The UWI Five Islands Campus welcomes Dr. Curtis Charles
as Director of Academic Affairs
Dr. Curtis Charles
The UWI Regional Headquarters, Jamaica. Friday, September 11, 2020. The University of the West Indies, Five Islands Campus is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Curtis Charles as its new Director of Academic Affairs, with effect from September 1, 2020. A former University President with extensive experience in accreditation, higher education administration, data science, corporate business strategy and change, and education technology, Dr. Charles’ career spans across state systems of higher education and private universities.
For more than 25 years, Dr. Charles has held positions in higher education, from Faculty, to Undergraduate and Graduate Department Chair, to Senior Academic Officer for Programme Development and Services, to Senior Associate Vice-Chancellor for Institutional Transformation. In his role as the Senior Associate Vice-Chancellor for Institutional Transformation at Fayetteville State University, Dr. Charles set up the 22-Faculty-Interdisciplinary Centre for Defence and Homeland Security (CDHS), that focused on increasing research and development contract revenue in areas of compelling interest such as cybersecurity threats, national security challenges, man-made and natural catastrophic disasters and K-20 STEM education outreach.
Dr. Charles has served as the Vice-President for Research, Development and Innovation at RLM Communications (DoD Contractor), where he oversaw design, development and innovation of new products and services for Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Biometrics and Cybersecurity. In addition, Dr. Charles has served as a Senior Business Strategy and Change engagement lead at IBM Global Services—conducting Strategy Customer Engagements in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and the United Kingdom. Most recently, Dr. Charles served as a Solution Architect and Predictive Insights Lead for Key Education Objectives at Microsoft Services where he worked with university leadership teams on the application of Cloud Computing, Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT) as a force-multiplier to strengthen operations and financial performance.
Dr. Charles is an academic entrepreneur to his core and believes that in collaboration with regional companies, The UWI Five Island Campus can be an engine of innovation to democratize 4th Industrial Revolution start-up industries throughout the Eastern Caribbean States—“Silicon Islands of the Caribbean.”
Dr. Charles is a graduate of Howard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Morgan State University, Northwestern University, Harvard’s Institute for Education Management, MIT’s Big Data and Social Analytics certification programme, Harvard’s Performance Assessment in Higher Education certification programme, MIT’s Building, Leading, and Sustaining the Innovative Organization certification programme, and the American Council on Education Institute for new Presidents. Dr. Charles’ college degrees are in Higher Education Administration, Predictive Data Analytics, and Architecture/Smart Buildings Technology.
Dr. Charles is married to Dr. Kelly Jackson Charles. They are the proud parents of four adult children. The University extends a warm welcome to Dr. Charles.
END.
