Dr Glenville Ash­by

Suf­folk Coun­ty Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege (SC­CC), Long Is­land, New York is an amal­gam of three cam­pus­es spread over 500 sprawl­ing acres. Its pas­ture-like bu­col­ic seren­i­ty, con­trast­ing with im­pres­sive aca­d­e­m­ic and ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ings, of­fer an idyl­lic en­vi­ron­ment for learn­ing, con­tem­pla­tion, dis­cov­ery and aware­ness. Home to 26,000 stu­dents, with 70 de­gree pro­grammes, 30 cer­tifi­cate op­tions, and a fac­ul­ty of 1,600, SC­CC is ac­cred­it­ed by nine na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions, in­clud­ing the Mid­dle States Com­mis­sion on High­er Ed­u­ca­tion, the Na­tion­al League for Nurs­ing Ac­cred­it­ing Com­mis­sion, and the Na­tion­al Au­to­mo­tive Ed­u­ca­tion Tech­ni­cal Foun­da­tion. Even more im­pres­sive is the fig­ure at the helm of this high­ly com­pet­i­tive aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tion-To­ba­go-born, Dr Shaun McK­ay.

McK­ay strikes a com­mand­ing pres­ence. Not sur­pris­ing, giv­en his tall, broad-shoul­dered frame and rich bari­tone voice that could elec­tri­fy the air­waves. He is be­spec­ta­cled and clean-shaven with a youth­ful ex­u­ber­ance that be­lies the sheer depth in wis­dom need­ed to at­tain his po­si­tion. McK­ay can al­most be def­er­en­tial­ly po­lite at times, lis­ten­ing for the right mo­ment to of­fer his view on any giv­en mat­ter. It is this pa­tience and de­lib­er­a­tion-added to a vo­ra­cious ap­petite for learn­ing and lead­er­ship-that have tak­en him very far, first in busi­ness and then in acad­e­mia. His stel­lar as­cen­dan­cy as the first Caribbean pres­i­dent of SC­CC is sto­ried and in­spi­ra­tional. Re­cent­ly, I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to vis­it him on cam­pus. McK­ay re­moved his jack­et, re­laxed, and for the next two hours, re­called his boy­hood days in To­ba­go, his ac­com­plish­ments and his en­dur­ing pas­sion to see his na­tive land com­pete and suc­ceed glob­al­ly. This, he said, is on­ly pos­si­ble through a rad­i­cal change with­in the ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem.

Grow­ing up in To­ba­go

"I was born in Bon Ac­cord," he said, with a sense of pride. One of ten chil­dren, he de­scribed his ear­ly years as hum­ble. "My mom was a home­mak­er and my dad was re­al­ly great at car­pen­try, al­though he ex­celled at O'lev­el ex­am­i­na­tions." His par­ents and close sib­ling net­work an­chored McK­ay; so too his ex­ploits in soc­cer and won­der­ment at the ac­com­plish­ments of West In­di­an crick­et cir­ca 1980. But this on­ly par­tial­ly ex­plains the ex­is­ten­tial val­ue he gave to self and sur­round­ings. "I was al­ways look­ing at ways of as­sess­ing needs around me, and ful­fill­ing them." It is this spir­it of en­tre­pre­neur­ship that gal­vanised him in­to a myr­i­ad of ven­tures, in­clud­ing a huge sport­ing goods busi­ness in To­ba­go, now man­aged by his sis­ter. "Out­side my fam­i­ly I had teach­ers who in­flu­enced me-from kinder­garten, Bon Ac­cord Gov­ern­ment El­e­men­tary, Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary and Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary."

