University of the West Indies

History

The university was founded in 1948, on the recommendation of the Asquith Commission through its sub-committee on the West Indies, chaired by Sir James Irvine. The Asquith Commission had been established in 1943 to review the provision of higher education in the British colonies. Initially in a special relationship with the University of London, the then University College of the West Indies (UCWI) was seated at Mona, about five miles from Kingston, Jamaica. The university was based at Gibraltar Camp, used by evacuated Gibraltarians during the war.

Seeking to address a need for medical care, the first faculty established a medical school. The foundation stone for a hospital was added in 1949, and the University College Hospital of the West Indies opened in 1953. On 18 January 1953, Sir Winston Churchill visited the hospital and unveiled a plaque in recognition of the contribution made by the government of the United Kingdom to the hospital. The hospital was renamed the University Hospital of the West Indies in 1967 when the university gained full university status. In addition to patient care, the hospital facilitates research and teaching, along with the Medical Services department of the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies.

The University College achieved independent university status in 1962. The St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad, formerly the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture (ICTA), was established in 1960, followed by a school established along University Row, at the Deep Water Harbour of Barbados in 1963, later seated at the present Cave Hill Campus in 1967. The Open Campus, University Centres, headed by a Resident Tutor, were established in each of the other 13 contributing territories thereafter.

In 1950, Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, Queen Victoria's last surviving granddaughter, became the first Chancellor of the University College of the West Indies.

Sir William Arthur Lewis was the first Vice-Chancellor under the UWI's independent Charter. A native of St Lucia, he served as the first West Indian Principal of the UCWI from 1958 to 1960 and as Vice-Chancellor from 1960 to 1963. He was succeeded by Sir Philip Sherlock (a Jamaican and one of UWI's founding fathers) who served as Vice-Chancellor from 1963 to 1969. Sir Roy Marshall, a Barbadian, was the next Vice-Chancellor, serving from 1969 to 1974. He was succeeded in that year by Aston Zachariah Preston, a Jamaican, who died in office on 24 June 1986. The fifth Vice-Chancellor was Sir Alister McIntyre, who served from 1988 to 1998, followed by alumnus and Professor Emeritus Rex Nettleford, who served from 1998 to 2004. The current Vice-Chancellor is Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, who succeeded Professor E. Nigel Harris in May 2015.

University system

The UWI is the largest education provider in the Commonwealth Caribbean, with five constituent campuses:

The following are the satellite campuses of the university system:

Mount Hope Campus in Mount Hope, Trinidad and Tobago (houses the Faculty of Medical Sciences of UWI St. Augustine)

St. Augustine South Campus at Debe in the Penal–Debe region, Trinidad and Tobago (extension campus of UWI St. Augustine)

Western Jamaica Campus in Montego Bay, Jamaica (extension campus of UWI Mona)

Centre for Hotel and Tourism Management in Nassau, Bahamas (extension campus of UWI Mona)

School of Clinical Medicine and Research in Nassau, Bahamas (extension of the medical programme at UWI St. Augustine)

The other contributing countries are served by the Open Campus.

Proposals and programs

There have been various proposals to add one or more campuses in other nations, including a campus at Hope, Grenada, Suzhou, China, the Johannesburg Institute for Global African Affairs, and collaboration with the University of Havana. In 2020 the University of the West Indies and Brock University founded the Canada-Caribbean Institute (CCI) to connect academic institutions, scholars, the business and public sectors, civil society, the cultural and diaspora communities. Since it has expanded to a growing cadre of educational entities.

In addition to programmes offered directly by one of the faculties of the university, the UWI extends accessibility to its programmes through articulation agreements and franchise arrangements with regional institutions. In many of these arrangements, students are able to study in their home countries for the first one or two years before going to a landed campus for the third (and fourth) year. In the case of articulation agreements, the local institution develops its own programme and the UWI agrees to recognise it as equivalent to the first year or two of a specific UWI programme. In the case of a franchise programme, the local institution delivers exactly the programme as offered by UWI. This is usually the first year or two, but can be the full bachelor's degree on occasion.

Global initiatives

The University of the West Indies has initiated several international partnerships. In 2016, UWI and the Global Institute for Software Technology (GIST) established the UWI-China Institute for Information Technology. Starting in the summer of 2018, students in the programme on the Cave Hill and Mona campuses will travel to Suzhou, China for two years to study software engineering and Mandarin.

The UWI-SUNY Center for Leadership and Sustainable Development (CLSD) was established in 2017 on SUNY's Empire State campus in Manhattan. The centre is designed to assist the Commonwealth Caribbean in meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In addition to research and advocacy, plans were underway as of 2019 to offer a joint master's degree in sustainability and leadership.

In 2017, the University of Lagos (UNILAG) and the UWI established the UNILAG-UWI Institute of African and Diaspora Studies. The institute conducts research and offers a master's degree in African and Diaspora Studies.

Also in 2017, UWI and the University of Johannesburg (UJ) signed a memorandum of agreement (MoA) to establish the Institute for Global Africa Affairs. The institute was launched in 2018 and will offer a joint master's degree in Global African Studies.

