Sha­had Ali

Sha­had Ali

Se­nior Press Pass Cor­re­spon­dent

"We promise to de­liv­er an ex­cel­lent ser­vice, at a prof­it if we can, at a loss if we must; but al­ways ex­cel­lence." This was the mantra that was re­peat­ed at the School of Busi­ness and Com­put­er Sci­ence's (SBCS) 25th An­niver­sary Staff Ap­pre­ci­a­tion Brunch held at the Champ Fleurs Cam­pus on Mon­day 13th Feb­ru­ary.The car park at SBCS was packed with tents adorned with pur­ple, pink and blue fab­ric. The at­mos­phere of the event was one of ju­bi­la­tion as the staff mem­bers them­selves opened the for­mal pro­ceed­ings with small anec­dotes of their ex­pe­ri­ence at the aca­d­e­m­ic es­tab­lish­ment over the past 25 years. Many praised Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Dr. Robin Maraj for his hard work and in­valu­able con­tri­bu­tions to what the staff mem­bers have de­scribed as a pre­miere aca­d­e­m­ic or­gan­i­sa­tion. Dr. Maraj was de­scribed as an in­de­pen­dent thinker who re­fus­es to con­form to the ac­cept­ed views on a sub­ject. Ben­nel Pad­more, who served SBCS for 20 years, de­scribed Dr. Maraj as an in­di­vid­ual who nev­er missed a beat with­in his or­gan­i­sa­tion. She re­lat­ed to the staff mem­bers present that he played many roles to make SBCS what it is to­day, from ac­coun­tant, to lec­tur­er and even help­ing out with con­struc­tion, Dr. Robin Maraj did it all. The staff al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to boast of the ex­pan­sions that SCBS has made over the past 25 years. To­day they take pride in hav­ing mod­ern tech­no­log­i­cal equip­ment, and ed­u­cat­ing larg­er class­es for a se­ries of diplo­ma and de­gree pro­grammes. The staff al­so showed off some cre­ative tal­ent at the brunch, with a staff mem­ber de­liv­er­ing a touch­ing ren­di­tion of Kel­ly Clark­son's 'A mo­ment like this'. The song meld­ed per­fect­ly with the sen­ti­ments of the event; stat­ing that many peo­ple wait a life­time for a mo­ment of a 25-year an­niver­sary.

The man of the day, Dr. Robin Maraj, was in­tro­duced by his wife and pro­fes­sion­al part­ner Mrs. Vi­jaya Maraj, who spoke very high­ly of her hus­band. Mrs. Maraj cur­rent­ly stands as the Di­rec­tor of the Cor­po­rate Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre at SBCS. Dr. Maraj al­so wast­ed no time dur­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of his speech to thank his wife for all the sup­port that she has giv­en him through­out 25 years of ded­i­ca­tion. These years, as Dr. Maraj ex­plained, were 25 long years for SBCS. Dur­ing the course of his speech, he took his staff mem­bers down mem­o­ry lane over 20 years ago, when SBCS was a one room build­ing in San Juan filled with PC com­put­ers. It was quite shock­ing to know that the bizarre yet cre­ative ar­chi­tec­tur­al de­sign of the mod­ern day SBCS build­ings was a one room school that housed no more than a score of stu­dents at a time. Dr Maraj went through each decade with his val­ued staff mem­bers. He spoke about the ac­qui­si­tion of the land for the Champ Fleurs Cam­pus, stat­ing that he won it through an auc­tion bid of $200,000. "In those days that was like 20 mil­lion dol­lars" he said jok­ing­ly mak­ing a satir­i­cal com­ment on the con­tro­ver­sial head­lines that ran with re­spect to gate funds and his school. He made sure to clar­i­fy that the is­sue was not a mat­ter of mon­ey, but an is­sue of what is right and what is wrong. Spir­its didn't damp­en af­ter such com­ments as Dr. Maraj and his wife were sur­prised with a cake that cel­e­brat­ed their 25-year-old ed­u­ca­tion­al es­tab­lish­ment. In­deed, the day was well spent and showed just how much one can achieve through hard work and ded­i­ca­tion. Con­grat­u­la­tions to Dr. Maraj and the SBCS fam­i­ly.