In greeting you we celebrate your achievements and we welcome you formally to the academic traditions of higher education and scholarship. I don’t know how many of you will read T.S Elliot while you are here. All of you should. But I take this opportunity to share with you three short lines from Burnt Norton, one of his four Quartets, I quote:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past

In these lines, Elliot captures the essence of this very moment which we are experiencing here: because as we greet a new generation of students, we conjure up past, present and future together. It is an instant of change and continuity captured in the present moment. It reminds us that we are members of a fraternity with a distinguished history, a history that you in your time and I in mine have the opportunity to embellish during our presence at St. Augustine.

Educating undergraduates is important to the national and the regional society, this indeed is our principal activity and we do it well. Our undergraduate education is the finest in this part of the world, and the most highly qualified students end up here. But, the growth in the entire University, the growth in student numbers has significant institutional consequences, including those relating to management, quality, effectiveness and the very structure of relations within the learning society that we are seeking to build. While we will support you and help to create an environment of excellence for you, you yourself must ensure that you always create a culture of excellence for yourself inspite of the environment and circumstances around you.

A character in V.S. Naipaul’s novel A Bend in the River says bluntly and unemotionally, “The World is as it is; those who are nothing, who allow themselves to be nothing, have no place in it.” With the opportunity that you have been given here, please don’t allow yourself to be nothing in the world. Make yourself somebody. Make a difference. Think. Consider. Act. Achieve. Make a positive impact. Develop yourself, develop others, and make development happen wherever you are. Live with a psychology of abundance even in the face of limitations and deprivation. So even if your classes are large and not as comfortable as you would like or if other minor problems crop up let these things NOT cloud your vision for tomorrow nor stand in the way of your being the best that you can be.

This Matriculation ceremony is an important rite of passage, signifying the formal admission of the student into the academic community through the act of placing his name on the roll of members of the University. It also signifies one of the first steps taken by the student in the adult world. This is particularly important since you have been given the opportunity, as well as the obligation, to transform this world that is afflicted by so many shortcomings. It is generally accepted that a sound higher education system is a prerequisite for creating an economically successful, socially advanced, culturally literate and internationally conscious society in which meaningful democracy, transparency and liberalism can thrive. You do indeed have an opportunity that is denied to the overwhelming majority of the world’s population. Make this one of your best opportunities for learning, building friendships, clarification of perspectives and strengthening of positive values.

What you have is youth on your side: 60% of the student body is under 24 another 21 % is under 34. “O youth, the strength, of it, the faith, of it, the imagination, of it,” Joseph Conrad wrote. You have the freedom, unburdened at present by the many responsibilities of full adulthood, and you have the opportunity to make a lasting difference. You too can sing with Wordsworth “Bliss it was then to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!” We have older students too over 2000 of them are between 35 and 54 and more than a hundred are over 55. You are all welcome. As learners you are young in spirit as I am, and that is what matters.

Your presence here at The University of the West Indies means that you are numbered among the elite of this country and the world. The sky is the limit as far as the potential for achievement is concerned – but you must be determined to work and to learn and to do good. To be one of the elite does not mean that you develop an elitist outlook or that you look down upon others from above.

You have all excelled at high school and you have acquired the building blocks that will allow you to pursue higher education successfully. However, a different approach to learning, based on critical thinking, problem solving analysis and questioning as well as challenging received wisdom, must constitute the bedrock of your approach to learning. The great Victorian educator, Cardinal Newman, defined a university as “a place of concourse, whither students come from every quarter for every kind of knowledge.... It is the place where inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries are verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge.” This constant questioning, this emphasis on logic and reason, is critical if you are to succeed in this information-rich, rapidly evolving and constantly changing global system in which knowledge and the ability to use it to the maximum are the most important currency. It is also important if you are to play a constructive role in the wider society, challenging the norms and conventions that may hinder its development and sometimes questions are more critical than answers.

But the cultivation of a critical, erudite and sophisticated mind will be of little use if the education to which it is exposed is not grounded in solid character-building. That famous man of letters, Samuel Johnson, has reminded us that “Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.” I want to reiterate that knowledge, integrity and sound character are all intertwined and, combined with responsible citizenship and a sense of duty to your fellow citizens should be cornerstones of your lives.

As the American National Association of School Psychologists has pointed out, one of the foci of education for character-building includes the creation of just or moral communities, that is, communities that support the development of students’ moral reasoning and their commitment to the virtues that hold a community together, virtues such as trust, care, and responsibility. Other foci may include democratic values and civility and the creation of democratic or moral communities. I want to emphasize strongly that UWI, as the principal regional institution of higher learning, must recognize its obligation to nurture civic-minded individuals who have the potential to create a fair and just society. And you cannot rise to this challenge by missing classes, sleeping through lectures, passive note taking or being unquestioning, regurgitating sheep!

The University of the West Indies has had no choice but to analyze carefully its curriculum and its teaching methods to ensure that we provide a solid basis for character building. If we are to accomplish this task successfully, you have a role to play. I am therefore calling on you, the students, to help ensure that we do in fact keep our promise to implement this undertaking. This will require you to do something that is novel to many of you. It will require you to challenge your lecturers and professors and the way that you are taught. It will require you to ask them how they are meeting the obligation to provide an education that prepares you for the many challenges of the workplace or academia but also to live an ethical life.

I should advise you that every Department on this Campus has been asked to review, realign and renew its curriculum and training in teaching and learning techniques is on going on this Campus in keeping with the University wide emphasis on a quality learning environment.

How can we design and construct a society based on justice, equity, fairness and equality of opportunity if you are not equal to the task? How can we provide the human leadership required to meet the challenges of the information age and the globalize world if you are not adequately prepared? It is up to you to ensure that character is the touchstone for judging our peers and that morality informs the other yardsticks by which we measure the impact of what we do.

In three of four years, when you graduate, we hope that you will have imbibed the qualities that will enable you to create a just and civilized society based on the recognition of the worth of every individual. We expect that the experience of debate, discussion and critical thinking here at St. Augustine will strengthen your ability to engage in dialogue with those with who you are in contact and to create consensus. It is by engaging in constructive dialogue, by taking into account the views of your peers and associates, and by ensuring that decisions are taken on the basis of reason, that you will be able to exert the leadership that we expect you, as graduates of The University of the West Indies, to provide in your personal and professional lives. I call on you therefore to make the most of your time here, to imbibe the leadership skills that will enable you to perpetuate the Learning Society wherever you go so that knowledge, reason and rigorous analysis will form the basis of all your actions.

The thrust over the next year will be to strengthen the curriculum, to address existing gaps in the student support system, to enhance teaching and learning through the use of technology and by improving teaching methods and to build up research clusters for support. We will also be actively engaged in construction of student dormitories and laboratories and classrooms for the Sciences. The emphasis therefore will be on excellence and constant quality improvement, a culture and system supportive of learning, research and human development and achievement and construction geared towards meeting housing and teaching and learning needs.

To this end, a human resource audit will be constructed in each Faculty and budgets for Departments and Faculties will be determined on the basis of consultation around their operational plans for the next eighteen months. The idea is to be as transparent as possible in the allocation of resources and to be as fair as possible to all.

However no system is perfect, sometimes, even in spite of the best intentions. And, therefore, I ask you all to assist in the building of this institution in the spirit of cooperation and collaboration so that generations may continue to benefit.

To all students from 18 countries in the region and 39 worldwide including T&T again I bid you a warm welcome. May you thrive at The University of the West Indies and may all your days be bright, sunny days of light.”