Ram­pant fir­ings of pro­fes­sors and oth­er staff have de­plet­ed aca­d­e­m­ic re­sources at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), with no in­di­ca­tion of re­place­ments. Close to 85 mem­bers of staff-from house­keep­er to vice-provost-were ter­mi­nat­ed be­tween May 2011 and Feb­ru­ary this year.

Pro­fes­sors who were con­tract­ed from oth­er coun­tries were told they had to re­turn home or face the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion. Some of the ter­mi­nat­ed fac­ul­ty mem­bers claimed they were be­ing vic­timised be­cause they were hired by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Sev­er­al of them were con­tact­ed this week but re­quest­ed anonymi­ty as they spoke out against what they be­lieved were un­fair prac­tices at the uni­ver­si­ty. One said: "When high­ly qual­i­fied peo­ple in the fac­ul­ties are fired...peo­ple who have high aca­d­e­m­ic stand­ings from for­eign uni­ver­si­ties and proven track records, what will even­tu­al­ly hap­pen is that UTT will face se­ri­ous reper­cus­sions, which will lead to a col­lapse."

An­oth­er said re­search stu­dents in the MPhil, MSc and PhD pro­grammes were in a quandary be­cause they have no su­per­vi­sors for their projects. Guild pres­i­dent Lau­ra Lewis could not be reached for com­ment. The most re­cent ter­mi­na­tion was the very per­son who is­sued let­ters to some of the staff-vice-pres­i­dent of hu­man re­sources Glen­ford Joseph.

He was axed in Feb­ru­ary by act­ing pres­i­dent Rod­ney Ja­gai, for­mer pres­i­dent of state-owned oil com­pa­ny Petrotrin. Sun­day Guardian re­ceived a copy of the in­ter­nal two-sen­tence memo sent to staff on Feb­ru­ary 29, stat­ing that with ef­fect from March 1, Joseph was no longer em­ployed with the uni­ver­si­ty.

The memo was signed by Ja­gai and stat­ed that all hu­man re­source mat­ters would be han­dled by his of­fice. Con­tact­ed the day af­ter he was fired, Joseph said the sit­u­a­tion was still de­vel­op­ing. He said: "I don't know that I have been axed, be­cause the mat­ter is on­go­ing. "I don't want to say any­thing that will pre-empt the sit­u­a­tion." Told about the memo, Joseph said, "Any­thing can be sent to staff."

He said a lot had not been said and "when it all un­folds, you will see." Ja­gai could not be reached for com­ment the day af­ter Joseph's fir­ing. All ques­tions were re­ferred to UTT's se­nior man­ag­er, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, San­dra Gan­ness. How­ev­er, she, too, failed to clar­i­fy the sit­u­a­tion. She asked that all ques­tions be sent via e-mail, but nev­er replied to an e-mail sent on March 5.

Can­celled work per­mits

Ac­cord­ing to his bio, Joseph was a for­mer di­rec­tor of hu­man re­sources, in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, di­rec­tor of mar­ket­ing and client ser­vices at Me­dia Plan­ners and Con­sul­tants Ltd, UTT lec­tur­er and al­so a lead man­age­ment con­sul­tant at Joseph and As­so­ciates.

In De­cem­ber last year, Joseph is­sued ter­mi­na­tion let­ters to sev­er­al mem­bers of staff, some of whom are for­eign pro­fes­sors, who came to UTT on con­tract. Among those ter­mi­nat­ed was Adel Sharaf, vice-provost, post­grad­u­ate stud­ies and re­search and de­vel­op­ment and pro­fes­sor of en­er­gy sys­tems, who was brought on by for­mer UTT pres­i­dent Prof Ken Julien in 2008.

Al­so fired were pro­gramme pro­fes­sor process en­gi­neer­ing, en­vi­ron­ment man­age­ment Adel Al Taweel, Dr An­dre Coop­er and Prof Theodore Lewis, who is Trinida­di­an. Ac­cord­ing to the De­cem­ber 15, 2011 ter­mi­na­tion let­ters signed by Joseph, the UTT had em­barked on an ex­er­cise to re­struc­ture and re­align its op­er­a­tions, and to re­view its cur­rent arrange­ment with staff in the or­gan­i­sa­tion in or­der to en­sure per­for­mance op­ti­mi­sa­tion and the ef­fec­tive stream­lin­ing of its ac­tiv­i­ties.

The ter­mi­nat­ed lec­tur­ers were al­so asked to re­turn their staff ID badges, mo­bile phones and ac­ces­sories, of­fice keys, fil­ing cab­i­nets and oth­er com­put­er equip­ment as­signed to them dur­ing their em­ploy­ment on or be­fore De­cem­ber 30 last year.