He cit­ed Beryl Jack, Theodo­ra Scott, Robert Dil­lan and oth­ers. The young McK­ay made it to A'Lev­els at St Joseph Con­vent and this is where Prov­i­dence stepped in. "Here I was, one of the few boys in re­al­ly, a girl school. We were taught by nuns, the whole nine yards. Don't get me wrong," he ex­plained. "It was a sound ed­u­ca­tion. You had to be the best to be of­fered a spot, but there was some­thing lack­ing." Words nev­er seem to elude McK­ay, but now, decades lat­er, he care­ful­ly re­flect­ed on his de­ci­sion to quit. As he be­gan speak­ing, he fi­nal­ly had it fig­ured out. "I just need­ed to get out and do more," he rea­soned. "Get­ting out" led him to Lon­don and fi­nal­ly to the Unit­ed States where un­der the tute­lage of fel­low To­bag­on­ian Abra­ham Moore, who "saw some­thing unique", a dri­ven and prodi­gious Shaun McK­ay steam­rolled through Mor­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, The Col­lege of Notre Dame and, fi­nal­ly, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land, where he earned acad­e­mia's high­est award in ed­u­ca­tion-a doc­tor­al de­gree. McK­ay went on to lec­ture at all lev­els of ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, and served as vice pres­i­dent of SC­CC in 2005, where his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties ranged from plan­ning and pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment, to im­ple­men­ta­tion and as­sess­ment of the Col­lege's pro­grammes and ser­vices. To­day, af­ter rat­i­fi­ca­tion by the Board of Trustees at the State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York (Suny), he now pre­sides over a com­plex ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion with an an­nu­al op­er­a­tional bud­get of just un­der US $200 mil­lion.

Cap­tion: Stu­dents of Tacarigua Pres­by­ter­ian School re­act to SEA?re­sults on Thurs­day.

Ed­u­ca­tion in T&T

McK­ay, de­spite his many years abroad, re­mains ped­a­gog­i­cal­ly at­tuned to Trinidad and To­ba­go. He is crit­i­cal of that na­tion's "Eu­ro­cen­tric ap­proach" which he deemed an­ti­quat­ed, if not anachro­nis­tic. "There is high un­em­ploy­ment there be­cause the ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem is in­flex­i­ble and not fit­ted to meet­ing the needs of a grow­ing so­ci­ety in a glob­al mar­ket," he ar­gued. "Ed­u­ca­tion in emerg­ing so­ci­eties, ex­am­ines the needs ger­mane to their de­vel­op­ment," he said. Sta­tis­tics, ac­cord­ing to McK­ay, show that na­tions that ex­cel eco­nom­i­cal­ly have adopt­ed in­no­v­a­tive teach­ing method­olo­gies and poli­cies. "When you look at the O and A'lev­el sys­tem, you see that they are rigid and de­signed to fo­cus on get­ting a job. But where are the jobs that grad­u­ates are equipped to per­form?" he asked rhetor­i­cal­ly. "So you have a sit­u­a­tion where you have to im­port labour in every sec­tor. In a coun­try with vast en­er­gy re­serves and on­ly 1.3 mil­lion or so peo­ple, this is trou­bling. Trinidad and To­ba­go has to build an ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem re­spon­sive to the re­al­i­ties of an emerg­ing mar­ket and na­tion if it must be­come com­pet­i­tive," he em­pha­sised.

McK­ay at­trib­uted this prob­lem to lack of pur­pose­ful lead­er­ship at the high­est lev­els of pol­i­cy and de­ci­sion-mak­ing. At the same time, he con­ced­ed that gen­er­a­tional is­sues, such as class and caste, con­tin­ue to stymie ed­u­ca­tion­al pur­suits at a very ba­sic lev­el. "If your par­ents nev­er had the means and have gone this far," us­ing his hands demon­stra­bly, "more times than not, they can­not car­ry you fur­ther, eco­nom­i­cal­ly and in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly." When asked about Costatt, he ex­er­cised reser­va­tion. "I can­not eval­u­ate Costatt and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) in the ab­stract," he re­spond­ed, while stress­ing the need for rig­or­ous and mul­ti-lay­ered ac­cred­it­ing stan­dards in the Caribbean. A pro­po­nent of re­search, as­sess­ment and eval­u­a­tion be­fore de­fin­i­tive poli­cies are im­ple­ment­ed, McK­ay chal­lenged the re­gion's gov­ern­ment to adopt these ex­act­ing stan­dards to ef­fect so­cial and eco­nom­ic change. It was Si­mon Zadek, au­thor of Ac­count­abil­i­ty, who wrote in "Emerg­ing Na­tions are Em­brac­ing Sus­tain­abil­i­ty," that, "re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship is not the pre­serve of West­ern busi­ness, and that emerg­ing mar­kets are match­ing or ex­ceed­ing sus­tain­able bench­marks set by their West­ern coun­ter­parts."

Are teach­ers be­ing re­trained?

