Petrina Francis, Education Reporter
( left - right )MUNROE AND HALL
THE UNIVERSITY of the West Indies (UWI) is positioning the campus to become a national heritage site by the year 2010.
This declaration of the UWI as a heritage site is in keeping with long-term plans to transform the institution. In 2003, a task force was established to identify some of the challenges that the university was experiencing. A total of 70 recom-mendations were made and the university will be pumping $250 million into the transformation process this academic year.
"We are trying to position the campus as a place where children from schools and the Jamaican public can come and see the historical sites and the historical importance," said Professor Verene Shepherd, member of the transformation team. "We will earn some money from it (the site) but it is also a project of a kind of ancestral recuperation and recognition, and I think it is important for our identity."
The UWI campus is a former plantation and Professor Shepherd said some of the sites that have been identified include the aqueduct, the Mona Chapel, the site where Gibraltar camp was located, the area where indentured Chinese workers used to work near Irvine Hall, and the Mona and Papine sugar works.
Professor Shepherd told The Gleaner that the heritage committee, which is responsible for the project, is sourcing funds to construct 'monuments to ancestors'. On these monuments, at historical markers across the campus, the names of the last 500 enslaved people who lived on the Papine and Mona plantation will be inscribed.
TRANSFORMATION A NECESSITY
According to Professor Kenneth Hall, principal of the UWI, strategic transformation of the university is necessary, given the competition that the institution faces from other local and offshore universities.
"Transformation is not an option for us, it is an absolute necessity," he said.
One of the concerns that arose from the task force report was that students were not adequately socialised. To this end, the university has established a pilot project dubbed the first 'year experience', which is designed to enhance the learning skill of about 130 commuting students. This will cost the university about $20 million.
Professor Trevor Munroe, another transformation team member, said that by November the first worker satisfaction survey would be administered to members of staff. The survey will attempt to get staff views about their own performance and allow them to make their own recommendations.
The UWI is also seeking funds to establish a university town centre which will house a variety of shops, a multi-storey car park and a 4,000-seat multi-purpose facility, among other things.