In 2019, Universidad de los Andes, commonly referred to as UNIANDES, and the UWI established the Strategic Alliance for Hemispheric Development. The Alliance will focus on the development of joint academic programmes and collaborative research projects.

In 2020, UWI and the University of Havana inked an agreement to jointly establish the Institute for the Sustainable Development of the Caribbean. UWI Mona will lead the initiative from the UWI side, with the deans of the Faculty of Science and Technology and the dean of the Faculty of Medical Sciences taking the lead.

In 2021 the Inter-American Development Bank decided to become a stakeholder of UWI under Cuban-American President Mauricio Claver-Carone as a public-private partnerships, [PPP).

Faculties

The University of the West Indies is a multi-campus, international university with several faculties and schools, some replicated on all four physical main campuses. The Open Campus does not have a faculty structure. The distribution of the faculties (called schools at Five Islands) is listed below.

A new Faculty of Culture, Creative and Performing Arts was approved to be established on 1 August 2020 at the Cave Hill Campus.

Faculty of Medical Sciences

Prior to the establishment of a medical school in the Caribbean, most physicians were trained in the United Kingdom, with a smaller group trained in the United States. This was costly, not attuned to the specific needs of the communities the doctors would serve, and risked the newly minted physicians remaining in the countries they trained in.

The Faculty of Medical Sciences was the first faculty to be established in the then University College. This was because of the pressing need for more (locally trained) doctors to treat conditions such as tuberculosis, yaws, tetanus, typhoid, infant malnutrition, and illnesses related to diarrhea. The establishment of medical schools in the colonies was replicated in the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Rhodesia, and Uganda. The inaugural entering class of 1948 consisted of 33 students from across the Caribbean, selected from 600–800 applicants. As the university college was then affiliated with the University of London, the medical curriculum reflected the University of London's curriculum with the addition of preventive and tropical medicine. Degrees were awarded under the University of London until 1962, reflecting London's role in administering the programme and providing the teaching staff. In addition to the standard five-year course, a pre-course science year was required for students without adequate preparation. The University Hospital of the West Indies, an acute tertiary hospital, provided the initial context for clinical education.

Expansion of the capacity of the Faculty followed several steps. In addition to population growth, the exodus of medical graduates to North America, never to return, exacerbated the need to increase the output of doctors. In the 1960s, it was possible to complete the clinical clerkship element of training in Trinidad and Tobago (at the Port of Spain General Hospital), Barbados (at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Bridgetown), as well as in Jamaica. In 1989, the medical school at the St. Augustine campus opened. However, it adopted a problem-based approach rather than the 'traditional' existing curriculum at the Mona school. Mona, which had previously implemented curricular reforms based on World Health Organization recommendations to emphasize community health promotion and protection, and St. Augustine had different medical school curricula, although the graduates took the same qualifying exams. Moreover, St. Augustine's Faculty of Medical Sciences included not just a school of medicine but also schools of dentistry, veterinary medicine, nursing, and pharmacy, necessitating some resource-sharing. In 2008, the clerkships in Barbados were fully developed into a medical school at the Cave Hill campus. Around the same time, the UWI School of Clinical Medicine and Research was established from an existing programme allowing clerkships to be undertaken in Nassau, under the direction of the St. Augustine campus. The School offers the final two years of the five-year programme.

Faculty of Law

Prior to the establishment of the Faculty of Law at the UWI, residents of the anglophone Caribbean would travel primarily to the United Kingdom to study. There, a prospective lawyer would join one of the Inns of Court, receiving lodging and training and undergoing examinations. The training focused on England's legal system and social context, which did not correspond to legal practice in the Caribbean. It was also expensive. For the legal profession in England, the influx of prospective lawyers from around the British Commonwealth was beginning to strain resources. Efforts were underway to limit international students in legal studies in England, which was another reason to establish legal training in the Caribbean.

The Faculty of Law was initially established in 1970 at the Cave Hill Campus, in Barbados, but the first year of the degree was available at each campus (and the University of Guyana in Guyana). This structure served, inter alia, to create a regional institution (the Faculty) and a regional identity within the profession. Incrementally, courses from the second and third year of the law programs were introduced at St. Augustine and Mona, allowing students to take more and more of the degree on those campuses rather than studying at Cave Hill. It is now possible to complete a law degree at each campus.

Following completion of the UWI law degree, graduates who intend to practice must complete a two-year practical professional training programme at one of three law schools in the Caribbean. The Eugene Dupuch Law School in The Bahamas usually is for citizens of the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands. The Norman Manley Law School in Jamaica has allocated citizens from Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Jamaica, Montserrat, and St. Kitts and Nevis. The Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad and Tobago serves Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago. The three schools were established by the Caribbean Council of Legal Education. Ironically, despite the Faculty of Law being founded in Barbados, that country does not have a law school, though one has been suggested.

