Dr Veron­i­ca Si­mon has been ap­point­ed Head, Stu­dent Ex­pe­ri­ence at The UWI Open Cam­pus ef­fec­tive Au­gust 1, 2021. She has been as­signed the task of con­cep­tu­al­is­ing and im­ple­ment­ing the op­er­a­tions of the new Stu­dent Vir­tu­al Concierge Unit (SVC­SU), lo­cat­ed in the Of­fice of the Prin­ci­pal. She has served The UWI in her sub­stan­tive role as Head of The UWI Open Cam­pus, Saint Lu­cia from 2007 and as Deputy Di­rec­tor (Ag) of the Open Cam­pus Coun­try Sites from 2019 to 2020.

Dur­ing her tenure, Dr Si­mon can be said to have sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­pand­ed the op­er­a­tions of the Open Cam­pus in Saint Lu­cia, by (among oth­er ini­tia­tives) in­tro­duc­ing new Cer­tifi­cate pro­grammes in The­atre Arts and Cre­ative Writ­ing; in­sti­tut­ing an­nu­al and oth­er reg­u­lar pub­lic lec­tures, e.g. The An­nu­al Pa­tri­cia Charles Memo­r­i­al Lec­ture and the reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty lec­ture se­ries; se­cur­ing a UN­ESCO grant for the es­tab­lish­ment of the Rod­er­ick Wal­cott Spe­cial Col­lec­tion at the Site li­brary; tak­ing the Site’s of­fer­ings to lo­ca­tions in Vieux Fort and Soufriere and cre­at­ing strate­gic al­liances with the Saint Lu­cia Folk Re­search Cen­tre, the Sir Arthur Lewis Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege, Mon­roe Col­lege, the Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fund (GEF) Small Grants Pro­gramme (SGP) in or­der to pre­serve the bi­en­ni­al Coun­try Con­fer­ences. A na­tive of Saint Lu­cia, she feels strong­ly that the pres­ence and con­tri­bu­tion of The UWI should be pal­pa­ble in every as­pect of the so­ci­ety.

Pri­or to her ad­min­is­tra­tive ser­vice to The UWI, Dr Si­mon held the po­si­tion of Co­or­di­na­tor of the De­part­ment of Con­tin­u­ing Ed­u­ca­tion at the Sir Arthur Lewis Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege (SAL­CC) in Saint Lu­cia from 2003 to 2007. Here she al­so held re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the two ex­ten­sion branch­es of the Col­lege in the South and the West of the is­land. Dur­ing her lead­er­ship of this de­part­ment, in ad­di­tion to ex­pand­ing the Col­lege’s As­so­ciate De­gree pro­gramme of­fer­ings to ma­ture stu­dents, she spear­head­ed the de­vel­op­ment of: Saint Lu­cia’s first Na­tion­al De­fen­sive Dri­ving course, first cer­ti­fied Na­tion­al Tour Guide Train­ing pro­gramme, first Na­tion­al taxi Dri­vers Train­ing pro­gramme and first Na­tion­al Vol­un­teer Train­ing pro­gramme. She was al­so a mem­ber of the SAL­CC’s Man­age­ment and Fi­nance Com­mit­tee, and its Aca­d­e­m­ic Board.

Be­fore be­com­ing a mem­ber of the SAL­CC’s se­nior ad­min­is­tra­tion, Dr Si­mon was a Lec­tur­er at the Di­vi­sion of Arts and Gen­er­al Stud­ies (DAS­GS) and the Di­vi­sion of Teacher Ed­u­ca­tion and Ed­u­ca­tion­al Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DTEEA) at the Sir Arthur Lewis Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege (SAL­CC) in Saint Lu­cia, for 14 years. Dur­ing this time, she was a lec­tur­er in the Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture and Lan­guage Com­mu­ni­ca­tion De­part­ments, as well as in the SAL­CC/UWI’s Bach­e­lor of Arts fran­chise pro­gramme at the DAS­GS.

When she moved to the Teacher Ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme at the DTEEA, where she trained teach­ers in Lan­guage Arts Method­ol­o­gy and served as the Head of the Lan­guage Arts De­part­ment, she si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly served as a part-time Tu­tor of Lan­guage and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion for The UWI School of Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies.

