University of the West Indies


The University of the West Indies, originally University College of the West Indies, is a public university system established to serve the higher education needs of the residents of 18 English-speaking countries and territories in the Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos Islands.
Each country is either a member of the Commonwealth of Nations or a British Overseas Territory.
The university has five major university centres: UWI Mona, UWI Cave Hill, UWI St. Augustine, UWI Five Islands, and the regional UWI Global Campus in the UWI-funding Caribbean nations. The UWI campus in Mona, Jamaica, served as the flagship campus and headquarters of the University of the West Indies.
The aim of the university is to help "unlock the potential for economic and cultural growth" in the West Indies, thus allowing improved regional autonomy. The university was originally instituted as an independent external college of the University of London.

History

The university was founded in 1948, on the recommendation of the Asquith Commission through its sub-committee on the West Indies, chaired by Sir James Irvine. The Asquith Commission had been established in 1943 to review the provision of higher education in the British colonies. Initially in a special relationship with the University of London, the then University College of the West Indies was seated at Mona, about five miles from Kingston, Jamaica. The university was based at Gibraltar Camp, used by evacuated Gibraltarians during the war.
Seeking to address a need for medical care, the first faculty established a medical school. The foundation stone for a hospital was added in 1949, and the University College Hospital of the West Indies opened in 1953. On 18 January 1953, Sir Winston Churchill visited the hospital and unveiled a plaque in recognition of the contribution made by the government of the United Kingdom to the hospital. The hospital was renamed the University Hospital of the West Indies in 1967 when the university gained full university status. In addition to patient care, the hospital facilitates research and teaching, along with the Medical Services department of the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies.
The University College achieved independent university status in 1962. The St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad, formerly the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, was established in 1960, followed by a school established along University Row, at the Deep Water Harbour of Barbados in 1963, later seated at the present Cave Hill Campus in 1967. The Open Campus, University Centres, headed by a Resident Tutor, were established in each of the other 13 contributing territories thereafter.
In 1950, Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, Queen Victoria's last surviving granddaughter, became the first Chancellor of the University College of the West Indies.
Sir William Arthur Lewis was the first Vice-Chancellor under the UWI's independent Charter. A native of St Lucia, he served as the first West Indian Principal of the UCWI from 1958 to 1960 and as Vice-Chancellor from 1960 to 1963. He was succeeded by Sir Philip Sherlock who served as Vice-Chancellor from 1963 to 1969. Sir Roy Marshall, a Barbadian, was the next Vice-Chancellor, serving from 1969 to 1974. He was succeeded in that year by Aston Zachariah Preston, a Jamaican, who died in office on 24 June 1986. The fifth Vice-Chancellor was Sir Alister McIntyre, who served from 1988 to 1998, followed by alumnus and Professor Emeritus Rex Nettleford, who served from 1998 to 2004. The current Vice-Chancellor is Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, who succeeded Professor E. Nigel Harris in May 2015.
The University of the West Indies Museum catalogues and exhibits some of the university's history.

University of the West Indies system

The UWI is the largest education provider in the Commonwealth Caribbean, with five constituent campuses:
ColourCampusCountryEstablished
MonaJamaica1948
St. AugustineTrinidad and Tobago1960
Cave HillBarbados1963
Global CampusMultiple 2007
Five IslandsAntigua and Barbuda2019

The following are the satellite campuses of the university system:
The other contributing countries are served by the Open Campus.

Proposed additions and Joint Ventures

There have been various proposals to add one or more campuses in other nations, including a campus at Hope, Grenada, Suzhou, China, the Johannesburg Institute for Global African Affairs, and collaboration with the University of Havana.

Articulation and franchised programmes

In addition to programmes offered directly by one of the faculties of the university, the UWI extends accessibility to its programmes through articulation agreements and franchise arrangements with regional institutions. In many of these arrangements, students are able to study in their home countries for the first one or two years before going to a landed campus for the third year. In the case of articulation agreements, the local institution develops its own programme and the UWI agrees to recognise it as equivalent to the first year or two of a specific UWI programme. In the case of a franchise programme, the local institution delivers exactly the programme as offered by UWI. This is usually the first year or two, but can be the full bachelor's degree on occasion.

