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Belle Antoine wants a more inclusive UWI St Augustine

by

#meta[ag-author]
20230122170938
20230122

SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

New­ly in­duct­ed Prin­ci­pal of the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine wants the uni­ver­si­ty to ex­pand its reach from cam­pus to com­mu­ni­ty.

Speak­ing dur­ing her in­duc­tion cer­e­mo­ny on Sat­ur­day, Belle An­toine said this means tak­ing schol­ar­ships to the wider so­ci­ety, mak­ing the UWI more in­clu­sive and en­sur­ing the uni­ver­si­ty can bring pos­i­tive change to the coun­try and the re­gion.

“Im­por­tant­ly, the St. Au­gus­tine cam­pus has a key role to play in heal­ing our wound­ed so­ci­ety. I be­lieve in its pow­er as a uni­fy­ing force, in­vok­ing pa­tri­ot­ic con­scious­ness. The voice of the UWI St. Au­gus­tine must be neu­tral, con­fi­dent, but re­spect­ful, prob­ing, but at the same time re­as­sur­ing be­cause of the knowl­edge that with­in our UWI there re­sides com­pe­ten­cies and tal­ents that give hope for the fu­ture,” Belle An­toine said.

“We must do more. It is an ab­solute im­per­a­tive for us to bring sci­ence not just to pol­i­cy mak­ers, but to the peo­ple to have a re­al im­pact and help to save the plan­et and our­selves. The av­er­age cit­i­zen must iden­ti­fy with it, ex­pe­ri­ence it, be­lieve it,” she added.

Belle An­toine said as a child, she wit­nessed dis­crim­i­na­tion against her Black Grena­di­an moth­er, while her White fa­ther was treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly.

She said this may have sown the seed for her so­cial ac­tivism.

She wants the UWI to be a force for change in so­ci­ety, say­ing, “For me, the mean­ing of civ­il lib­er­ties, like equal­i­ty, re­sides in eco­nom­ic and so­cial rights en­shrined in ed­u­ca­tion, health, work, wa­ter and the en­vi­ron­ment. When the big build­ings and grandiose schemes are gone, what will be re­mem­bered is the col­lec­tive hu­man­is­tic in­tel­lec­tu­al force that re­sides in the UWI.”

To make the uni­ver­si­ty more in­clu­sive, Belle An­toine said she has asked her col­leagues to “re­con­sid­er and re­fash­ion” the UWI’s en­try re­quire­ments.

“In my frame of ed­u­ca­tion for true de­vel­op­ment, I pro­pose a more pro­gres­sive ap­proach to ex­pand­ing ac­cess to the un­der­served and for­got­ten. We have been in­sen­si­tive to the so­cio-eco­nom­ic and so­cio-cul­tur­al con­straints, even eth­nic and gen­der to ac­cess­ing ed­u­ca­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in all pro­fes­sions. Ad­mis­sions can no longer be based pure­ly on CAPE re­sults,” Belle An­toine said.

She said so­ci­ety’s fail­ure to en­sure there is eq­ui­ty and pro­tec­tion for the vul­ner­a­ble and mar­gin­al­ized is vis­i­ble, im­pact­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, crime, fam­i­lies and the econ­o­my.

Belle An­toine said there are sev­er­al part­ner­ships al­ready un­der­way to en­sure the UWI be­comes more in­clu­sive, in­clud­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of an ANSA McAL En­tre­pre­neur­ship Fund by the Sab­ga fam­i­ly. She said the uni­ver­si­ty is mov­ing ahead with plans to cre­ate a UWI Glob­al Off­shore School of Med­i­cine.

“Cre­at­ing an en­tre­pre­neur­ial cul­ture re­quires the cam­pus to be ag­ile, leav­ing be­hind old ways which have some­times failed us. Meet­ing the needs of stu­dents and prepar­ing them for this new, more com­plex world re­mains a top pri­or­i­ty. These are times when the very rel­e­vance of uni­ver­si­ty is be­ing chal­lenged,” she said.

Belle An­toine said the UWI’s pro­grammes need­ed to be “re­cal­i­brat­ed” to en­cour­age ac­tive and on-the-job learn­ing.

She said the uni­ver­si­ty al­so needs to ad­dress the fi­nan­cial hard­ships be­ing faced by many stu­dents.

“We must have sus­tain­able fees for the cam­pus if we are to sur­vive, but we must al­so pro­tect our stu­dents by speak­ing more di­rect­ly with banks, pri­vate sec­tor, in­creas­ing bur­saries and pro­mot­ing in­no­v­a­tive bond arrange­ments in ex­change for fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance and loan schemes. I al­so hope to have clos­er link­ages and com­mu­ni­ca­tions with gov­ern­ment to bet­ter un­der­stand and serve the na­tion­al agen­da,” she said.

Belle An­toine said while her tenure be­gan at a time of fi­nan­cial hard­ships, she was con­fi­dent that the UWI St Au­gus­tine would thrive.


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