4
UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 2ND AUGUST, 2015
OUR CAMPUS
The UWI congratulates
Director
of the Institute
for Gender &Development
Studies and Professor
of Social History at the
Mona Campus, Professor
Verene Shepherd on her
appointment to the United
Nations Committee on
the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination (CERD).
During the twenty-sixth meeting of CERD’s States’
in New York on 25 June 2015, Professor Shepherd was
elected among the nine members (half of the membership
of the Committee) who will replacemembers whose terms
expire in January 2016. She will be the first national of
the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to serve on
the CERD. She was elected along with candidates from
Burkina Faso, China, Colombia, Guatemala, Mauritania,
Russia, Spain and the United States of America and
received the most votes among them.
The CERD is a body of independent experts charged
withmonitoring the implementation of the
Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
by its
State parties. It is one of the eight of the human rights treaty
bodies which fall under the Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
Qualifying experts are persons of high moral character
with recognised competence in the field of human rights.
Professor Verene Shepherd, a fellowof the Cambridge
Commonwealth Society, is also graduate of The UWI,
Mona Campus and the University of Cambridge, where
she read for her PhD in history. Her research interests
are Jamaican economic history during slavery, migration
and Diasporas, and Caribbean women’s history; and she
has published widely on these topics. She is a member
of several international organisations and sits on the
Advisory/Editorial of several regional and international
journals including the
Arts Journal, Caribbean Quarterly,
Jamaica Journal, Slavery and Abolition.
Speaking on behalf of The UWI, Vice-Chancellor
Professor Sir Hilary Beckles stated, “Prof Shepherd has
given a lifetime of service to the region and world in
the search for social justice, equity, and development.
In so doing she has served in the leadership of national,
regional and international organisations. She is now
one of the region’s most senior international diplomats
whose success has been tangible. Last year she guided UN
committees into the General Assembly’s declaring 2015-
2024 the
Decade for People of African Descent
. Now she
moves to the CERD. Within The UWI we celebrate this
superlative contribution and wish her continued success
for all our sakes.”
Professor Shepherd shared her philosophy on racism
stating, “The scourge of racism, racial discrimination,
Afrophobia, Islamophobia, Xenophobia and related
intolerance must be expunged from the human family,
thereby ensuring the inherent dignity and fundamental
rights and freedoms of all - regardless of ‘race’, ethnicity,
gender, skin colour, heritage/ancestry, religion, sexual
orientation and place of birth.” She added, “Discrimination
is abhorrent to peaceful co-existence and that justice is
vital to peace.”
One of her priority areas while on the CERD will
be to urge state parties to provide effective and adequate
remedies, internally and externally, to victims of racism
and racial discrimination, in accordance withArticle 6 and
General recommendation 26 of the ICERD.
Professor Shepherd is expected to serve on the
committee for the term 2016-2020.
Professor Verene
Shepherd elected
for UN Committee
Pro f e s s or S t ephan
Gift
is currently Head
of the Department of
Electrical and Computer
Eng i ne e r i ng i n t he
Faculty of Engineering
and L e a d e r o f t he
E l e c t ron i c s Sy s t em
Group. He was awarded
a UWI postgraduate
s c h o l a r s h i p a n d
completed his doctoral
degree in Electrical
Eng i ne e r i ng at age
24, the youngest PhD
graduate in the Faculty’s history. He later joined the
Department in 1995. He has published over 50 papers in
international peer-reviewed journals. He has developed
several new electronic systems and in a series of papers
has challenged Einstein’s theory of relativity. He is also
the first person in his Department to be promoted to the
rank of Professor. Professor Gift has received many awards
including the Young Innovator’s Award in 1986, The UWI
Guild of Graduates Pelican Award for Excellence in Science
and Technology in 1993, the PrimeMinister’s Special Award
of Merit for Innovation in the Field of Electronics in 2002
and Friends of the Tobago Library Committee Individual
of the Year Award for 2006 in recognition of outstanding
contribution in Science.
Pr o f e s s o r Te r en c e
Seemungal
has made an
invaluable contribution
to the study of lung
health. He is current
Head of the Department
of Clinical Medical
Sciences in the Faculty
of Medical Sciences. He
is also and Chair of the
Campus Open Lectures
Committee. His work
with the academic group
of Professor Wedzicha
in London contributed
significantly to the body of knowledge of chronic obstructive
pulmonary disease. His academic contributions form a
consistent body of work of high quality, originality and
significance. Recently, he was ranked No. 10 in the world
in an analysis of the top 100 “most influential papers on
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).” The
article in the International Journal of COPD,
A bibliometric
analysis of the 100 most influential papers on COPD
, was
UWI appoints
three newDeans at the
St. Augustine Campus
based on a study looking for the most often cited works.
The most frequently cited were published between 1966
and 2010. Professor Seemungal’s article was published in
1998 and at the time of the study had been cited 768 times.
The most cited article was published in 2007 and had 2,164
citations.
Professor Ann-Marie
Bissessar
is Professor
of Polit ica l S cience
and former Head of
t he Dep a r tment o f
Behavioural Sciences.
She has to date written/
co-edited/edited sixteen
books and approximately
seventy articles in peer
reviewed journals. Her
areas of research include
issues of Governance,
Public and Health Sector
reform; HumanResource
reform and regulations in relation to Money Laundering,
HumanTrafficking andAnti-Corruption. She was appointed
to the rank of Professor in 2010. Among her recent
publications is
Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana: Race and
Politics in Two Plural Societies
which she co-authored with
Professor Emeritus John Gaffar La Guerre in 2013. In it,
an attempt is made to probe more carefully the processes
by which social and ethnic problems, as these pertain to
Caribbean countries Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana,
are conveyed to the political arena and the mechanisms by
which they determine critical outcomes.
Dr Isaac Bekele
has served as Dean of the Faculty of
Food and Agriculture since his appointment to the post
in 2013. He holds a PhD in Biostatistics from Cornell
University; an MSc in Biometry from Reading University
and a BSc in Statistics from Addis Ababa University. He
has over 20 years’ experience in the area of environmental
studies, providing statistical support to graduate students
as co-supervisor or statistical support provider. He has
also been a statistical consultant to the Institute of Marine
Affairs for an extended period and taught statistics to MSc
Environmental Engineering students. His research interests
include statistical mathematics, theories in agricultural,
biological and environmental fields.
These new deans join other recently appointed
colleagues -
Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine
- Dean
of the Faculty of Law,
Dr Heather Cateau
- Dean of the
Faculty of Humanities and Education and
Professor Indar
Ramnarine
- Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology.
Three new Deans have been appointed
at The University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine ahead
of the academic year 2015/2016. Effective 1 August 2015, Professor Stephan Gift assumes the role of Dean
of the Faculty of Engineering, Professor Terence Seemungal as Dean of the Faculty of Medical Sciences
and Professor Ann-Marie Bissessar as Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. Dr Isaac Bekele has been
reappointed as Dean Faculty of Food and Agriculture. All appointments are for a period of 5 years.