Sun­day Guardian was al­so re­li­ably in­formed that dis­missed for­eign staff were giv­en 15 days to leave the coun­try, since their work per­mits would be can­celled. How­ev­er, when they chal­lenged UTT of­fi­cials, it was agreed that they would be giv­en three months' no­tice, as stat­ed in their con­tract.

Farewell to fired staff

Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that the names of 83 fired staff mem­bers were list­ed on a post on UTT's Web site on Jan­u­ary 28 but were sub­se­quent­ly re­moved. The post bade farewell to the fired staff. A copy of the names and oth­er doc­u­ments have been ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian.

Some of the ter­mi­nat­ed staff held such po­si­tions as ex­ec­u­tive as­sis­tant, IT man­ag­er, of­fice clerk, med­ical con­sul­tant, ad­vis­er to the pres­i­dent, in­ter­im provost, fa­cil­i­ties of­fi­cer, as­so­ciate pro­fes­sors and com­mu­ni­ca­tions and chron­i­cles man­ag­er, vice-pres­i­dent fi­nance, ad­min­is­tra­tion and pro­cure­ment; vice-pres­i­dent, cap­i­tal projects and phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture; pro­fes­sors of mu­sic, re­search as­so­ciate, se­nior in­struc­tors and coach­es in var­i­ous sport­ing dis­ci­plines.

On March 13, UTT's chair­man Cur­tis Man­choon is­sued a memo to staff ti­tled Ap­pre­ci­a­tion of thanks for ser­vice to UTT, in which he ex­pressed grat­i­tude to all "the ded­i­cat­ed mem­bers of staff of UTT who con­tin­ue to work tire­less­ly in our de­liv­ery of qual­i­ty ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

Man­choon added that the uni­ver­si­ty was con­tin­u­ing to un­der­go a process of re­struc­tur­ing, which would bring it clos­er to its mis­sion and vi­sion of be­ing the na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion of high­er learn­ing and re­search for so­cio-eco­nom­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment.

Last Sun­day, the UTT placed a full-page ad­ver­tise­ment on Page 21 of this news­pa­per seek­ing to clear the air on a se­ries of ar­ti­cles pub­lished by a week­ly pa­per. UTT's Board of Gov­er­nors stat­ed that the ar­ti­cles sought to bring the na­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty in­to dis­re­pute and dis­cred­it its per­son­nel and op­er­a­tions by al­leg­ing var­i­ous ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties.

"The Chair­man and the Board of Gov­er­nors of UTT wish to state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that these ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties which the news­pa­per has al­lud­ed to are in­deed a re­flec­tion of gov­er­nance at UTT, but un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, and bear no re­sem­blance to the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, un­der the cur­rent gov­ern­ment in of­fice."

How­ev­er, the ter­mi­na­tion of se­nior pro­fes­sors and oth­er staff took place un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, which as­sumed of­fice in May 2010. Then, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar or­dered a foren­sic au­dit in­to the af­fairs and op­er­a­tions at the uni­ver­si­ty. On­ly last week, Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed some of the find­ings. How­ev­er, they have not been re­vealed by the Gov­ern­ment.

Ques­tion­ing Ja­gai's qual­i­fi­ca­tions

Well-placed sources have point­ed out that the pre­vi­ous pres­i­dents of UTT have had records of dis­tin­guished aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment, in­di­cat­ed by high­er de­grees, books, ar­ti­cles and pub­li­ca­tions that are recog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Ja­gai's qual­i­fi­ca­tions are be­ing ques­tioned, how­ev­er.

There are some UTT staff are more ca­pa­ble and qual­i­fied to run the af­fairs of the uni­ver­si­ty, sources in­di­cat­ed, how­ev­er they stressed it was a po­si­tion they did not want. One per­son said: "The uni­ver­si­ty's stan­dards are now low­ered. "This would nev­er hap­pen at the re­gion­al aca­d­e­m­ic uni­ver­si­ty."

Ac­cord­ing to Ja­gai's bi­o­graph­i­cal de­tails on UTT's Web site, he holds an un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree in chem­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing (first-class ho­n­ours) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) and a mas­ter's in pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tul­sa, North Cam­pus, Ok­la­homa. He has been a mem­ber of the So­ci­ety of Pe­tro­le­um En­gi­neers, T&T Chap­ter, since 1976 and be­longs to sev­er­al pro­fes­sion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Ja­gai held the po­si­tions of cam­pus aca­d­e­m­ic ad­min­is­tra­tor, pro­gramme leader, pro­gramme head of De­part­ment for Pe­tro­le­um En­gi­neer­ing and pro­gramme leader (ag) for Util­i­ties En­gi­neer­ing at UTT. In 2010, UTT pro­mot­ed him to as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor in prac­tice.

