Harris
Professor Nigel Harris, vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies, has been in office for 26 months. Below we publish excerpts from an interview he did last week with Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer, about his experience in this challenging job.
EM: Professor Harris, it's been two years since you took up the job as vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies. Let me start by asking you whether the challenges that you have encountered have been in keeping with your expectations. Have they been as difficult or even more difficult than you had anticipated?
NH: Well, entering a new task, I never prejudge the level of challenge that I might encounter. I believe in our first interview (Moxam and Harris, 2004) one of the prominent issues at the time was that the Mona campus had suffered or anticipated getting a loss in funding. Indeed, their budget had been cut quite significantly and there was a sense of crisis with respect to the future of Mona and the future of the university. What has happened is really two-fold. One is that the task is a large and much more complex task in terms of managing the full regional university than I could have imagined. The second point to make is that as time has gone on during this two-year period although the actual availability of funding remains a challenge what we are increasingly able to do is to work with our governments and other sectors of the region to mitigate some of the fallout anticipated two years ago.
EM: I recall that during your installation address, you spoke of the importance of procuring more non-government funding. How successful have you been in that regard?
NH: Well, we are putting in place the structures that will enable us to actually access some of those funds. The way in which we have gone about it is to identify areas of regional need - disaster risk reduction, crime and justice and security, teacher education - boosting bio-technology and agriculture, working more closely with Caricom to implement the Single Market and Economy. These are all areas where our governments, regional entities and international institutions are interested in providing funding. So what we are doing is to put in place the people resources that can access those funds to enable us to address some real regional problems.
EM: The question of impressing upon private businesses the need to partner with the university and the returns that they can expect from that; how have you found that?
NH: Even prior to my coming - each of our major campuses had started forging partnerships with the private sector. At Mona, for instance, the Mona School of Business has a number of private sector individuals on their board who help guide the directions that they take. The private sector has been involved in giving a number of scholarships. We are just about to start a new strategic plan - 2007-2012, and we have gone to the private sector in Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago (campus territories) and asked them some questions: What do you think about the service that we have been providing? How can it be different? What do you see the university being, five, ten, fifteen years from now? How can we partner together to make that happen? In truth, some of what we hear is not always what we like to hear. Of course, the private sector is concerned that we are not turning out individuals with enough work-ready skills. There are issues too in respect of improving the communication skills of our graduates. At the same time, in terms of the things that we would want from the private sector, it would be in terms of investment in our students - scholarships, even if they are scholarships designed to assist in providing them with appropriate human capacity. We want them to partner with us by providing internships for students to get experience from the world of work, from working, not only in the private sector but in the community.
EM: Your own background is in science and research, and, referring to your inaugural address again, you stressed that that would be one of your priorities. How have you progressed in that regard?
NH: It's been an uphill struggle. Certainly, within the academe, there is an understanding that more has to be done with respect to math and Science. This is also recognised in the wider society, but the question is how to do it. One of the things that is evident is that even in the numbers of students that we are pulling out of high school with the CSEC and CAPE results - and CAPE is even worse - are so few that, even feeding into the university, the numbers are so tiny, And so one of the elements that we were trying to pursue was to enhance teaching in math and science. What I can tell you is that, at a meeting of all our education departments across the three campuses, we agreed, and plans are being put in place, to enhance the math and science teacher pool. More intermediate was the creation of some centres, and in this area, we've made some progress. The creation of the Disaster Risk Reduction Centre in fact draws on science and research, particularly utilising people with engineering and building skills, but also those in environmental sciences. I've also been working with our people in biotechnology in terms of creating greater collaboration across the university to build real capacity in biotechnology. Alternative energy is another area of interest.
In the shorter term, the thrust has been towards the creation of a Caribbean Research Funding Agency.
Now, some interesting things have taken place. For instance, in Trinidad & Tobago, they have created a research fund, albeit it's for their own scientists. There has also been an announcement within the last month that the Barbados government is going to move in the direction with their new strategic plan of investing up to 1.5 per cent of GDP in Research and Development. There is a grouping of Caribbean scientists that is actually working with Prime Minister Keith Mitchell (who has lead responsibility in Caricom for science) to continue this process of persuading governments to invest in scientific research.
EM: Is there a danger of the university becoming less regional, as each territory retreats into meeting its own perceived needs, and as fewer students from the campus territories go to the other campus territories to benefit from the integration experience?
NH: It is something we've got to worry about. The reality today is that the overwhelming majority of our students from any of the three large countries with campuses are going to their own campus. We are engaged in efforts to persuade students to move from campus to campus. In fact, well before my coming, in 1999, there was something called the Millennium Project, and our regional governments actually put funds in to enable students to travel between campuses. It turned out that very little of those funds were actually used. And when we drilled down, one of the issues we discovered was that we didn't partner with our students. My feeling is that if you want students to do something, get them as the partners. And so, we are revisiting that programme. We've now refashioned it; it's called the Caribbean Integration Programme, and we are going back to our governments and each of the campuses has actually created a fund to enable their students to travel to other campuses.
EM: But, here's an allied challenge: the question of declining social conditions; crime in particular. That has reared its ugly head, in no uncertain way, in Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago. And, as we are at the Mona campus, let me draw your attention to that growing slum, Mona Commons, just across from the gate of the University Hospital of the West Indies. Surely, that cannot continue to exist there!
NH: Well, I think that the issue of crime, and particularly, crime near to our campuses, is a turnoff for students who may want to come to Jamaica or go to Trinidad, because of the concerns in Trinidad, right now. The first point to make is that what was heart-warming was my discovery of the number of initiatives that the Mona students have taken to work in August Town and surrounding communities. I'm very encouraged by their sense of volunteerism and community and giving back; it's something we've got to build on.
EM: Even in the main campus territories, you have acknowledged that you are losing some of the 'brightest and best' to foreign universities, and most of those who go are not returning to their country of origin.
NH: Yes. We have got to work, first of all in our university for the brightest of our young people to see that the education given at UWI is equivalent to any they can get anywhere in the world.
EM: Are you doing that?
NH: We are working on that, and I would say that our degree of success varies, depending on the campus. For instance, at St. Augustine, 60 per cent of the national scholarship winners are actually coming to the UWI at St. Augustine. So, St. Augustine has been very attractive! Cave Hill also is having similar successes. But the trouble in Jamaica is that the choices are much larger for students and the recruitment by North American institutions is more aggressive than they are elsewhere in the Caribbean.
One of the problems is that our students learn too late about being accepted into the University of the West Indies. The CAPE results come out only three weeks before the university year begins. In the meantime the American universities have gone about accepting students and offering scholarships six months before. Students don't want to be left in limbo.
So, what we are doing, certainly in some faculties, is that, on the basis of the CSEC results and the Level One CAPE - we've done a study and we can predict who will do very well, and on that basis, we've now started to offer early admissions. There are some faculties that remain very competitive and where, I can tell you, we are still attracting the brightest and the best. Medicine is awfully competitive, so much so that even if we were to try to predict early we shouldn't admit more than about half of that class because that's so competitive. Law is similarly extremely competitive, and Engineering, at least for Trinidadian students, is also very difficult to get into. But I would like us in the social sciences and the sciences to be able to get some of our best students.
