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March 2012
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President and Principal but first of all EngineerBy Professor Bridget Brereton
Like Ken Julien, Richards was one of the small group of men (no women yet, it seems) who built up the Faculty from its humble beginnings at the start of the 1960s. Like Julien, too, he began his working life in the nation’s oil industry. Still a teenager, on leaving school he became a staff trainee at UBOT (later taken over by Shell) in 1950. He went to Britain for his tertiary education, gaining BSc and MSc degrees in chemical engineering from Manchester in 1955 and 1957, and a PhD from Cambridge in 1963. (Only the best universities for him.) Once he had obtained his first degrees, he held management posts at Shell in the late 1950s and the early 1960s. But Richards soon felt the lure of the new Faculty of Engineering, joining the Department of Chemical Engineering in 1965. He became part of the dynamic team of West Indians who entered the Faculty soon after it opened its doors in 1961—Julien, Harry Phelps, Compton Deane, George Sammy, Desmond Imbert. These relatively young men were catapulted into leadership positions in the Faculty after most of the senior British academics, the Faculty’s founders, left St. Augustine. Richards served as Head of his department, and in 1974 he succeeded Julien as Faculty Dean, holding that position until 1979. During those years, aided by oil boom money and the strong support of the Eric Williams government, the Faculty forged ahead: student numbers rose steadily, new buildings were planned and construction started, new programmes and disciplines were brought on stream. Colleagues from the less favoured faculties looked on with awe as the splendid new edifices began to rise before our envious eyes. Both as departmental Head and as Dean, Richards built up the Department of Chemical Engineering, established strong links with the British Institute of Chemical Engineering, secured international accreditation for the Department’s programmes, and developed its capacity in process industry. In general, he helped to make the Faculty an internationally recognized body, whose graduates came to hold leadership positions nationally, regionally and abroad. In 1980, Richards was plucked out of the Faculty of Engineering to become St Augustine’s first Deputy Principal, and also a Pro-Vice-Chancellor within the regional UWI system. And in 1985 he succeeded Lloyd Braithwaite as Campus Principal, holding that post until his retirement from UWI in 1996. It fell to him to steer the campus through some very difficult years, years of financial stringency and constant worries about how the bills (including staff salaries) would be paid from month to month. But his characteristic calm, geniality and good humour helped to bring the campus through to better days by the early 1990s. After he left UWI he was called to higher realms of service, becoming President in 2003, a post he still holds. But the President has remained very close to the campus and to his Faculty, returning very frequently to attend functions and to participate in its varied life. It seems you never cease to be an engineer and a St. Augustine man, however elevated you may become. Bridget Brereton is Emerita Professor of History and author of the 2010 “From Imperial College to the University of The West Indies.” |
When several buildings of the Faculty of Engineering were given new names in November 2011, it was no surprise that one of them—Block 13—was renamed in honour of G.M.Richards, currently the President of the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago.