Your children will meet you in school, was what her mother told Alicia Phillips-Joseph. What did she mean by that? Well, Alicia had started her tertiary education with linguistics, then shifted to communications and international relations for her undergraduate degree. When that was completed, she paused her studies to focus on raising her four children.
They’re all adults now. Marcus is 29, Melissa is 26, Marcele is 24, and Matthew is 22. She’d waited until Matthew had finished secondary school before enrolling in a master’s programme in Strategic Leadership and Innovation. It was the long break in her studies that prompted her mother’s words. They were prophetic. She and Marcele both graduated with their master’s degrees in 2025.
Yet Alicia was always committed to tertiary studies. “Growing up in Laventille, I witnessed social challenges that seemed to persist over time. I recognised early on that education was a key to overcoming these obstacles.”
Her parents had not gone past primary school and this motivated her to go further.
“Our family background spans multiple Caribbean islands, including Dominica, Tobago, Trinidad, Barbados and St Vincent and the Grenadines,” she said. This diversity informed her understanding of international relations and trade policy. It was also useful when Marcele spent the final seven months of his programme on an internship in St Vincent.
He had been moving relentlessly through the academic path. From CAPE to undergrad to post-graduate studies, he did not pause. He began his BSc in Biochemistry during the early stages of the pandemic in 2020, and then immediately enrolled in the MSc in Agri Food Safety and Quality Assurance programme. He was determined to have his master’s by the time he was 25. He’s beaten that self-imposed target.
But it wasn’t simply about setting an academic goal. Choosing biochemistry “was influenced by my early interest in the biological systems of living organisms and influence of these on functionalities and operations needed to sustain life.” As COVID-19 unfolded, he saw the importance of biochemistry in public health issues. He also saw the need for good quality food that is “fit for consumption and absent of adverse health effects”.
“Throughout the Agri Food Safety and Quality Assurance programme, I saw the application of biochemistry concepts and skills, such as ELISA and PCR, to the agricultural sector, allowing me to relate and grasp graduate level concepts of which I had not previously been aware,” he said.
Alicia said that when Marcele was awarded a merit for his master’s studies, “we found ourselves studying side by side.”
Both faced challenges.
For Alicia, balancing family responsibilities with academic demands was the most onerous. She had to learn to delegate household tasks to her family.
For Marcele it was rough to juggle work and study while trying to maintain a social life. He’d been awarded an Intra-Caribbean Academic Mobility Programme scholarship through the European Union/Cariforum which led to the internship at the Eastern Caribbean Group of Companies.
“Adapting to a slower pace of living and without familiar resources, for instance, my own transport, and entertainment took a while to adapt to, but I was able to appreciate being out of my comfort zone and being exposed to new ideas, surroundings and pastimes.”
He said it was an “eye-opener” to find himself doing his master’s at the same time as his mother.
“We both did undergrad at different times. For me, during the pandemic with accessible resources at my fingertips and information one Google click away, and for her during a time where you had to physically go to libraries and borrow physical books, we had to develop our way of bridging the gap. This was initially very difficult for both of us as our learning approaches are vastly different, but worth it in the end.”
He added, “I found it easier to stay at home to study; she found it difficult to stay focused on school work at home and made it her priority to go to the Alma Jordan Library to do schoolwork. We eventually split our school work time to half at home and half at the library. Even teaching a parent how to easily find online journals, papers, articles and connecting papers to build literature truly was an experience that I’ll gladly do again for my mom.”
For Alicia, “Our simultaneous graduation with master’s degrees was a proud moment that fulfilled my mother’s prophecy: my children did indeed meet me in school. This milestone symbolises not only personal achievement, but also the intergenerational value of education and the strength of family support.”
