The purpose of UWI Today is to keep you more informed about what the University of the West Indies is doing and thinking.

Vice Chancellor Emeritus Professor Rex Nettleford often said that the University of the West Indies and the significant contribution that it makes to the Caribbean region is one of the world’s best kept secrets. Our new Vice Chancellor, due to be formally installed at St. Augustine campus on February 26, 2005, has been making the case recently for the University of the West Indies to engage its stakeholders seriously. When I became Principal of the St. Augustine campus in 2001, the buzz in my ears was that the University still operated as if it were an Ivory Tower and that it was largely divorced from what the rest of the society really cared about. So when the time came for my Inaugural Address I spoke about the University as a Learning Community and about its obligations to build a wider Learning Society. With the help of my campus colleagues the University has been on that track ever since.

We have done much to bridge the gap between the University and its stakeholders over the last three and a half years. Many of our academics at UWI are involved with the Government of Trinidad and Tobago in the Vision 2020 exercise or directly involved in policy related work. Many corporations and companies have worked with us to fund scholarships, to develop collaborative projects and programmes, or to support teaching and research.

The media have played a major role as brokers of information and through the professional approach of many in the journalistic fraternity, the public has been kept abreast, of what is happening at the University. Some of our projects and programmes also involve healthy collaboration with NGO’s and, citizens on the whole, have been writing to us or calling on the phone to make suggestions about what more we might do or what we could do better. Moreover through our Marketing and Communications Department we have been publishing a quarterly, St. Augustine News (STAN), which covers events and developments on the Campus four times a year and this is distributed to a wide cross section of regional opinion leaders.

We see our audience as the general public in an age of lifelong learning when anyone at anytime in his/her life might wish to be a student; parents of students who attend the University; the corporate sector who are the employers of our graduates and potential benefactors of UWI; the government sector as funders, employers and policy makers; and all citizens generally who, as tax payers, have an interest in what takes place at a public University. And of course, we expect our students, staff and faculty to have enough of an interest in UWI Today to contribute actively to the success of the newspaper.

UWI Today therefore is conceived, as a vehicle of communication by the University, to keep the public informed on an on-going basis about the work, events, action, taking place at the university. On the other hand it is educational in intent because it will focus on ideas and issues.

UWI Today will consist of news, views, interviews and photos and will highlight on- going research, publications, achievers and achievements, regional and international collaboration, excellence in teaching and research and issues and ideas about education and related matters.

We urge you all, to partner with us in this worthwhile enterprise .The University of the West Indies is your University.

We wish our Editor, Indrani Bachan-Persad and her team, all success with this new venture.

Bhoendradatt Tewarie
Pro Vice Chancellor & Campus Principal