Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Act­ing pres­i­dent and provost of the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) Dr Fazal Ali has de­nied that the uni­ver­si­ty al­lowed one stu­dent to cheat to gain a de­gree. Ali in­sist­ed that UTT can stand up to scruti­ny and that he would not con­done or en­cour­age wrong­do­ing by any stu­dent.

The stu­dent, who Ali re­fused to name, grad­u­at­ed on Thurs­day with a PhD in Process and Util­i­ties En­gi­neer­ing at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, Port-of-Spain. Ali was re­spond­ing to an ar­ti­cle pub­lished in the Sun­day Guardian on No­vem­ber 18, head­lined "UTT?stu­dent ac­cused of cheat­ing."

The ac­cu­sa­tion was lev­elled by Prof Dr James Speight, who is no longer at UTT. Speight said the stu­dent's ac­tions were ques­tion­able at the time of sub­mis­sion of the first draft of his the­sis, in­di­cat­ing that he spoke to the then provost, David Mc­Gaw, telling him about the stu­dent's con­duct re­gard­ing his work, but that got no at­ten­tion.

The ar­ti­cle fur­ther stat­ed that fol­low­ing Speight's com­plaints, for­mer vice-provost for post­grad­u­ate stud­ies Prof Adel Sharaf rec­om­mend­ed that a com­mit­tee be set up to ex­am­ine the con­cerns raised about the stu­dent. Sharaf, the ar­ti­cle had stat­ed, al­so pre­pared a 75-page fold­er which was sub­mit­ted to a for­mer act­ing pres­i­dent and oth­er uni­ver­si­ty of­fi­cials but they all ig­nored the sit­u­a­tion.

'No eth­i­cal mis­con­duct'

In the pres­ence of­Profs Zena Moore, Win­ston Suite,Dr Mar­i­an Wat­son, Dr Ejae John,Feona Lue Ping Wa and the stu­dent on Thurs­day, Ali said the facts con­tained in the ar­ti­cle cre­at­ed a neg­a­tive stereo­type of UTT. Speight, Ali said, had used all his in­tel­li­gence "to make the truth ob­scure."

In de­fend­ing UTT's name, Ali ad­mit­ted that con­cerns were raised in April of 2010 to then provost (Prof Michael Gray) who prompt­ly com­mis­sioned a five-mem­ber team of se­nior aca­d­e­m­ic and oth­er of­fi­cials of the uni­ver­si­ty to in­ves­ti­gate the al­le­ga­tions. In June 2010, Ali said, the team re­port­ed to Gray that there was no eth­i­cal mis­con­duct on the part of the stu­dent and the al­le­ga­tions were with­out foun­da­tion.

As a re­sult, Ali said, Sharaf, who al­leged that the sit­u­a­tion was ig­nored, wrote to the stu­dent in Au­gust 2010 ad­vis­ing him that Speight, who raised the con­cerns, had now con­firmed his will­ing­ness to con­tin­ue in his su­per­vi­so­ry role. "The stu­dent was ad­vised to con­tin­ue work­ing on his the­sis, with the same su­per­vi­sor mak­ing the rec­om­men­da­tion for the im­prove­ment of the work," Ali ex­plained.

'The stu­dent com­plied'

In Sep­tem­ber 2010, Ali said, the stu­dent com­plied with all the rec­om­men­da­tions made by Speight and sub­mit­ted the re­vised ver­sion to him. How­ev­er, Speight, ac­cord­ing to the UTT provost, re­fused to re­lease the the­sis for ex­am­i­na­tion.

Ali said by March of 2011, Sharaf, who felt that UTT had not prop­er­ly han­dled the mat­ter, recog­nised the change in at­ti­tude of Speight and di­rect­ed that the the­sis be re­viewed by UTT's Prof Al Taweel whose ex­per­tise lay in the same field of re­search be­ing con­duct­ed for the the­sis. Taweel deemed the the­sis to be an ac­cept­able lev­el, in keep­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards for the award of a PhD.

"There­fore, the the­sis was ex­am­ined in ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished ex­am­i­na­tion process­es for doc­tor­al de­grees," Ali point­ed out. Suite said UTT has a process for award­ing post­grad­u­ate de­grees, whichthey care­ful­ly fol­low. "The pic­ture paint­ed is that UTT has been giv­ing out de­grees by­vaps and with­out scruti­ny. This is not so. This stu­dent's work has been eval­u­at­ed just as all the oth­er awardees."

Suite ex­plained that the eval­u­a­tion in­volves an oral de­fence con­duct­ed by a pan­el of ex­am­in­ers, both in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal to UTT, with com­bined post­doc­tor­al ex­pe­ri­ence span­ning more than 50 years. Ali said if UTT was with­out a pa­per trail of facts, they would have aban­doned the stu­dent out­right.

He as­sured the pub­lic that the aca­d­e­m­ic stan­dards, process­es and rigour for the award of de­grees at UTT have at all times been un­com­pro­mised and will al­ways be in line with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices. "We will stand against any at­tack. I would go all out to de­fend UTT's name with my blood and life."