Michelle Loubon

New­ly-ap­point­ed Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Uni­ver­si­ties and Re­search In­sti­tutes of the Caribbean (UNI­CA), Prof E Nigel Har­ris, says St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus may con­cen­trate on ab­sorb­ing post-grad­u­ate stu­dents in­to its pro­grammes. The in­sti­tu­tion will al­so as­sist with aca­d­e­m­ic and staff de­vel­op­ment at Hait­ian uni­ver­si­ties. Har­ris, who is al­so vice-chan­cel­lor at UWI, made this com­ment dur­ing the UNI­CA post- AGM me­dia brief­ing in the Hi­bis­cus Lounge, Hilton Trinidad, St Ann's. Har­ris suc­ceeds Dr Ra­mon de la Torre, Pres­i­dent of UNI­CA and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Ri­co.

It took place af­ter a two-day con­fer­ence host­ed by UNI­CA at the In­sti­tute of Crit­i­cal Think­ing, UWI, which be­gan on Mon­day. Its theme was Part­ner­ing For Sus­tain­abil­i­ty: The Ur­gency of Haiti–with spe­cial em­pha­sis on Re­build­ing The Ter­tiary Sec­tor. Quizzed on the num­ber of stu­dents St Au­gus­tine would ab­sorb in­to its pro­grammes, Har­ris said: "I can't say. We have to be guid­ed by the Hait­ian link­ages. But we might con­cen­trate on post-grad­u­ate stu­dents or aca­d­e­m­ic and staff de­vel­op­ment." He al­so said they had to be guid­ed by the "am­bit of the task force," which would most def­i­nite­ly be led by Ja­maica's Dr Matthew Smith. To date, Har­ris said, "Hait­ian uni­ver­si­ties have been of­fered places from all over the world for hun­dreds of stu­dents." Hait­ian stu­dents could al­so re­ly up­on UNI­CA, too.

"There are a pret­ty large num­ber of uni­ver­si­ties with­in UNI­CA. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Ri­co has tak­en in sev­er­al stu­dents. We have uni­ver­si­ties in Colom­bia, Venezuela and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. UNI­CA has got a wealth of uni­ver­si­ties." On Mon­day, Prof Clement Sankat had said they had sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al for 75 stu­dents. Har­ris con­fessed to not hav­ing full sta­tis­tics, be­cause of the ex­tent of the de­struc­tion un­leashed by col­laps­ing build­ings dur­ing the earth­quake in Port-au-Prince on Jan­u­ary 12. But they would as­sist, based on the di­rec­tives is­sued by Hait­ian uni­ver­si­ties.

"We have to cap­ture an in­ven­to­ry and build on what ex­ists. We have to mo­bilise the sup­port of the uni­ver­si­ties to ad­dress some of the re­al chal­lenges. We have to be guid­ed by the lead­er­ship of Hait­ian uni­ver­si­ties," added Har­ris. In a press re­lease, Charge d' Af­faires of the Em­bassy of the Re­pub­lic of Haiti, HE Max JC Alce, had ad­vised: "40 uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sors and 1,300 teach­ers are dead; 4,000 stu­dents have died, 13 uni­ver­si­ty fac­ul­ty build­ings have col­lapsed, 2,394 schools have been de­stroyed." He had re­lat­ed these de­tails at a meet­ing host­ed by UNI­CA on Feb­ru­ary 24 in Ja­maica.