St Vincent Hosting Open Campus Council Meeting
Office of the Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal. Monday, March 3, 2020 - The University of the West Indies Open Campus 2020 Council Meeting will be hosted in St Vincent and the Grenadines on Friday March 20 at the Beachcombers Hotel in Villa.
The Open Campus Council is the highest decision-making body of the Campus and will be presided over by Ambassador Dr June Soomer, Chairman of Open Campus Council.
Approximately 50 delegates representing ministries of education, The University of the West Indies, UWI Alumni and Guild of Students will be in attendance at the annual Council meeting.
The first segment of the morning session will be opened to invited guests and the media and will also be broadcast live on UWItv channel on FlOW and also online on Open Campus Facebook page. Dr June Soomer, Chairman of Council; Dr Luz Longsworth, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Open Campus; and Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor of The UWI will address the public session.
Dr Longsworth will present the Principal’s Report, a key feature of the Council meeting. Among the accomplishments Dr Longsworth will highlight are the institutional re-accreditation of the Open Campus for the maximum seven years by the Barbados Accreditation Council, the pending opening of new and refurbished Sites in St Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago, the number of partnerships the Campus has forged during the year under review and the growth student numbers year on year. The meeting will also review the Audited Financial Statements, the Audit Committee Report, and The UWI Open Campus Alumni Report.
The Campus will host a press conference following the public session of the meeting.
Re-Opening of St Vincent and the Grenadines Country Site
The refurbished St Vincent and the Grenadines Open Campus Country Site will be re-opened on Thursday March 19, 2020 at 6:00 pm at the Site’s Murray’s Road location in Kingstown.
The refurbished Site will be officially re-opened by Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr the Honourable Ralph Gonsalves and Vice-Chancellor of The UWI, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles.
Dr Gonsalves will deliver the main address, while representatives of The UWI, Sir Hilary Beckles, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Open Campus, Dr Luz Longsworth; representatives from the Caribbean Development Bank, and Global Affairs Canada will also give remarks.
The site was renovated with funding provided by the Caribbean Development Bank, The UWI, Global Affairs Canada and the Government of St Vincent and the Grenadines under the SDEC Project.
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Photo captions:
1. Architect’s rendering of the refurbished Open Campus Site in St Vincent and the Grenadines
2. Ambassador Dr June Soomer, Chairman of Open Campus Council
About The UWI
For the past 70 years The University of the West Indies (The UWI) has provided service and leadership to the Caribbean region and wider world. The UWI has evolved from a university college of London in Jamaica with 33 medical students in 1948 to an internationally respected, regional university with near 50,000 students and five campuses: Mona in Jamaica, St. Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago, Cave Hill in Barbados, Five Islands in Antigua and Barbuda, and an Open Campus. As part of its robust globalization agenda, The UWI has established partnering centres with universities in North America, Asia, and Africa such as the State University of New York (SUNY)-UWI Center for Leadership and Sustainable Development, the UWI-China Institute of Information Technology, the University of Lagos (UNILAG)-UWI Institute of African and Diaspora Studies and the Institute for Global African Affairs with the University of Johannesburg (UJ). The UWI offers over 800 certificate, diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Food & Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science & Technology, Social Sciences and Sport.
As the region’s premier research academy, The UWI’s foremost objective is driving the growth and development of the regional economy. Times Higher Education (THE) has ranked The UWI among the top 1,258 universities in world for 2019, and the 40 best universities in its Latin America Rankings for 2018. It was the only Caribbean-based University to make the prestigious lists. For more, visit www.uwi.edu.
(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.)
