New­ly ap­point­ed Chan­cel­lor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), Dr Do­dridge D Miller, says pur­su­ing a glob­al strat­e­gy is nec­es­sary for the suc­cess of the in­sti­tu­tion and, by ex­ten­sion, its grad­u­ates.

Speak­ing Thurs­day, on day one of UWI’s 2024 grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies, Miller, the sev­enth chan­cel­lor of the in­sti­tu­tion, told grad­u­ates that the in­sti­tu­tion could not af­ford to view the world on­ly as a lo­cal or re­gion­al con­struct, even with its lim­it­ed re­sources.

“To do so will fail its grad­u­ates and ul­ti­mate­ly fail the re­gion. We must con­tin­ue to en­gage the rest of the world and par­tic­i­pate in im­por­tant re­search and con­ver­sa­tions on mat­ters of glob­al con­se­quence,” he ex­plained.

The Chan­cel­lor, who re­placed for­mer of­fice­hold­er Robert Bermudez in Au­gust, said once the uni­ver­si­ty con­tin­ued its glob­al think­ing ap­proach, it would con­tin­ue to pro­duce grad­u­ates with the aca­d­e­m­ic com­pe­tence and crit­i­cal and strate­gic think­ing to op­er­ate in any en­vi­ron­ment of their choos­ing.

“You, the mem­bers of the grad­u­at­ing class of 2024, are the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of this glob­al think­ing,” he said.

He told the grad­u­at­ing class that study­ing dur­ing a glob­al pan­dem­ic showed that they had the strength of char­ac­ter and abil­i­ty to over­come chal­lenges and their pres­ence yes­ter­day so­lid­i­fied their readi­ness to tack­le the world of work.

“Grad­u­at­ing from uni­ver­si­ty is a mas­sive ac­com­plish­ment, mark­ing the end of one chap­ter and the start of a thrilling new jour­ney. Ex­pect a whirl­wind of emo­tions, ex­cite­ment for the fu­ture, nos­tal­gia for the good times you’re leav­ing be­hind and maybe a bit of un­cer­tain­ty for what’s next. This tran­si­tion pe­ri­od can be filled with job hunt­ing, pos­si­bly mov­ing to a new coun­try or re­turn­ing to your home coun­try and ad­just­ing to a dif­fer­ent dai­ly rou­tine,” he said.

Miller said the grad­u­ates would be ap­ply­ing the knowl­edge and skills gained at UWI but al­so learn­ing to nav­i­gate the pro­fes­sion­al world.

How­ev­er, his ad­vice to them was to chal­lenge the “norm,” sim­i­lar to what UWI did with the change to the of­fi­cers’ re­galia (gowns) this year, af­ter sev­en and a half decades.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­gion­al uni­ver­si­ty, the new re­galia cel­e­brates the Caribbean iden­ti­ty and in­de­pen­dence from colo­nial times.

The re­design saw the gowns be­ing changed from their tra­di­tion­al red white and black to colours that cap­ture the vi­bran­cy of the re­gion and rep­re­sent each cam­pus.

“I hope this ini­tia­tive in­spires you and re-en­forces that you are part of a vi­brant her­itage that re­fused to ac­cept the sta­tus quo,” Miller said.

“Stay cu­ri­ous and con­tin­ue to seek knowl­edge and per­son­al growth.”