The first law students, beginning studies in October 1970, consisted of 24 students in Jamaica, nineteen in Trinidad and Tobago, 35 in Barbados, and thirteen in Guyana. Two years later, almost 300 students were enrolled in the Faculty. The first graduates entered the profession in 1975.

Faculty of Sport

Launched in 2017, the UWI Faculty of Sport integrates teaching and research, professional development, community partnerships, and co- and extra-curricular student sport through three main units: Professional Programmes, Outreach & Projects Unit, Co-curricular & Intramural-Activity Unit and the Academic Programme & Activity Unit. The faculty is made up of four Academies of Sport: Cave Hill Academy of Sport, Open Campus Academy of Sport, Mona Academy of Sport and St Augustine Academy of Sport.

UWI Press

Founded in 1992, the University of the West Indies Press is a department within the University of the West Indies system, located in Jamaica. Supported by a regionally assembled board of directors, UWI Press acts as the publishing arm of the main UWI campuses and their faculty and student body, including the Open Campus, where it additionally serves a network of 17 countries and territories. UWI Press focuses primarily on the traditional fields of Caribbean history, social sciences, political science, and cultural studies.

Rankings

In the 2021 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, UWI ranked in the 401–500th band. and in 2023, ranked in the top 150 best universities in the world for best research impact. The 2021–2022 Times Higher Education ranking ranked UWI in the top 20 when compared with Latin American University rankings, and ranked UWI first in the Caribbean. In 2020, UWI ranked among the top 100 Golden Age University Rankings and Impact Rankings. UWI is the only Caribbean university to make these prestigious lists.

People

Chancellors

Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, 1948–71

Sir Hugh Wooding, 1971–74

Sir Allen Montgomery Lewis 1974–89

Sir Shridath Ramphal 1989–2003

Sir George Alleyne 2003–2017

Robert Bermudez 2017– 2024

Dr. The Most Hon. Dodridge Miller 2024- Present

Vice-Chancellor

Principals

Sir Thomas Taylor 1947–52

Walter Wyatt Grave 1953–58

Sir William Arthur Lewis 1958–60

Vice-Chancellors

Sir William Arthur Lewis 1960–63

Sir Philip Sherlock 1963–69

Sir O Roy Marshall 1969–74

Hon Aston Zachariah Preston 1974–86

Pro-vice-chancellor L R B Robinson acting 1986–88

Sir Alister McIntyre 1988–1998

Rex Nettleford 1998–2004

Eon Nigel Harris 2004–2015

Sir Hilary Beckles 2015–

Notable faculty

M. H. Ahmad: professor of biotechnology and director of the Biotechnology Centre at Mona campus between 1990 and 2011.

Helen Asemota: professor of biochemistry and biotechnology

Courtenay Bartholomew: the first lecturer and then Professor of Medicine at UWI St Augustine.

V. C. R. A. C. Crabbe: Professor of Legislative Drafting, formerly justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana, and first Electoral Commissioner of Ghana.

Leith Dunn Head of the Mona Unit

Albert K Fiadjoe: Distinguished emeritus professor of public law.

Elsa Goveia: first female professor of UCWI and noted pioneer in West Indian historiography.

François Jackman: Ambassador to the UN and China, founded Chinese study institute at Barbados campus

Bridget Jones (1935–2000): pioneering Literature and language professor from 1964 to 1982, who developed curricula to include Afro-, Anglo- and Franco-Caribbean writers in university syllabai at UWI and in Britain and Ireland.

Dorothy King: head of the Microbiology Department of the medical faculty from 1973 to 2001.

Elsa Leo-Rhynie: Principal of the Mona campus.

William Arthur Lewis: economist, lecturer, author and joint winner of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics of 1979.

Albert Belville Lockhart: Consultant and Ophthalmologist, Recipient of the Jamaican Order of Merit, co-inventor of Canasol.

Notable alumni

The university has produced students who have excelled in a number of disciplines, such as the arts and sciences, business, politics, and sports. Notable alumni and faculty include three Nobel Laureates, 72 Rhodes Scholars, three Gates Cambridge Scholarship winners, one Emmy award winner, one Man Booker Prize winner, one American Book Award winner, multiple Commonwealth Short Story Prize winners, 18 current or former Caribbean Heads of Government, Olympic gold medallists, among other award winners. The university's cricket team previously participated in West Indian domestic cricket, but now participates as part of a Combined Campuses and Colleges team.

UWI graduates who are, or have been, heads of government:

Irfaan Ali, president of Guyana

Vance Amory, former premier of Nevis

Kenny Anthony, former prime minister of St. Lucia

Owen Arthur, former prime minister of Barbados

Dean Barrow, former prime minister of Belize

Heather Doram, activist and educator who designed Antigua and Barbuda's national costume

Denzil Douglas, former prime minister of St. Kitts & Nevis

Rufus Ewing, premier of the Turks and Caicos Islands

Bruce Golding, former prime minister of Jamaica

Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines

David A. Granger, president of Guyana

Timothy Harris, prime minister of St. Kitts & Nevis