(The UWI) — New­ly in­duct­ed Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor and Prin­ci­pal of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies at Cave Hill, Pro­fes­sor Clive Lan­dis has pledged to draw on The UWI’s strate­gic vi­sion of dri­ving Caribbean de­vel­op­ment to po­si­tion the Cave Hill Cam­pus as a pil­lar of in­no­va­tion in Bar­ba­dos.

Pro­fes­sor Lan­dis out­lined these plans dur­ing his in­au­gur­al ad­dress at the cer­e­mo­ny for his in­duc­tion as the sixth Prin­ci­pal of the Cave Hill Cam­pus on Sat­ur­day, No­vem­ber 13, 2021.

“In my vi­sion for the Cave Hill Cam­pus, I in­tend to tap in­to this burn­ing fire to serve the re­gion, to open new av­enues, through which staff and stu­dents can find mean­ing and ful­fil­ment through ser­vice in the com­mu­ni­ty,” Pro­fes­sor Lan­dis stat­ed.

The pro­lif­ic sci­en­tif­ic re­searcher—who has served The UWI for al­most two decades, in­clud­ing in vary­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive po­si­tions—sig­nalled a will­ing­ness to work in part­ner­ship for the ad­vance­ment of the Cam­pus. He in­di­cat­ed his readi­ness to en­gage the Gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos and the pri­vate sec­tor for the de­vel­op­ment of in­no­va­tion sys­tems to help trans­form the in­stinc­tive cre­ativ­i­ty of Caribbean peo­ple from the spark of an idea to a com­mer­cial­ly vi­able prod­uct. 

Pro­fes­sor Lan­dis said the di­ver­si­ty of ex­per­tise at each UWI cam­pus had bol­stered the re­silience of the in­sti­tu­tion dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, there­by al­low­ing the con­tin­u­ous de­liv­ery of ser­vice to stu­dents, while pro­vid­ing a re­gion­al re­search plat­form to sup­port pol­i­cy­mak­ers for ev­i­dence-based de­ci­sions.

On the is­sue of com­mu­ni­ty out­reach, he said there would be an in­crease in the years ahead as he laud­ed the high­ly suc­cess­ful “Seek and Save” ini­tia­tive, which in­volved over 400 stu­dents col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Min­istry of Health to vis­it Bar­ba­di­an house­holds in a bid to con­tain the COVID-19 out­break.

The Prin­ci­pal an­nounced a UWI Cave Hill Africa Health Strat­e­gy to take ad­van­tage of growth op­por­tu­ni­ties for South-South col­lab­o­ra­tion with the African con­ti­nent in ar­eas of med­ical ed­u­ca­tion, health eco­nom­ics, health dis­par­i­ties re­search and eth­i­cal biobank­ing. He not­ed that Cave Hill’s in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty as­sets in health ed­u­ca­tion and re­search ser­vices were ide­al­ly placed for trade with part­ner in­sti­tu­tions to gar­ner health ben­e­fits for peo­ples of the African di­as­po­ra.

Sat­ur­day’s In­duc­tion Cer­e­mo­ny, which had a scaled back in-per­son at­ten­dance be­cause of COVID-19 pub­lic health re­stric­tions, nonethe­less ex­hib­it­ed the usu­al pomp and cir­cum­stance as­so­ci­at­ed with the oc­ca­sion. Dur­ing the two-hour event, the Prin­ci­pal was praised for his wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence, vi­sion­ary lead­er­ship, ex­ten­sive re­search, and prin­ci­pled stance.

Among the more than two dozen peo­ple who paid trib­ute were fel­low prin­ci­pals of the oth­er four UWI Cam­pus­es, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of na­tion­al and re­gion­al agen­cies, UWI staff as well as cur­rent and for­mer stu­dents.

In his speech de­liv­ered af­ter the tra­di­tion­al rob­ing of the new Prin­ci­pal, Vice-Chan­cel­lor of The UWI, Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les said Pro­fes­sor Lan­dis has not on­ly demon­strat­ed in­tel­lect but in­tegri­ty of pur­pose and cit­i­zen­ship with­in The UWI.

“We are proud of his record of achieve­ment and com­mit­ment. We re­spect him, we ad­mire him, and we salute him on this day. He is a man of the mo­ment, there is no doubt. He pos­sess­es all the rel­e­vant skillsets to lead this dis­tin­guished Cam­pus. Not on­ly is he com­pe­tent, but his con­scious­ness will en­able his dra­mat­ic im­pact up­on the lead­er­ship of the Cam­pus and this Uni­ver­si­ty. I am con­fi­dent that Cave Hill will con­tin­ue to thrive un­der his lead­er­ship be­cause we know of his judg­ment, we know of his tem­pera­ment and, crit­i­cal­ly, we are com­fort­ed by his im­pulse for so­cial jus­tice.”

Speak­ing on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Tech­no­log­i­cal and Vo­ca­tion­al Train­ing, the Ho­n­ourable San­tia Brad­shaw ex­pressed hope that the new Prin­ci­pal would con­tin­ue the Cam­pus’ fo­cus on train­ing, in­no­va­tion, and en­tre­pre­neur­ship nec­es­sary for post-COVID re­cov­ery in the re­gion. She said the gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the in­vest­ment in high­er ed­u­ca­tion de­spite com­pe­ti­tion for scarce fi­nan­cial re­sources.

“Link­ages formed be­tween The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and the Gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos have not on­ly sig­nif­i­cant­ly ad­vanced the is­land’s ed­u­ca­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, but al­so the eco­nom­ic and so­cial well-be­ing of Bar­ba­dos,” she added.