“Campus community” - it’s a handy phrase, a brisk bit of alliteration to describe the people that make up UWI St Augustine. It’s also very accurate. A campus is a community. It has parks, offices, police, places to eat, and even places to live. Some 18,000 students and 3,000 staff live and work on the St Augustine Campus, and many of them never think about what goes into keeping their community running, who is responsible for ensuring community life. One of the most senior at the helm of ensuring that the community thrives is the Campus Registrar.
“The modern registrar is the chief operating officer of the institution,” says Dr Dawn-Marie De Four-Gill, Campus Registrar of UWI St Augustine. She is the first woman appointed to the position in the history of the campus.
This past July she celebrated her first year in the post, having acted as Deputy Campus Registrar before her official appointment in 2019. And what a year it’s been. She came on during a time of great upheaval at the Caribbean institution as it has been dealing with financial pressures brought on by weakening regional economies and greater competition from other schools. Then came the coronavirus pandemic.
“We had to change so rapidly,” she says. “I came into the office with a clear vision and roadmap for change, and all these plans and ideas have been interrupted because of COVID-19.”
But part of leadership is adaptation, and working with her colleagues in the campus management team, the deans and their faculties, the campus’ support and technical staff, Dr De Four-Gill’s first year, while not easy, has been one of rapid evolution for the benefit of UWI St Augustine.
Long before she was a campus administrator, De Four-Gill was a UWI student:
“UWI has been so much a part of my life. I did my first degree here. I started to work here after my second degree.”
She muses on her trajectory, “I think I was a late bloomer. I did well through primary and secondary school but I really started to peak in university.”
After UWI, she received a Chevening Scholarship for her to do a master’s degree in Marketing at the CASS Business School at City University in London. Marketing would soon bring her back to the St Augustine Campus, where she would make an impact that still resonates powerfully today.
“I was always interested in strategy and I understood the underpinning role of marketing. I wanted to bring it all together in a holistic way,” she says.
For many years, Dr De Four-Gill was the Director of the Marketing and Communications Office (M&C), a unit she developed with the support of Campus Principals Professor Compton Bourne and Dr Bhoendradatt Tewarie, and, initially, a very small staff.
“I always had a good mentor and supporter in the form of Prof Bourne,” she says. “He believed that we had to do things a little differently. He had a vision, so I started working with him directly in the area of marketing and relationship building. It just grew from there. When Dr Tewarie came on, he too had a similar vision and gave me the room to help him implement it, and so a full-fledged marketing and communications unit was formed.”
By “full-fledged” she means three or four people. It was an overwhelming workload. They did everything - edited all campus publications, handled campus messaging, managed photo shoots, and even handled outreach and student recruitment events.”
She looks back and laughs, “You really had to be young to take it on. It required a level of sacrifice that when I look back on it now, I don’t know if I could do it again.”
But the sacrifice paid off. M&C has become a multiple international award-winning, fully integrated part of campus operations, and the marketing function has grown and spread across the other UWI campuses (UWI TODAY is produced by M&C). It also showed not only De Four-Gill’s capacity for work, but her willingness to go where others had not ventured and her ability to endure the uncertainty and hardships to make it work. These are character assets for a senior administrator, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March 2020, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago ordered a temporary lockdown of schools. As the perils related to the coronavirus became clearer, the lockdown order was extended. UWI St Augustine closed the campus shortly after - during the second semester of the academic year.
“We had to go into emergency mode and try to retrofit,” says Dr De Four-Gill. “We had to take all our processes to support students in a face-to-face environment and find a way to deliver that same level of support in a digital environment.”
In areas like communications, online lectures and even coursework, this was laborious but not extremely difficult. However, the examinations process (student assessments) was both time-consuming and challenging work. Faculties and lecturers had to convert exams to an alternative assessment mode, and the administration had to convert their support processes to match.
“The public only sees the part where you go to a space and take exams, but a lot goes into that behind the scenes,” she says. “We were clear that we couldn’t do fully online exams because we didn’t want to disadvantage any students. Quite a number of students don’t have access to electronic devices.”
They settled on a format that would replace the standard, in- person two-hour exams, with online assessments ranging from 24 hours, to 48 hours, to five days. Not only was it a new system, it was a system that had to be implemented in the space of three weeks instead of the typical eight-week exam timetable construction.
And while the result wasn’t perfect, it worked, she says: “We knew we would have fallouts and clashes, etc, and we were prepared to deal with that. We had to.”
As Campus Registrar. Dr De Four Gill has been involved in almost every aspect of the COVID-19 response - facilities management, student support, health and safety measures, everything. She has come through the experience with many positive takeaways, despite the challenges. The many hours-long meetings have brought her closer to her campus colleagues. The sharing of information with other universities has strengthened her network with international higher education providers. The roadblocks and inefficiencies she has discovered in the campus’ operations have given her useful information on what needs to be improved.
Perhaps most importantly, the realities of university life post- COVID-19 have made her and other higher ed professionals look deeply at what it means to be part of a tertiary level institution and how campuses can evolve to match.
It’s an empowering outlook, one she credits to the influence of her family, “I have had strong family support throughout my life.” Dr De Four-Gill grew up primarily with her single mother and sister, with the additional influence of extended family like her grandfather.
“My mom is an incredible inspiration for me,” she says. “And I am terribly proud of my sister. One of my drivers is for them to be proud of me.”
Dr De Four-Gill recalls her mother hosting fundraising activities like barbecues so that she could afford to live in the UK while pursuing her master’s degree. “Something she willingly and generously repeated when my sister did her masters in the UK,” she says.
She also has a family of her own, a husband and two sons. She speaks at length about them:
“When I was pursuing my doctorate [in Higher Education Leadership and Management from the University of Pennsylvania] my husband, understanding the tremendous pressure it would mean for me and our family, took over the running of the house. He was selfless. He left his job and worked from home. He did everything.”
Of her two sons, 18 and 13, she says, they keep her grounded: “I’m still a mom. I might wake up early in the morning to meditate and prepare for work, but I also have to prepare breakfast and lunch, sync schedules and get them all out of the house on time. My family is very, very important to me.”
Important as well, is what she represents for professional women and women in academia. She mentions the several mentors she has had at the university and many of them are women. She also draws upon a treasured resource of support from her female colleagues at UWI. She hopes to inspire as she has been inspired.
“I want people to understand that their circumstances don’t determine who they are and that you can do anything with perseverance and hard work. I want them to know that it’s ok to be a strong woman. However, being strong does not mean doing it alone. I have benefited from the support of so many. They have contributed to my success and to my well-being. It’s ok to not want to have to do it all on your own,” she says.
And of the experience as Campus Registrar? She laughs, “it’s been an interesting journey so far. I look forward to what we need to do over the next year.”
