Two leaders from the CL Financial Group of Companies, one of the region’s largest and most diversified conglomerates, engaged an entire faculty of the University of the West Indies in a discussion of issues related to Science and Agriculture. The faculty was, of course, the Faculty of Science and Agriculture at UWI, St. Augustine and the CL Financial corporate leaders were none other than Mr. Lawrence Duprey himself, Executive Chairman of the group and Mr. Ram Ramesh, Managing Director of Caribbean Money Market Brokers (CMMB), a leading player in investment, securities and financial instruments and a subsidiary of the group financial portfolio of companies.

Mr. Duprey, who owns a large acreage of cocoa estates and says he “has cocoa in his blood,” processes Trinidad cocoa in France and exports it under the Tamana label as a super premium brand of chocolate to Japan. He identified two projects in which his company is interested and invited members from the School of Agriculture with the relevant expertise to partner with him in those projects. Mr. Duprey said that the Government of Trinidad and Tobago had on successive occasions over time failed to understand the value of its agricultural assets and the extent to which scientific developments had created the power to leverage these assets into new products and brands that could be successful in the global marketplace. He felt that many mistakes had been made with the sugar cane industry for instance. He was also of the view that the opinion leaders in the country as a whole were not as fully appreciative as they needed to be, of the role of agriculture in the development process and that had led, generally, to underdevelopment and undermining of the region’s agricultural potential.

Mr. Duprey also made the case for better teaching of Mathematics and for strengthening of Mathematics teaching at primary and secondary school levels in order to channel more students not only into the study of Mathematics but also as a support for effective study of the Science subjects as well.

Mr. Duprey took questions from the floor and interacted with faculty members and staff following his presentation. As a parting gift he asked the Department of Computer Science to determine the specifications of a super computer appropriate to its needs and he would leverage resources to make a gift of such a computer to the campus. He felt strongly that research work on the campus should not be limited by undercapacity in computer power.

Caribbean Money Market Brokers (CMMB) Managing Director Ram Ramesh told members of the Faculty of Science and Agriculture the story of how Lawrence Duprey became not only an entrepreneur and investor in Oman but a broker of knowledge about the Methanol industry. The CL Financial Group is one of the largest players in Methanol in the world. “It was a case of taking coals to Newcastle,” said Mr. Ramesh.

“Mr. Duprey succeeded in putting together a global team, a significant proportion of whose members came from Trinidad and Tobago, to basically design and develop a methanol project in Oman, and offer a range of consultancy services to this energy rich country. The plant in Oman has become the largest in the world and CL Financial has a stake in it.”

Mr. Ramesh went on however, to talk about what his company looks for when it recruits university graduates. CMMB currently recruits about six UWI graduates annually largely in finance and management but in other fields as well. He identified three critical requirements: problem solving skills, the ability to connect the dots and the ability to apply what you know to the creation of solutions or to innovative uses. He emphasised that to get this kind of graduate emphasis on critical thinking skills, systems thinking approaches and case study exercises were absolutely necessary in the classroom. He also stressed the need to include decision-making skills in the curriculum.

Mr. Ramesh pledged to support the Mathematics project which supports effective teaching of Maths at primary and secondary level by reaching out to teachers. The project was initiated last year by Professor Balswaroop Bhatt, former Head of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science.