Of the 19 hon­orary grad­uands cho­sen by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, six will re­ceive doc­tor­ates hon­oris causa in recog­ni­tion of a life­time of com­mit­ment to works that qual­i­fy as schol­ar­ly and valu­able to the Caribbean re­gion.Of that very se­lect six, four come from Trinidad and To­ba­go, the wor­thy ex­cep­tions be­ing nov­el­ist and lit­er­ary com­men­ta­tor Dr Lak­sh­mi Per­saud of Lon­don and Ian Ran­dle, an pi­o­neer­ing re­gion­al pub­lish­er from Ja­maica.The T&T hon­orary grad­uands are Rt Rev­erend Clive Ab­du­lah, for­mer Bish­op of the An­gli­can Dio­cese, Dr Theo­do­sius Ming Whi Poon-King, re­searcher and sci­en­tist, Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown, jour­nal­ist and Dr El­isha Tikas­ingh.

They join an im­pres­sive list of for­mer ho­n­our grad­uands con­ferred by the uni­ver­si­ty who cov­er a range of dis­ci­plines as well as so­cial in­ter­ven­tions and cul­tur­al pur­suits. The thread bind­ing them all is a clear uni­ty of pur­pose and ded­i­ca­tion to ap­ply­ing their knowl­edge in mean­ing­ful, so­cial­ly rel­e­vant ways.Af­ter 23 years as the first na­tion­al elect­ed Bish­op of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Rev Clive Ab­du­lah (LLD, hc) con­tin­ues to serve his Dio­cese. In 1976, Rev Ab­du­lah BA, STM, FCP, DMIN, DD, was key to the first vis­it of the An­gli­can Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil to the Caribbean and in 1978, suc­cess­ful­ly over­saw the vis­it of Arch­bish­op Desmond Tu­tu of South Africa.Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown (DLitt, hc) is a vet­er­an of the British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion and the pro­duc­er of sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al prize-win­ning pro­grammes.

Ms Sa­landy-Brown BA, PG Dip, DLitt, FR­SA, is a for­mer ed­i­tor of the Mel­rose Press in Lon­don, a Gov­er­nor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster and a For­mer Trustee of the Koestler Awards to sup­port and fund Arts in UK pris­ons.Dr Theo­do­sius Poon-King (DSc, hc) un­der­took the first na­tion­wide sur­vey of di­a­betes in T&T in 1961, pre­sent­ing the re­sults of his study in Swe­den in 1967 be­fore it was pub­lished in The Lancet.Dr Poon-King MD, BSc, FR­CP Edin FACP, found­ed the Strep­to­coc­cal Dis­ease Unit at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in 1966 to in­ves­ti­gate and con­trol re­cur­ring epi­demics of acute nephri­tis and acute rheumat­ic fever, vir­tu­al­ly erad­i­cat­ing in­stances of these ail­ments.Dr El­isha Tikas­ingh (DSc, hc) has been a not­ed con­trib­u­tor to the fields of en­to­mol­o­gy, par­a­sitol­ogy and vi­rol­o­gy over his 25-year ca­reer. He es­tab­lished the Par­a­sitol­ogy Unit at CAREC, the ref­er­ence cen­tre for lab­o­ra­to­ries in 19 coun­tries of the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean.

These na­tion­als, serv­ing the high­est ideals of their pro­fes­sions, have con­tributed ex­em­plary val­ue in so­cial in­ter­ven­tion, art and sci­ence of­fer­ing not on­ly ex­cel­lence but an ad­mirable com­mit­ment to this coun­try.Both sci­en­tists on this year's hon­oris causa lists are al­ready suc­cess­ful doc­tor­al can­di­dates, which un­der­lines the ra­tio­nale for a de­gree of­fered for the sake of ho­n­our, the ac­knowl­edge­ment of an out­put of work, usu­al­ly over a life­time, that is ground­ed in on­go­ing schol­ar­ship, in­no­va­tion or so­cial in­ter­ven­tion at a lev­el of qual­i­ty and en­gage­ment that de­serves no­tice and for­mal recog­ni­tion by the re­gion's old­est ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tion.These grad­uands of­fer wor­thy ex­am­ples of schol­ar­ship not as an end in it­self, but as a life­long call­ing.