It was an ed­u­ca­tion-re­lat­ed sub­ject that im­me­di­ate­ly res­onates with McK­ay. He iden­ti­fied the high lit­er­a­cy rate of Trinidad and To­ba­go as the very ba­sis of its de­vel­op­ment. But he stressed that more was need­ed and he is alarmed that a once ro­bust agro-pro­cess­ing na­tion now im­ports most of its food. "Of course there is a vi­brant tourist sec­tor, and an en­er­gy sec­tor in the case of Trinidad," he said, "but is re­search on the way to find or de­vel­op new mar­kets in man­u­fac­tur­ing, tech­nol­o­gy and oth­er in­dus­tries? "When these ex­plorato­ry steps are un­der­tak­en, are mean­ing­ful cur­ric­u­la be­ing es­tab­lished? Is enough be­ing done at the bud­getary lev­el to make this a re­al­i­ty? Are teach­ers be­ing re­trained and du­ly re­mu­ner­at­ed?" McK­ay viewed a de­tailed ori­ent­ed ap­proach to ed­u­ca­tion­al plan­ning as para­mount to na­tion­al suc­cess. He spoke of in­ter­ven­tion meth­ods, skilled and aca­d­e­m­ic based as­sess­ments, and treat­ment meth­ods­for every stu­dent. "Un­like the Caribbean, fac­ul­ty in the US is giv­en au­ton­o­my in the se­lec­tion of books and method­ol­o­gy." Fac­ul­ty is con­tin­u­ous­ly de­vel­op­ing learn­ing repos­i­to­ries un­der a sys­tem he called "Stu­dent En­gage­ment through In­for­mal Sup­port." He be­lieves stu­dents should be ac­cul­tur­at­ed to pur­sue the high­est ech­e­lon of suc­cess, giv­en all the re­me­di­al tools nec­es­sary, and that "they must go through the full dis­cov­ery process avail­able." He em­pha­sised that every child is ca­pa­ble of learn­ing.

Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA)

McK­ay strong­ly chal­lenged the con­cept of SEA, for­mal­ly called Com­mon En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tions, as an ac­cu­rate mea­sure­ment of stu­dents' abil­i­ties. He has strong sup­port in his view. A high­ly emo­tive is­sue, there has been a groundswell of re­sent­ment to­ward this mode of test­ing. "For­get pres­tige schools and uni­ver­si­ties. These doors are not open to you who have prob­lems recit­ing in­for­ma­tion," ac­cord­ing to Zophis Ed­wards, writ­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go Blog News some years ago. One par­ent, in a let­ter to one of the na­tion's news­pa­pers, wrote: "Why should chil­dren have to put their lives on hold for a year or more in or­der to write an ex­am­i­na­tion and be sub­ject­ed to such stress? Prepa­ra­tion for the SEA Ex­am­i­na­tion has amount­ed to penance for the na­tion's chil­dren." She con­tin­ued: "Is the SEA a com­pet­i­tive or a place­ment ex­am­i­na­tion? If it is a place­ment ex­am­i­na­tion, then why are the stu­dents ranked, with the top three idolised and the top one hun­dred pub­li­cised? "It is a dam­ag­ing prac­tice that should be stopped im­me­di­ate­ly since stu­dents in the suc­ces­sive years are put un­der un­due pres­sure."

McK­ay was aware of these con­cerns and agreed that rad­i­cal change is es­sen­tial to un­lock the re­al po­ten­tial of chil­dren. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that this would re­quire strate­gic plan­ning and a ma­jor pol­i­cy shift. He al­so de­mand­ed a time­ly and thought­ful re­sponse from gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. Of the SEA, he stat­ed: "This is a stan­dard­ised process that does not pro­mote crit­i­cal think­ing. You are ask­ing stu­dents at 11 years old to do what their 16-year-old coun­ter­parts do in the US. But at that age US kids can con­cep­tu­alise, and are more ma­ture and pre­pared to han­dle that rig­or­ous as­sess­ment," he said, re­fer­ring to the Stan­dard­ised Ap­ti­tude Test (SAT). "Eleven year old kids just don't have that cog­ni­tive de­vel­op­ment and crit­i­cal think­ing ca­pac­i­ty," he stat­ed, adding that "a spe­cial pan­el should be con­vened to re­vis­it the SEA and at the same time, reeval­u­ate the mis­sion of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion."

