Michelle Loubon

Vis­it­ing Mo­roc­can ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion ex­pert Dr Jamil Sal­mi says UWI should reach out to its French and Span­ish speak­ing neigh­bours like Haiti, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Cu­ba to tru­ly es­tab­lish the aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tion's rep­u­ta­tion as a re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al gi­ant.Sal­mi made this com­ment dur­ing a Dis­tin­guished Open lec­ture at Daa­ga Au­di­to­ri­um, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus last week Wednes­day. Its theme was The Chal­lenge of Es­tab­lish­ing World-Class Uni­ver­si­ties.

Sal­mi, who lives in Bo­go­ta, Colom­bia, had first-hand knowl­edge about the crush­ing pover­ty ex­pe­ri­enced by Haitians since he worked on the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor dur­ing his stint as a World Bank of­fi­cial in the late 1990s.He al­so vis­it­ed Haiti in the af­ter­math of the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake which de­stroyed Port-au-Prince on Jan­u­ary 12, 2010. The epic tragedy claimed about 300,000 lives and ren­dered mil­lions home­less, forc­ing them to seek refuge in tent cities.

Sal­mi said: "UWI can do more if it reach­es out to Span­ish and French peo­ple in the Caribbean like Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Haiti and Cu­ba. The Caribbean has a va­ri­ety of cul­tures and lan­guages and I think if UWI wants to be a re­gion­al uni­ver­si­ty it should reach out to Haiti since it is in such a poor state and needs all the help it can get. Much can be done if we reach out to Span­ish and French peo­ple in the Caribbean." He felt com­mun­ci­a­tion bar­ri­ers should be re­moved to fa­cil­i­ate prop­er col­lab­o­ra­tion.

He said: "I think UWI should rep­re­sent all these cul­tures. One of the best com­pe­ten­cies one can ac­quire in life is lan­guage. It can open doors and en­cour­age peo­ple to reach out to each oth­er. I think it is some­thing UWI could give to its stu­dents as a very im­por­tant part of the ed­u­ca­tion."Sal­mi cit­ed the ex­am­ple of Ko­rea where par­ents are hav­ing surgery per­formed on their chil­drens' mouths to im­prove their Eng­lish lan­guage pro­nun­ci­a­tion.

To date, in Sep­tem­ber 2010, UWI reached out to 41 en­gi­neer­ing stu­dents and 12 agron­o­my stu­dents and they were able to re­sume their stud­ies at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus. Spear­head­ing the project was Prof Clement Im­bert, deputy dean un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dent af­fairs/pro­fes­sor of ma­te­ri­als and man­u­fac­tur­ing.

About Sal­mi

For the past 20 years, Sal­mi has pro­vid­ed pol­i­cy ad­vice on ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion de­vel­op­ment, fi­nanc­ing re­forms and strate­gic plan­ning to gov­ern­ments and uni­ver­si­ty lead­ers in more than 80 coun­tries.He is a mem­ber of the in­ter­na­tion­al ad­vi­so­ry board of sev­er­al uni­ver­si­ties in Eu­rope, Latin Amer­i­ca and Asia. He is al­so a mem­ber of the Ad­vi­so­ry Net­work of the UK Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion for High­er Ed­u­ca­tion and the Ed­i­to­r­i­al Com­mit­tee of the OECD's Jour­nal of High­er Ed­u­ca­tion Man­age­ment and Pol­i­cy.