

Commitment to our Community
The UWI is well known for its conferences, seminars and forums on current issues. The names COTE, BBF and the popular SALISES Forums are familiar in local and regional business circles and attract speakers and attendees considered to be at the top of their fields. Apart from these, this year we also hosted forums that touched on issues such as road accidents, and the sustainable development of coastal communities.

The Tele-health programme and others from the Faculty of Medical Sciences bring relief to citizens while providing practical experience to students. All Faculties are increasing opportunities for the integration of community projects into coursework. The expansion of the online resources of the Campus Libraries and the launch of online journals in various fields, apart from providing avenues for publication, also make the research and knowledge of the campus more widely available to the general public.

Committed to Quality
Our local accreditation exercise was completed at the end of 2010, and the Campus was awarded institutional accreditation by the Accreditation Council of Trinidad and Tobago (ACTT) in May 2011 for a period of seven years. We submitted to the accreditation process not only to provide public assurance, but to take advantage of an opportunity to re-examine and refine what we do and how we do it.

We celebrated 50 years of research with a publication showing the work of 50 top researchers on the campus, and with the TT Chapter of the Alumni Association, we recognised 50 Distinguished Alumni. In addition, a number of UWI buildings now bear the names of some of those who made sterling contributions to the development of the campus and the University. Small, elegant signs dot the landscape, succinctly telling the stories of each landmark, and providing daily reminders to the campus population that they are the inheritors and custodians of a proud legacy.