Rachael Thomp­son-King

?Prop­er ad­min­is­tra­tion of sport is the ul­ti­mate goal of the new Ex­ec­u­tive Sport Man­age­ment Pro­gramme which was launched by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) on Fri­day at the of­fice of the cam­pus prin­ci­pal Prof Clement Sankat, pro vice chan­cel­lor, at UWI in St Au­gus­tine. UWI, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Fi­fa and the In­ter­na­tion­al Cen­tre for Sports Stud­ies (CIES), in­tro­duced the post­grad­u­ate diplo­ma in Sport Man­age­ment with the op­tion of pur­su­ing a UWI Mas­ter of Sci­ence de­gree in the same sub­ject area. The lat­ter is be­ing of­fered to stu­dents who have sur­passed the for­ma­tion for the diplo­ma. It is the first of this kind in the re­gion to be of­fered at ter­tiary lev­el and all present ex­pressed their ex­cite­ment in what is ex­pect­ed to bring T&T, if not the re­gion, on par with the rest of the sport­ing world.

The idea of the pro­gramme was man­i­fest­ed long be­fore the sign­ing of a mem­o­ran­dum of agree­ment in 2008, to un­der­take co-op­er­a­tive pro­grammes in the ar­eas of re­search, train­ing, ed­u­ca­tion and fa­cil­i­ties de­vel­op­ment in sport with­in the re­gion. "This project or as I de­scribe it, this ad­ven­ture start­ed sev­en years ago in Ar­genti­na," said Vin­cent Mon­nier, head of CIES In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions. "We have made the the­o­ries and con­cepts ap­plic­a­ble to the re­al world and we will not stop there. We will be con­stant­ly try­ing to im­prove the qual­i­ty of the pro­gramme." Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er, who was al­so present when Fi­fa pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter and and UWI vice ccha­n­cel­lor, Prof E Nigel Har­ris signed the mem­o­ran­dum, shared that there is a need to raise the stan­dard of ex­cel­lence in sport re­gion­al­ly. "To­day, this is the sum to­tal of the dis­cus­sions to en­hance the cred­i­bil­i­ty of and ed­u­ca­tion­al lev­el of sport ad­min­is­tra­tors in the re­gion.

"I am ex­cit­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ties which this pro­gramme will open as it will pro­duce ef­fec­tive lead­ers in sport man­age­ment which would ul­ti­mate­ly aid in the eco­nom­ic growth," said Warn­er. The pro­gramme was de­signed to cater for the needs of sport­ing gov­er­nance here and around the re­gion. It will equip stu­dents with the knowl­edge and skills to ex­e­cute prop­er sports man­age­ment im­per­a­tives. "For many years, the sport sec­tor in the Caribbean has ex­pe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­al man­age­ment chal­lenges which in turn have served to lim­it its over­all con­tri­bu­tion to de­vel­op­ment with­in the re­gion," said Prof Sankat. "This pro­gramme was tai­lored and adapt­ed to re­spond to the needs of this re­gion's sport ad­min­is­tra­tion, recog­nis­ing our unique cul­ture and en­vi­ron­ment."

Mar­ket­ing, fi­nance, law and events man­age­ment will be cov­ered by the diplo­ma, benifit­ting those who op­er­ate in man­age­r­i­al, ad­min­is­tra­tive and lead­er­ship ca­pac­i­ty in sports or­gan­istaions. With the in­clu­sion of the Fi­fa/CIES post­grad­u­ate pro­grammes, UWI has now be­come part of the in­ter­na­tion­al net­work as it is be­ing con­duct­ed by CIES at uni­ver­si­ties around the world in­clud­ing Italy, Switzer­land, Eng­land, South Africa, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Ar­genti­na, Egypt, Sene­gal, Pales­tine, Chile, Turkey and Ukraine. Al­so speak­ing at the launch were Mar­garet Richard­son, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion; Dr David Ram­per­sad, di­rec­tor of Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Of­fice at UWI, who chaired the event; di­rec­tor of Sport and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Iva Gloudon and stu­dent Bri­an David. David ex­pressed that he and his col­leagues were hap­py to be as­so­ci­at­ed with "pro­pelling sport man­age­ment to where it needs to be in T&T."