SUNDAY 13 NOVEMBER, 2016 – UWI TODAY
3
EDITORIAL TEAM
Campus Principal
Professor Brian Copeland
Director of Marketing
and Communications
Dr Dawn-Marie De Four-Gill
EDITOR (Ag.)
Rebecca Robinson
CONTACT US
The UWI Marketing and Communications Office
Tel: (868) 662-2002, exts. 82013 / 83997
or email:
Recognising
Excellence
Guest Editorial by the Chancellor of The University of the West Indies
Congratulations to the class of 2016!
We are proud
of you and salute your progress and accomplishment to
date. The academic programme and the curriculum are
constantly being revised to adapt to the changing needs of
the society and 20 new programmes were introduced in
the last academic year.
This is an appropriate place to record our appreciation
for the continued and generous support of the government
of Trinidad and Tobago to the University in general and to
this Campus in particular. External grants for a wide range
of projects totaled $TT 21 million and I am pleased to note
that $TT 7.1 million of this came from the government of
Trinidad and Tobago. I was also intrigued by $961,000
from the Food and Agriculture Organisation for work on
cassava and I know everyone here is aware of the increasing
emphasis on local products such as cassava which will go a
long way to reducing the food import bill.
Work on cocoa attracted $TT 1.3 million, again
emphasising the relevance of the work being carried out
here to local issues. I note that the Principal has signed
an agreement with the IDB for a project on
Improving
the marketing and production of artisanal cocoa from
Trinidad and Tobago
. This will integrate small farmers and
community co-operative producers into the value chain for
the supply of premium cocoa products. The Department of
Chemical Engineering is carrying out work on Dominica
Community Restoration with funding from UNDP.
All graduations are special but this perhaps is more
so because it comes at a time of many changes here. I
welcome Professor Brian Copeland as I say again, that I am
pleased with his elevation to the post of Campus Principal.
He brings with him years of experience in the University,
demonstrated competence in his field and the dedication
and commitment to excellence that augur well for the
Campus. And I must also record here my appreciation for
the years of dedicated service Professor Sankat has given.
This time next year you will have a new Chancellor and
I trust that the University will be as kind to her or him
as it has been to me. We are still in the beginning of the
administration of the Vice-Chancellor and I think that the
current Government of Trinidad and Tobago might still
consider itself new. These events brought to mind Bob
Dylan’s famous song of 1964 -
Times are a changin
– the
last few lines of which are:
As the present now
will later be past
the order is rapidly fadin
and the first one now will be later the last
for the times they are a changin.
As you knowhe won the Nobel Prize recently. Changes
at the personal level always bring challenges even though
many are predictable as a part of nature. But it is a bit
different at the institutional level when they are caused
by extrinsic forces, and I’m sure everyone knows the
immutable law of nature that organisms adapt to change
or die.
The longevity of universities as institutions has
meant that they have adapted to change. Institutions
like ours can see change as a threat and adopt the almost
physiological adrenergic response of fight or flight. They
can treat it as a crisis with an aggressive overreaction and
focus on defending the status quo by circling the wagons
and insisting on the rightness of the old way. But they
can also welcome change as an opportunity for deliberate
and reasoned response to the environment and part of
the genius of long lived organisms is not to frame the
Thetimesareachanging
A University tradition
for more than 20 years,
the Vice-Chancellor’s Awards recognise excellence
in teaching, administration and research
accomplishments, service to the university
community, contributions to public service, and
all-round excellence in a combination of two or
more of these core areas. A departmental award is
also given for service and operational excellence.
This year seven awards for excellence
were presented at a ceremony which is rotated
annually among The University’s four campuses
and took place at The UWI St Augustine
Campus in Trinidad and Tobago. The 2015/2016
awardees from St Augustine are captures above
with
Richard Saunders
, the Registrar at St
Augustine and Campus Principal,
Professor
Brian Copeland
. Flanking them from left to
right are:
Dr Farid Youssef
, Department of Pre-
Clinical Sciences - Excellence Award for Teaching,
Professor Jayaraj Jayaraman
, Department of
Life Sciences - Excellence Award for Research
Accomplishments, The Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering - Departmental
Award for Excellence – represented by
Dr Fasil
Muddeen
and
Camille Renaud, Mr Jessel
Murray
, Department of Creative and Festival
Arts, St Augustine Campus - All-round excellence
in University Service and Public Service.
(For full coverage of the event please see page 6)
L-R Dr Farid Youssef, Dept. of Pre-Clinical Sciences,
Professor Jayaraj Jayaraman, Dept of Life Sciences
Richard Saunders, Registrar, Professor Brian Copeland,
Camille Renaud, Dr Fasil Muddeen and Jessel Murray.
response to change in binary terms. They build on the old
and seize the opportunity to explore new and improve old
norms and practices. I know from experience that new
administrations bring change which can be unsettling. I
have had on occasion to refer toMachiavelli’s famous quote
about change
“It must be considered that there is nothing more
difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor
more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order
of things; for the reformer has enemies in all those who
profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in
all those who would profit by the new order”.
A positive mindset is necessary because the changes
will come not only from modifications within the
institution consequent on changing of the guard. For
example, the University has to respond to the challenges
of interconnectedness and the changes it brings to higher
education. The Internet has not only brought speed of
access to information, it has also brought to the fore
the homogenisation of aspirations of its public and the
perceptions of the possible that may exceed the apparent
capacity to fulfill them.
There has been no change in understanding that the
major function of the University is to inculcate knowledge
into the young. I use this formulation deliberately as often
I am accused of epistemological quibbling when I insist
that we cannot transfer knowledge which is essentially an
intensely personal attribute. Universities train persons to
think critically and inculcate the principles and practice
of internalising information to produce individual
knowledge. Our graduates are valuable not primarily
because of the technical knowledge they possess at the
time they graduate, but mainly because of their capacity to
internalise information and process it into the knowledge
which becomes the basis for their performance. I am
not particularly impressed when I hear the criticism of
our graduates that they are not job ready in the sense of
having all the knowledge necessary to perform certain tasks
which involve a set of technical skills. I would argue that
no successful worker in any profession is job ready in the
sense I described above when he or she graduates from a
University.
There is a responsibility on the part of employers to
facilitate the process by which the graduate incorporates
that new pertinent information and makes it part of his
or her knowledge base that allows him or her to take the
appropriate decisions. There are facts – data which are
managed and organised to become information. Humans
internalise that information, process it to become their
knowledge and it is it on the basis of that knowledge that
we have the wisdom to act appropriately. The role of the
University is essential in the first two stages and critical in
facilitating the others.
But there is a growing and subtle change in the way
universities are perceived and the purpose they fulfill which
is particularly relevant pertinent to this campus. The word
combinations of research, development and innovation or
technology and innovation are much more common than
they used to be. One reason is because it has become clear
that technology and the diffusion of technology has been
the most important driver of development especially when
measured in terms of economic growth.
(Part 2 of Chancellor’s Graduation message is carried
on page 12 while other cover Graduation coverage is
on pages 7-10
The following is part of Sir George Alleyne’s graduation address 2016,
at the St Augustine campus’