How­ev­er, one se­nior staff mem­ber said the qual­i­fi­ca­tions for pres­i­den­cy were now "wa­tered down." Oth­ers have com­pared his aca­d­e­m­ic stand­ing and back­ground with past pres­i­dents. In Jan­u­ary, UTT is­sued an ad­ver­tise­ment invit­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for the po­si­tion, but to date, Ja­gai is still act­ing pres­i­dent. Ac­cord­ing to the key spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the po­si­tion, the pres­i­dent should be a proven leader, who:

• has a broad un­der­stand­ing of the new di­rec­tion and cur­rent is­sues in high­er ed­u­ca­tion;

• has knowl­edge of best prac­tices in high­er ed­u­ca­tion and must as­pire to be a lead­ing voice in the sec­tor;

• is an ex­cel­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tor ca­pa­ble of ac­tive­ly en­gag­ing the na­tion's lead­ers, busi­ness, cit­i­zens and all stake­hold­ers;

• has an ex­ten­sive record of lead­er­ship ac­com­plish­ments and pru­dent man­age­ment at a very se­nior lev­el, prefer­ably, but not ex­clu­sive­ly, in high­er ed­u­ca­tion or pub­lic/gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing is­sues of strate­gic plan­ning, change man­age­ment and fund-rais­ing and with a pro­found ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the prin­ci­ples of good gov­er­nance.

Those ap­ply­ing had to have:

• an earned ter­mi­nal (PhD) de­gree in any aca­d­e­m­ic or pro­fes­sion­al field (de­sir­able but not ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial);

• ex­pe­ri­ence in ad­min­is­ter­ing a di­verse, mul­ti-cam­pus uni­ver­si­ty or or­gan­i­sa­tion of com­pa­ra­ble com­plex­i­ty

• and at least ten years of vi­sion­ary lead­er­ship and pru­dent man­age­ment at an ex­ec­u­tive lev­el.

UTT pres­i­dents

Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus Ramesh De­osaran was first ap­point­ed act­ing pres­i­dent in Ju­ly 2010 on the res­ig­na­tion of the first pres­i­dent, Prof Ken Julien. Julien ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion al­most three months be­fore his con­tract end­ed, and it took ef­fect from May 26, 2010, two days af­ter the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship won the gen­er­al elec­tion.

He was the first lo­cal en­gi­neer­ing lec­tur­er with a PhD and lat­er be­came one of the youngest aca­d­e­m­ic deans in the Com­mon­wealth. He was named Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus in 1997 and has a dis­tin­guished ca­reer in en­er­gy span­ning al­most four decades.

De­osaran served briefly af­ter May 2010, fol­lowed by Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus Ken­neth Ram­c­hand, whose ten-month con­tract end­ed in Sep­tem­ber last year. Ram­c­hand is a grad­u­ate of Ed­in­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty, who be­came the first pro­fes­sor of West In­di­an Lit­er­a­ture at UWI. He was al­so the head of the De­part­ment of Lib­er­al Arts at St Au­gus­tine. Ram­c­hand has a PhD in lit­er­a­ture and is well pub­lished in North Amer­i­ca, the UK and the Caribbean.

His bio states he has been a se­nior Ful­bright schol­ar af­fil­i­at­ed to Yale Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tul­sa at Ok­la­homa, a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor at In­di­ana Uni­ver­si­ty and Col­gate Uni­ver­si­ty, as well as a Guggen­heim fel­low. Ram­c­hand's as­so­ci­a­tion with UTT be­gan in 2005 and he left in 2009 as as­so­ciate provost.

De­osaran's ca­reer and qual­i­fi­ca­tions have a sim­i­lar stand­ing to Ram­c­hand's. De­osaran is a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, hav­ing ob­tained his bach­e­lor's, mas­ter's and doc­tor­ate at that uni­ver­si­ty. He has been a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Bom­bay, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Los An­ge­les, John Jay Col­lege of Crim­i­nal Jus­tice, City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York, Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty.

He is a schol­ar in crim­i­nol­o­gy and the so­cial sci­ences and is the founder of the ANSA McAL Psy­cho­log­i­cal Re­search Cen­tre and Cen­tre for Crim­i­nol­o­gy and Crim­i­nal Jus­tice at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus. He has over a dozen books to his name and over 200 schol­ar­ly pa­pers.

Sources said a pres­i­dent was ex­pect­ed to bring vi­sion to a uni­ver­si­ty and in­form its mem­bers of their role in ful­fill­ing that vi­sion. "If it is that now a UTT pres­i­dent does not need a PhD qual­i­fi­ca­tion to his name, or pub­li­ca­tions and pa­pers, then we have reached a point where any­thing goes," one se­nior fac­ul­ty mem­ber said.

An­oth­er said: "The sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing the uni­ver­si­ty's pres­i­den­cy is de­grad­ing the uni­ver­si­ty in the eyes of the world." Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Fazal Karim could not be reached for com­ment.

(To be con­tin­ued next week)