Global initiatives

The University of the West Indies has initiated several international partnerships. In 2016, UWI and the Global Institute for Software Technology established the UWI-China Institute for Information Technology. Starting in the summer of 2018, students in the programme on the Cave Hill and Mona campuses will travel to Suzhou, China for two years to study software engineering and Mandarin.
The UWI-SUNY Center for Leadership and Sustainable Development was established in 2017 on SUNY's Empire State campus in Manhattan.
The centre is designed to assist the Commonwealth Caribbean in meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In addition to research and advocacy, plans were underway as of 2019 to offer a joint master's degree in sustainability and leadership.
In 2017, the University of Lagos and the UWI established the UNILAG-UWI Institute of African and Diaspora Studies. The institute conducts research and offers a master's degree in African and Diaspora Studies.
Also in 2017, UWI and the University of Johannesburg signed a memorandum of agreement to establish the Institute for Global Africa Affairs. The institute was launched in 2018 and will offer a joint master's degree in Global African Studies.
In 2019, Universidad de los Andes, commonly referred to as UNIANDES, and the UWI established the Strategic Alliance for Hemispheric Development. The Alliance will focus on the development of joint academic programmes and collaborative research projects.
In 2020, UWI and the University of Havana inked an agreement to jointly establish the Institute for the Sustainable Development of the Caribbean. UWI Mona will lead the initiative from the UWI side, with the deans of the Faculty of Science and Technology and the dean of the Faculty of Medical Sciences taking the lead.
In 2021 the Inter-American Development Bank decided to become a stakeholder of UWI under Cuban-American President Mauricio Claver-Carone as a public-private partnerships, PPP).

Faculties

The University of the West Indies is a multi-campus, international university with several faculties and schools, some replicated on all four physical main campuses. The Open Campus does not have a faculty structure. The distribution of the faculties is listed below.
Cave Hill CampusFive Islands CampusMona CampusSt. Augustine Campus
Humanities & EducationHumanities & EducationHumanities & EducationHumanities & Education
LawLawLaw
Medical SciencesHealth & Behavioural SciencesMedical SciencesMedical Sciences
Science & TechnologyScience, Computing, & Artificial IntelligenceScience & TechnologyScience & Technology
Social SciencesSocial SciencesSocial Sciences
SportSportSport
EngineeringEngineering
Food & Agriculture
Culture, [Creative and Performing Arts
Business & Management

A new Faculty of Culture, Creative and Performing Arts was approved to be established on 1 August 2020 at the Cave Hill Campus.

Faculty of Medical Sciences

Prior to the establishment of a medical school in the Caribbean, most physicians were trained in the United Kingdom, with a smaller group trained in the United States. This was costly, not attuned to the specific needs of the communities the doctors would serve, and risked the newly minted physicians remaining in the countries they trained in.
The Faculty of Medical Sciences was the first faculty to be established in the then University College. This was because of the pressing need for more doctors to treat conditions such as tuberculosis, yaws, tetanus, typhoid, infant malnutrition, and illnesses related to diarrhea. The establishment of medical schools in the colonies was replicated in the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Rhodesia, and Uganda. The inaugural entering class of 1948 consisted of 33 students from across the Caribbean, selected from 600–800 applicants. As the university college was then affiliated with the University of London, the medical curriculum reflected the University of London's curriculum with the addition of preventive and tropical medicine. Degrees were awarded under the University of London until 1962, reflecting London's role in administering the programme and providing the teaching staff. In addition to the standard five-year course, a pre-course science year was required for students without adequate preparation. The University Hospital of the West Indies, an acute tertiary hospital, provided the initial context for clinical education.
Expansion of the capacity of the Faculty followed several steps. In addition to population growth, the exodus of medical graduates to North America, never to return, exacerbated the need to increase the output of doctors. In the 1960s, it was possible to complete the clinical clerkship element of training in Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, as well as in Jamaica. In 1989, the medical school at the St. Augustine campus opened. However, it adopted a problem-based approach rather than the 'traditional' existing curriculum at the Mona school. Mona, which had previously implemented curricular reforms based on World Health Organization recommendations to emphasize community health promotion and protection, and St. Augustine had different medical school curricula, although the graduates took the same qualifying exams. Moreover, St. Augustine's Faculty of Medical Sciences included not just a school of medicine but also schools of dentistry, veterinary medicine, nursing, and pharmacy, necessitating some resource-sharing. In 2008, the clerkships in Barbados were fully developed into a medical school at the Cave Hill campus. Around the same time, the UWI School of Clinical Medicine and Research was established from an existing programme allowing clerkships to be undertaken in Nassau, under the direction of the St. Augustine campus. The School offers the final two years of the five-year programme.