Raphael John-Lall

Dr Ian Saku­ra-Lemessy, the new di­rec­tor at Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, is a man with a vi­sion of mod­ernising the col­lege. Af­ter 25 years of liv­ing and teach­ing at the uni­ver­si­ty lev­el in the Unit­ed States, Saku­ra-Lemessy de­cid­ed to re­turn the land of his birth to make his con­tri­bu­tion. Two months in­to his three-year con­tract, his plans in­clude mod­ernising the cur­ricu­lum, mak­ing Cipri­ani Col­lege-which has 3,000 stu­dents-a cen­tre of aca­d­e­m­ic re­search in the re­gion. He wants Cipri­ani Col­lege to pro­duce top-class pro­fes­sion­als in fields such as in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions, hu­man re­source man­age­ment, cred­it union stud­ies and health and safe­ty prac­tice. "The stat­ed vi­sion of the board is to pro­vide qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion for work­ers and those of the work­ing-class, and to de­sign pro­grammes to help those may have been oth­er­wise pro­hib­it­ed from ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion. We al­so want to de­sign pro­grammes that strength­en the co-op­er­a­tive and cred­it union and al­so trade union move­ment," he said. Cipri­ani Col­lege of­fers pro­grammes from the cer­tifi­cate lev­el up to bach­e­lor of arts. "We want to pro­duce en­light­ened cit­i­zens who are more than work­ers and make it one of the pre­miere ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tions not on­ly in T&T, but in the Caribbean re­gion."

Ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion and the econ­o­my

He said Cipri­ani Col­lege must po­si­tion it­self to pro­duce stu­dents for the new econ­o­my T&T is try­ing to build.

"The ter­tiary and the over­all ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor must be­gin to presage the day when T&T's econ­o­my can no longer be sus­tained os­ten­si­bly on oil rev­enues. Is­sues of the green econ­o­my and school­ing de­mands of a 'green-col­lar mar­ket' are mat­ters Cipri­ani and oth­er ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions must ad­dress." He said Cipri­ani stu­dents have ex­celled and made their con­tri­bu­tion in so­ci­ety. "Our grad­u­ates are found through­out T&T, in the pri­vate sec­tor, in the ex­tract­ing in­dus­tries, like oil and gas, in the pub­lic sec­tor and through­out the pub­lic ser­vice. We are prob­a­bly the on­ly in­sti­tu­tion in this coun­try with a place­ment rate post-grad­u­a­tion some­where around 90 per cent. This is on the train­ing that is re­ceived here."

Cipri­ani Col­lege's bud­get

It takes be­tween $47 mil­lion and $50 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly to run Cipri­ani Col­lege. "You are look­ing at new con­struc­tion, the abil­i­ty of labs, the hir­ing of staff. In the past, the col­lege has un­der­gone a num­ber of in­fra­struc­tur­al en­hance­ments. The col­lege has grown over the years," he said. Min­is­ter of Labour, Er­rol McLeod has been very sup­port­ive of the col­lege, Saku­ra-Lemessy said. "Our line min­istry is the Min­istry of Labour and we have been able to sur­vive and we are still able to pro­vide a qual­i­ty ser­vice and qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion to the stu­dents who en­ter these walls. The Min­is­ter of Labour has been sup­port­ive and has made sure we get the types of funds we need to run here and keep the in­sti­tu­tion run­ning at lev­els the stu­dents ex­pect."

Re­search fa­cil­i­ty

One of Saku­ra-Lemessy first plans is to make Cipri­ani Col­lege a cen­tre of re­search. "I in­tend to make this in­sti­tu­tion more vis­i­ble and rel­e­vant in terms of re­search. We are on the verge of rolling out an on­line jour­nal and I've al­so got the com­mit­ment of some es­teemed pro­fes­sion­als from abroad and lo­cal­ly who will sort of serve as peer re­view­ers. This will be a peers re­view jour­nal where peo­ple sub­mit ar­ti­cles and it is re­viewed us­ing very strict aca­d­e­m­ic stan­dards," he said. He said Cipri­ani should have archives and re­search of the strug­gles of the work­ing-class in by­gone years. "An in­sti­tu­tion like Cipri­ani should be do­ing re­search of this long his­to­ry of work­ing-class strug­gle and so­cial ac­tivism that has been a trade­mark of the trade union move­ment and oth­er so­cial move­ments in the last 50 years or so. Any­one do­ing this type of re­search should come first to Cipri­ani. I want to cul­ti­vate that here." He al­so said that there are cer­tain types of re­search that Cipri­ani should be com­mis­sioned to. "The his­to­ry of the trade union move­ment, in­for­ma­tion on the cred­it unions. We have a CLR James Cen­tre where we want to have schol­ar­ly dis­course on the fu­ture of this coun­try."