The chal­lenges ahead

McK­ay con­ced­ed that the US, de­spite its su­per pow­er sta­tus, is lag­ging be­hind in key ar­eas of ed­u­ca­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, such as math­e­mat­ics and sci­ence; a para­dox he viewed as a tes­ta­ment to the ever grow­ing and per­sis­tent chal­lenges every so­ci­ety faces. He re­ferred to the place­ment of the US be­hind coun­tries like South Ko­rea, Fin­land, and Hong Kong in the Pro­gramme for In­ter­na­tion­al Stu­dent As­sess­ment, which tests stu­dents' abil­i­ty to ap­ply math, read­ing and sci­ence to re­al life sit­u­a­tions. Yet, he was en­cour­aged that US pol­i­cy mak­ers at all lev­els of gov­er­nance, are quick­ly recog­nis­ing these short­com­ings, and are en­gaged in mul­ti­lat­er­al plan­ning to re­gain a com­pet­i­tive edge. As so­cial me­dia has emerged as one of the most ef­fec­tive tools for per­son­al, so­cial, and even po­lit­i­cal change, school of­fi­cials are grap­pling with ways in which it can be ef­fec­tive­ly em­ployed for aca­d­e­m­ic growth.

Cap­tion: A proud moth­er stands with her daugh­ter who passed for her first choice.

McK­ay, a big pro­po­nent of tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment is al­so aware of its po­ten­tial dan­gers. He spoke of so­cial me­dia as a po­ten­tial­ly in­struc­tive tool, but with neg­a­tives if left en­tire­ly unchecked. He al­so ex­pressed op­ti­mism at the free com­put­er dri­ve un­der­tak­en by the Peo­ples Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, but with one caveat: "Giv­ing chil­dren free com­put­ers is all well and good, but it has to be done with­in a frame­work for de­vel­op­ment." And in a rare mo­ment of lev­i­ty he jok­ing­ly asked: "Have you seen how kids com­mu­ni­cate on the Web? It runs counter to every­thing we teach in lan­guage class­es." The per­sis­tent brain drain be­set­ting the Caribbean is a glob­al phe­nom­e­non ac­cord­ing to McK­ay. "We have this prob­lem right here on Long Is­land," he stat­ed. "That is where elect­ed of­fi­cials and ed­u­ca­tors must find so­lu­tions by cre­at­ing a com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment. Vo­ca­tion­al and aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions must be flu­id enough to re­spond to re­al­i­ties, such as out­sourc­ing and un­em­ploy­ment in their re­spec­tive en­vi­ron­ment. This may re­quire new pro­grammes or re­train­ing to meet rapid changes tak­ing place."

Re­turn­ing home

Asked about trans­fer­ring his knowl­edge and ex­per­tise to fix the vex­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al prob­lem in his home­land, Dr Shaun McK­ay raised the specter of a "cul­tur­al bar­ri­er" that is re­sis­tant to for­eign na­tion­als, and the ab­sence of pro­vi­sions to ac­com­mo­date an in­flux of ex­pa­tri­ates, de­spite the re­cent call by the in­cum­bent ad­min­is­tra­tion. "We are com­fort­able im­port­ing work­ers with no cul­tur­al ties to the re­gion, of­fer­ing them huge salaries and ben­e­fits, some­thing we will not ex­tend to our own over­seas na­tion­als who are equal­ly, if not more qual­i­fied." He re­frained from re­fer­ring to this "dis­re­spect" and con­se­quent hin­drance to "mean­ing­ful en­gage­ment" as a rel­ic of the re­gion's colo­nial past, and was still open to lend­ing his ex­per­tise in­di­vid­u­al­ly, or as part of a con­sor­tium. "I am not say­ing that ex­pats should re­turn with a mind­set that we know it all, that we are the sole au­thor­i­ties on every is­sue. We must col­lab­o­rate, share in­for­ma­tion, and de­ter­mine what is best for the na­tion," he end­ed.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry Con­tact­ed

A call was placed to Dr Tim Gopeesingh, the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, re­quest­ing com­ment on McK­ay's ar­gu­ments. He was out of the coun­try. The re­porter then con­tact­ed the Me­dia Re­la­tions De­part­ment via tele­phone and e-mail and was ad­vised to vis­it the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's Web site. The note stat­ed: "We have made pub­lic a se­ries of doc­u­ments out­lin­ing the trans­for­ma­tion­al jour­ney that would see the re­for­mu­la­tion of the vi­sion, mis­sion and strate­gies."