SUNDAY 7TH DECEMBER, 2014 – UWI TODAY
17
ENERGY
UWI GRADUATION CEREMONIES 2014
Faculty of Social Sciences
HONORARY GRADUATE
SIR RONALD SANDERS
Government Support Vital
“In the last decade the University’s enrolment has grown from 22,000 to more than 47,000
students and applications increased between 2006 and 2013 from 16,000 to 30,000. The
University has coped with this rightful demand by West Indian people for higher learning
in the face of inadequate funding and competition from new national universities and from
foreign ones. There are areas of research in which the University has international standing –
among them, sustainable development in small island states; Early Childhood Development,
select areas in Law, Marine and Environmental Studies. One can only imagine how many more
areas of valuable research for this region the UWI could have developed if it had the funding
of governments that it deserves. Few Universities can be good at everything but, as Vice-
Chancellor Nigel Harris once remarked to me, the UWI has ‘peaks of excellence in which it is
globally visible and about which we can be proud as a region.”
VALEDICTORIAN
SEEMA RAMSARRAN
Don’t bow to Social Pressure
“Graduates, I am certain that like me, you might have been told that your degree is of minimal
value. Or maybe at some point, people have tried to deter you from whatever field you have
chosen. We live in such an influential world today, the church, the mass media, relatives,
peers… Our social atmosphere forces us and moulds us to conform to standards set by society
– to pursue a certain career path, one that is reckoned to be more prestigious. My friends,
whatever you would have had to do to surpass those negative forces and to be where you are
right at this moment; I say to you, never lose that unwavering attitude. For it is that attitude
which brought you here in year one, while you sat in these very seats for ‘UWI Life orientation’
with a passion burning deep inside you, a want, a thirst for learning.”
FOR FULL ADDRESS, PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT:
What students said about UWI:
“I’m the first to graduate in my generation of the family. It’s a very good feeling. My parents would be
proud. I think the Open Campus is a good thing for older students; the teleconferencing options are very
convenient.”
(Management Studies)
