Trinida­di­an Wayne Fred­er­ick was vot­ed the 17th pres­i­dent of Howard Uni­ver­si­ty, in Wash­ing­ton, DC, Unit­ed States, on Mon­day by the uni­ver­si­ty's board of trustees af­ter be­ing unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ed by the Pres­i­den­tial Search Com­mit­tee (PSC).A grad­u­ate of St Mary's Col­lege, Wayne Fred­er­ick, MD, MBA, FACS, orig­i­nal­ly from Opal Gar­dens, Di­a­mond Vale, Diego Mar­tin, and grand­son of late at­tor­ney Charles Tyson, has served as the uni­ver­si­ty's in­ter­im pres­i­dent since last Oc­to­ber.

He en­rolled at Howard as a 16-year-old and earned a dual BSc/MD de­gree pro­gramme at 22, then went on to a sur­gi­cal res­i­den­cy at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal. He com­plet­ed a post-doc­tor­al re­search fel­low­ship and a sur­gi­cal on­col­o­gy fel­low­ship at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas MD An­der­son Can­cer Cen­tre, then earned an MBA de­gree from Howard's School of Busi­ness.

Now a re­spect­ed schol­ar, sur­geon, re­searcher and ad­min­is­tra­tor, Fred­er­ick pre­vi­ous­ly served as Howard's Provost and chief aca­d­e­m­ic of­fi­cer, charged with over­sight of Howard's 13 schools and col­leges, as well as its health sci­ences en­ter­prise.

Fred­er­ick's moth­er Frances Tyson-Fred­er­ick, pri­ma­ry care man­ag­er of the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, St George West, said yes­ter­day: "I feel hum­bled by my son's achieve­ment and I thank God for this bless­ing. He de­serves it be­cause he has been a good child. I trust in God and raised him to trust in God.

"He is a very good sur­geon and very good ad­min­is­tra­tor. When I was there for his grad­u­a­tion I kept say­ing to my­self, when he stood at the ros­trum to de­liv­er the speech as in­ter­im pres­i­dent, I kept say­ing to my­self, 'Is that my son?' as the tears welled up in my eyes."Wayne is go­ing to be a good pres­i­dent. He is al­so a good hus­band and fa­ther. I al­ways com­mu­ni­cate with my boys and com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween par­ent and child is crit­i­cal.

"We still have a lot of hope in Trinidad with young peo­ple like Wayne who are con­tribut­ing and will­ing to give back to this na­tion. I have three sons and nev­er had any kind of dif­fi­cul­ty in bring­ing them up. I know there is hope for young peo­ple in this won­der­ful na­tion."Fred­er­ick is quot­ed as say­ing in a re­lease from the uni­ver­si­ty: "I am deeply ho­n­oured to be se­lect­ed by the board of trustees to lead this great uni­ver­si­ty.

"Howard Uni­ver­si­ty has been an un­par­al­leled cat­a­lyst since its found­ing, open­ing doors and ex­pand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for un­told in­di­vid­u­als while dri­ving re­search, in­no­va­tion, ser­vice, and ex­cel­lence."On the cusp of our 150th an­niver­sary, I could not be more hum­bled to ac­cept the man­tle of lead­er­ship and em­brace the sa­cred trust of our mot­to, Truth and Ser­vice."

Ac­cord­ing to the uni­ver­si­ty re­lease, the PSC, chaired by Ver­non E Jor­dan, Jr, com­prised all the uni­ver­si­ty's stake­hold­er groups and in­clud­ed At­lanta may­or Kasim Reed and Cal­i­for­nia At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ka­mala D Har­ris.Af­ter con­duct­ing an ex­haus­tive na­tion­al search, we iden­ti­fied a fi­nal­ist pool, com­prised of both in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal can­di­dates. From this stel­lar group, Dr Fred­er­ick stood out as supreme­ly qual­i­fied, re­mark­ably mo­ti­vat­ed and unique­ly suit­ed to lead Howard Uni­ver­si­ty."

Al­so quot­ed in the re­lease, board chair­man Stacey J Mob­ley said that Fred­er­ick "brings in­sight, en­er­gy and the req­ui­site vi­sion to ad­vance the Cap­stone through col­lab­o­ra­tion and en­gage­ment."

Re­port­ing by Pe­ter Ray Blood