A mul­ti­ple grad­u­ate of The UWI, Dr Si­mon holds a BA (Hons) de­gree in Eng­lish from the Mona Cam­pus, an MPhil de­gree in Ed­u­ca­tion, and a PG Diplo­ma in Ed­u­ca­tion from the St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus. She al­so holds a PhD in Ed­u­ca­tion from The Uni­ver­si­ty of Sheffield. Her first for­ay in­to the field of Ed­u­ca­tion be­gan in 1976 when she taught for one year at the St. Joseph’s Con­vent Sec­ondary School in Saint Lu­cia, at a very young age, im­me­di­ate­ly on com­ple­tion of her ‘A’ Lev­els at the then Saint Lu­cia A Lev­el Col­lege (now part of the SAL­CC). How­ev­er, her ac­tu­al ca­reer can be said to have be­gun af­ter grad­u­at­ing with her first de­gree in 1980, when she taught Lit­er­a­ture and served for sev­en years as Sixth Form Dean at the St. Joseph’s Con­vent in San Fer­nan­do, Trinidad.

Dr Si­mon’s ser­vice to the Caribbean re­gion, par­tic­u­lar­ly the OECS, is ex­ten­sive. She has served as a cur­ricu­lum con­sul­tant to the OECS, pi­lot test­ing the OECS Har­monised Lan­guage Arts Cur­ricu­lum in Grena­da, Do­mini­ca, An­tigua and St. Vin­cent and lead­ing the re­lat­ed joint In­fant and Pri­ma­ry Text­book Re­view ex­er­cise. At the in­vi­ta­tion of the Am­bas­sador of Fin­land to the OECS, she led a del­e­ga­tion of OECS ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials on a Study Tour of Fin­land in 2013, lead­ing to rec­om­men­da­tions for changes in the ap­proach to ped­a­gogy in the sub-re­gion. Two years ear­li­er, she had been se­lect­ed by the Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al of Saint Lu­cia to ac­com­pa­ny Her Ex­cel­len­cy’s of­fi­cial del­e­ga­tion to Tai­wan as the ed­u­ca­tion ex­pert in the group. Re­gion­al­ly, she has served the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil in var­i­ous ca­pac­i­ties in­clud­ing Syl­labus De­vel­op­ment Pan­el mem­ber and Chief Ex­am­in­er of the CAPE Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies. She has made oth­er ma­jor con­tri­bu­tions to the re­gion via her roles as Lan­guage Arts Con­sul­tant to the CARI­COM/OAS/CI­DA Project on Achieve­ment Norms and Cur­ricu­lum De­vel­op­er in the cre­ation of mod­ules for the UWI/TLIU/EDF Sec­ondary Teacher Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Project.

In ad­di­tion to sev­er­al con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tions, pub­lic speech­es and work­shops, Dr Si­mon has de­signed learn­ing ma­te­ri­als for all age groups from pri­ma­ry to ter­tiary lev­el; has co-au­thored text­books in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Stud­ies and Lan­guage Arts and edit­ed two An­tholo­gies for chil­dren (Macmil­lan). She has served as Chair of the Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fa­cil­i­ty Small Grants Pro­gramme Na­tion­al Steer­ing Com­mit­tee in Saint Lu­cia and a mem­ber of the Re­gion­al Ad­vi­so­ry Group of the OECS/US­AID Ear­ly Learn­ers Pro­gramme, in ad­di­tion to vol­un­teer­ing her ser­vice and skills to sev­er­al na­tion­al bod­ies. In 2018, she re­ceived the UWIAA Pel­i­can Award for her ster­ling con­tri­bu­tion to ed­u­ca­tion in Saint Lu­cia.

Com­ment­ing on Dr Si­mon’s ap­point­ment, Dr Fran­cis O. Sev­erin, Prin­ci­pal (ad in­ter­im) of the Open Cam­pus, who is al­so Lead Cul­ture Stew­ard, dis­closed, “In light of her well-known care and ad­vo­ca­cy for stu­dents, and her years of ex­pe­ri­ence as a gen­uine ed­u­ca­tor and trained teacher, Dr Si­mon is em­i­nent­ly qual­i­fied to lead this trans­for­ma­tion­al stu­dent ex­pe­ri­ence and thrust which are cen­tral to our phi­los­o­phy of the stu­dent as the rai­son d'être of our Cam­pus. In ac­cord with the ‘You said, We did’ con­cept, I am ab­solute­ly pleased that we have a prac­ti­cal re­sponse to en­hanc­ing the learn­er ecol­o­gy – and all that it en­tails.”

The UWI Open Cam­pus ex­tends con­grat­u­la­tions to Dr Si­mon on her ap­point­ment and wish­es her suc­cess in this new role.