Cur­ricu­lum de­liv­ery

Saku­ra-Lemessy said all in­sti­tu­tions uni­ver­sal­ly are strug­gling with the prob­lem of cur­ricu­lum de­liv­ery.

"We have to be con­stant­ly mod­ernising and mod­i­fy­ing our cur­ricu­lum to meet mar­ket de­mands. We are cog­nisant of the fact that in do­ing this, we don't want to sac­ri­fice qual­i­ty. Some ex­perts have re­ferred to what is known as the 'com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of ed­u­ca­tion,' where, in the neo-lib­er­al mar­ket­place, peo­ple are see­ing ed­u­ca­tion as the pro­duc­tion of cre­den­tials. But we want to in­tro­duce peo­ple to an en­rich­ing learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment." Saku­ra-Lemessy said da­ta from many in­ter­na­tion­al stud­ies show that stu­dents with crit­i­cal think­ing skills, com­put­er skills and oth­er core com­pe­ten­cy skills are more pro­duc­tive in the work­place. That's the type of stu­dent Saku­ra-Lemessy wants to turn out at Cipri­ani. "I have al­ready tak­en steps to strength­en the stake­hold­er and in­ter­nal re­search de­part­ment with the ad­di­tion of new staff in or­der to do more fea­si­bil­i­ty and mar­ket re­search." He drew on the ex­am­ple of the Unit­ed States, which, he said, is hav­ing its own prob­lems with its ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. "The US is clear­ly the world leader in terms of ac­cred­i­ta­tion and cur­ricu­lum de­liv­ery and on­line learn­ing, but look at their chal­lenges. They have un­em­ploy­ment in the area of 11 per cent to 12 per cent, a high­er ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that is in dire need of ref­or­ma­tion, ir­re­spec­tive of their long his­to­ry. So just imag­ine emerg­ing coun­tries like ours."

Ac­cred­i­ta­tion

Saku­ra-Lemessy, who has served as ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of ac­cred­i­ta­tion at Al­bany State Uni­ver­si­ty, Geor­gia, said Cipri­ani's pro­grammes are recog­nised lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. "Ac­cred­i­ta­tion is a vol­un­tary process. All in­sti­tu­tions that are Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) ap­proved must be reg­is­tered by the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil of T&T. It means the pro­grammes are ap­proved. The first in­sti­tu­tions that were looked at were: Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of T&T (Costatt), and Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT). We are in the next group, with Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean (USC). "We have met all the stan­dards for reg­is­tra­tion. We are on the verge of ac­quir­ing ac­cred­i­ta­tion sta­tus by next year. I want to make that clear we are a bach­e­lor's de­gree-grant­i­ng ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion." Once a stu­dent has com­plet­ed his or her de­gree at Cipri­ani, they can go on to any oth­er lo­cal or for­eign uni­ver­si­ty to pur­sue post-grad­u­ate stud­ies, he said. "The col­lege was re­cent­ly part of a con­sor­tium that signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing to en­sure that cer­tain cours­es can be trans­ferred to oth­er state-run ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tions, like UWI and UTT." He boast­ed that many Cipri­ani stu­dents have gone on to earn post-grad­u­ate de­grees in the US. "We are sub­ject to the same scruti­ny to get in the US as some­one from UWI."

ABOUT Dr Ian Saku­ra-Lemessy

At­tend­ed Na­pari­ma Col­lege and mi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States to pur­sue high­er ed­u­ca­tion in the late 1980s.

Bach­e­lor of Arts de­gree in po­lit­i­cal sci­ence, a Mas­ters and PhD in so­ci­ol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi. 2002 to 2005: Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, in­sti­tu­tion­al re­search, Flori­da Memo­r­i­al Uni­ver­si­ty. 2005 to 2007: Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, in­sti­tu­tion­al re­search and plan­ning, Al­bany State Uni­ver­si­ty, Flori­da. 2007 to 2011: Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, ac­cred­i­ta­tion, so­ci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, Al­bany State Uni­ver­si­ty. Pub­lished schol­ar­ly works in top aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nals, in­clud­ing Work and Oc­cu­pa­tions, The Jour­nal of African Amer­i­can Stud­ies, and Con­tem­po­rary So­ci­ol­o­gy and Per­spec­tives. Pre­sent­ed schol­ar­ly pa­pers at in­ter­na­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ences. He pre­sent­ed a pa­per on labour mar­ket in­equal­i­ty, recog­nised as one of the most cit­ed aca­d­e­m­ic ar­ti­cles in the US. Served as a mem­ber of US White House ini­tia­tive on His­tor­i­cal Black Col­leges and Uni­ver­si­ties (ICUF) Con­sor­tium and a re­view­er of sev­er­al lead­ing aca­d­e­m­ic pub­lish­ers.