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Sunday, July 13, 2025

New Costaatt Campus set to open in September

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20160712

The Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Costaatt) is set to open the doors of its newest cam­pus in Ch­agua­nas by Sep­tem­ber, en­abling it to ac­com­mo­date ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,250 more per­sons seek­ing ter­tiary lev­el ed­u­ca­tion.

In keep­ing with its man­date to pro­vide a bridge for per­sons de­sirous of ob­tain­ing such qual­i­fi­ca­tions, se­nior cam­pus of­fi­cials are work­ing on a 15-year de­vel­op­ment plan which will sup­port Gov­ern­ment's de­vel­op­ment agen­da and fac­tor in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate in T&T.

Ex­cit­ed over the im­pend­ing move to the first-ever pur­pose built cam­pus which sits on 30 acres in Ch­agua­nas, Costaatt pres­i­dent Dr Gillian Paul yes­ter­day de­scribed the joy of re­ceiv­ing the keys last Fri­day as a "won­der­ful" mo­ment for the staff and cur­rent en­roll­ment of 9,000 stu­dents.

Con­struct­ed at a cost of $185 mil­lion, Paul as­sured that the build­ing was com­plet­ed with­in time and un­der bud­get, a fact she be­lieves would au­gur well for the de­vel­op­ment of oth­er cam­pus­es.

De­clar­ing that the phys­i­cal premis­es were "sub­stan­tial­ly com­plete," she said there was still min­i­mal out­fit­ting work to be done.

Re­veal­ing that this move was part of Costaatt's mas­ter plan which had been on the cards for a very long time, Paul said the Ch­agua­nas cam­pus had been spe­cial­ly de­signed ac­cord­ing to the de­mands of the in­dus­try and what was ex­pect­ed from the pre­mier in­sti­tu­tion.

Speak­ing at a me­dia brief­ing at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, St Clair, yes­ter­day dur­ing which the 11-mem­ber board was pre­sent­ed with their in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment, Paul said they were pre­vi­ous­ly ham­pered in the ex­pan­sion of op­er­a­tions ow­ing to the lack of phys­i­cal space.

Heart­ened that they would now be able to re­spond pos­i­tive­ly to the ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing needs of many of the com­mu­ni­ties they serve, Paul stressed:

"One of the ma­jor pur­pos­es of the mas­ter plan is for us to be able to build the cam­pus­es that al­low us to pro­vide the train­ing to dri­ve eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas like To­ba­go and San­gre Grande, where Costaatt's role as a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege will be ad­dress­ing stu­dent per­for­mance at the sec­ondary lev­el and cre­at­ing that im­por­tant bridge that will al­low them to grow the econ­o­my."

Among the ar­eas of study to be fea­tured at the Ch­agua­nas Cam­pus will be agri­cul­ture, culi­nary arts, con­struc­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing and tourism.

There are Costaatt cam­pus­es in Port-of-Spain, El Do­ra­do, Trinci­ty, San­gre Grande, San Fer­nan­do and To­ba­go.

Pri­or to hand­ing out the let­ters of ap­point­ment, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia praised Paul and her team for the tremen­dous ef­forts over the past 15 years to en­sure per­sons who would not nor­mal­ly have been able to ac­cess ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion had an equal op­por­tu­ni­ty to ben­e­fit.

It was a sim­i­lar sen­ti­ment shared by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Lovell Fran­cis, and new­ly-ap­point­ed Costaatt chair­man, Shel­don Cyrus. No stranger to the post he once held, Cyrus said he was "hum­bled" by the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve the coun­try.

The new board, led by Cyrus, in­cludes vice-chair­man Dr Ri­ta Pem­ber­ton, along with di­rec­tors S Va­lerie Kel­sick, Ja­nine Knag­gs, San­jay Ba­hadoorins­gh, Clau­dine Shep­pard, Glenn Khan, Wal­da Dot­tin-Matthew, Jen­nifer Bou­cad-Blake, Kash­ka St Hillaire and Edgar Ju­lian Dun­can. See Page A9.

Text­book in­ves­ti­ga­tion on­go­ing

Mean­while, asked to pro­vide an up­date on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­leged sale of text­books dis­trib­uted un­der the min­istry's Text­book Rental Pro­gramme, Gar­cia sim­ply said it was on­go­ing.

Hop­ing to get an up­date from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon soon on where it had reached, Gar­cia said he had not re­ceived any re­ports up to yes­ter­day.

Sev­er­al weeks ago, he an­nounced text­books bear­ing school stamps were be­ing of­fered for sale by sec­ond-hand book­sellers in Port-of-Spain.


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