Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) South Cam­pus in Pe­nal-Debe will of­fi­cial­ly open for aca­d­e­m­ic pro­grammes in Au­gust 2025, near­ly a decade af­ter its sched­uled com­ple­tion.

Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor and Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine said, “The UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus is ex­cit­ed to work with the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go as a key de­vel­op­men­tal part­ner in its shared goals of strength­en­ing the ed­u­ca­tion, skills base and re­search im­per­a­tives of the coun­try. Max­imis­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of the South Cam­pus to en­sure that the coun­try’s pro­duc­tive re­sources are put to op­ti­mum use is an im­por­tant facet of these laud­able goals.”

Con­struc­tion of the cam­pus be­gan in 2012 with a $499 mil­lion bud­get and a com­ple­tion tar­get of 2014. The orig­i­nal plan was to house the Fac­ul­ty of Law.

In 2019, UWI said the site would in­stead be used by the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences. Then, in 2023, for­mer Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the cam­pus would be­come a med­ical school, par­tial­ly fund­ed by a pro­posed $330 mil­lion bond.

The South Cam­pus was used as a na­tion­al fa­cil­i­ty dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and lat­er re­turned to UWI. The uni­ver­si­ty says it has since car­ried out re­pairs and se­cu­ri­ty up­grades and re-eval­u­at­ed the cam­pus’s long-term pur­pose.

The site will now house UWI’s new­ly launched Glob­al School of Med­i­cine (GSM), which will cater main­ly to in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents pur­su­ing a Doc­tor of Med­i­cine (MD) de­gree. Ap­pli­ca­tions for the pro­gramme are open.

Oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic of­fer­ings from the Fac­ul­ties of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, Food and Agri­cul­ture, Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion, and Med­ical Sci­ences will al­so be de­liv­ered in blend­ed for­mats. UWI Roytec has signed a rental agree­ment to op­er­ate on-site.