Charles Kong Soo

To­ba­go-born Cha­co­nia Gold Medal re­cip­i­ent, UWI stal­wart and ed­u­ca­tion con­sul­tant, Car­ol Keller, 68, died af­ter a short ill­ness on De­cem­ber 17, at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Dr Jenif­fer Mo­hammed, act­ing head, School of Ed­u­ca­tion, UWI, St Au­gus­tine, who knew Keller for 25 years, said on Wednes­day: "We at the School of Ed­u­ca­tion and the wider UWI com­mu­ni­ty are ex­treme­ly sad­dened by the loss of such a great hu­man­i­tar­i­an and an out­stand­ing teacher and schol­ar.

"He was well-loved and re­spect­ed and every­body re­gard­ed him a friend. We are par­tic­u­lar­ly dazed be­cause we were in the midst of dis­cussing how best to ho­n­our him and had plans for show­ing him our ap­pre­ci­a­tion for his life's work at the bi­en­ni­al con­fer­ence in ed­u­ca­tion which we are host­ing in April 2013. "We ex­tend our sin­cer­est con­do­lences to his moth­er, wife, Louise and chil­dren, Christo­pher, Car­olyn and Mar­cus."

Keller was born in To­ba­go on March 12, 1944 and spoke of Ma­son Hall as his vil­lage. When stu­dents gig­gled about his name, he al­ways opened his eyes wide and with a se­ri­ous face ex­plained its ori­gin. He told them the name Car­ol was Ro­man­ian and meant "man." Nev­er­the­less, sec­re­taries at the School of Ed­u­ca­tion rou­tine­ly field­ed tele­phone calls and mes­sages ad­dressed to Miss or Mrs Car­ol Keller.

He at­tend­ed both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school in To­ba­go (Bish­op's). Keller came to Trinidad to at­tend UWI, where he grad­u­at­ed with first-class ho­n­ours in his­to­ry and eco­nom­ics in 1968. He taught eco­nom­ics at St Mary's Col­lege and, grad­u­at­ed with the first co­hort of the diplo­ma in ed­u­ca­tion at UWI.

Keller then ob­tained (in 1981) an MA from Stan­ford in in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment ed­u­ca­tion and an MSc in in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions from UWI. He was ap­point­ed lec­tur­er in so­cial sci­ences at the School of Ed­u­ca­tion in 1976, and re­mained there un­til re­tir­ing in 2009. He con­tin­ued to teach and su­per­vise stu­dents un­til ear­li­er this month.

For more than 30 years, Keller served UWI and the School of Ed­u­ca­tion in var­i­ous posts such as lec­tur­er, dean, deputy dean and head of de­part­ment. He su­per­vised le­gions of BEd, DipEd, MEd, MPhil and PhD stu­dents, and was re­cent­ly ho­n­oured by UWI for ex­cel­lence in post­grad­u­ate su­per­vi­sion.

He had a par­tic­u­lar love of the class­room and for decades vis­it­ed schools to mon­i­tor and as­sist teach­ers in the diplo­ma in ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme. As re­cent­ly as last se­mes­ter he was busy trav­el­ling to schools in To­ba­go every week do­ing just that.

Keller was award­ed the Cha­co­nia Medal (Gold) in 2005 for ser­vice to ed­u­ca­tion. He served on the tech­ni­cal ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee of the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil and many gov­ern­ment and non-gov­ern­ment boards and agen­cies, such as the Teach­ers Cred­it Union, the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, Kairi Con­sul­tants, the Fire Ser­vices Ex­am­i­na­tions Board, the Na­tion­al Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Ed­u­ca­tion, Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd, and the Cari­com Ad­vi­so­ry Task Force on the fu­ture of ed­u­ca­tion in the re­gion.

He al­so re­ceived ho­n­ours and ac­co­lades from na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies. His fu­ner­al will be held to­day from 10 am at the Church of the As­sump­tion in Mar­aval. How­ev­er, he will be buried to­mor­row at 10 am at the UWI Ceme­tery, St Au­gus­tine. He is sur­vived by his wife Louise, his moth­er and his chil­dren Christo­pher, Car­olyn and Mar­cus.