Loyse Vin­cent

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is cur­rent­ly un­der­tak­ing a process to con­vert the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism In­sti­tute (THTI) at Mt St George in­to the Uni­ver­si­ty of To­ba­go.

THTI CEO Dr Steven Shep­pard an­nounced the plan dur­ing a week­ly vir­tu­al THA pan­el dis­cus­sion ti­tled “To­ba­go Mat­ters” which looked at ed­u­ca­tion on the is­land.

Shep­pard said the list of sub­ject ar­eas to be taught at the pro­posed uni­ver­si­ty has al­ready been de­vel­oped and ap­proved by the board of di­rec­tors, and these ar­eas, both tra­di­tion­al and un­con­ven­tion­al, are based on To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­men­tal needs. He gave some in­sight in­to the sub­jects to be of­fered at the uni­ver­si­ty.

“Trop­i­cal Agri­cul­ture and Food Tech­nol­o­gy, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing this COVID and post-COVID era, where food se­cu­ri­ty is such an im­por­tant is­sue. We see every week, com­plaints about food prices go­ing up, we have to de­pend on oth­er coun­tries too much, we have to fo­cus more on what we pro­duce here,” Shep­pard said.

He said there will al­so be an em­pha­sis on food pro­cess­ing which will tar­get mi­cro-en­tre­pre­neurs on the is­land, adding they can be for­mal­ly ex­posed to meth­ods of food preser­va­tion and food pro­cess­ing, as well as the chem­istry be­hind food pro­cess­ing.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of To­ba­go will al­so of­fer cours­es that cov­er tra­di­tion­al and un­con­ven­tion­al tourism ar­eas.

“Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and strate­gic tourism will cov­er culi­nary arts, food and bev­er­age op­er­a­tion and check this land­scape de­sign, land­scape main­te­nance, in­ven­to­ry man­age­ment, fore­cast­ing, maid in­ter­ac­tion, cus­tomer ser­vice man­age­ment, sound en­gi­neer­ing, sound man­age­ment, small ves­sel con­struc­tion and main­te­nance, coastal nav­i­ga­tion—all that is part of tourism,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Shep­pard, ar­eas such as earth and en­vi­ron­men­tal sci­ence, al­lied health sci­ences, such as spe­cialised ther­a­py ar­eas and di­ag­nos­tic imag­ing, are al­so be­ing pro­posed as cours­es. How­ev­er, there will be a ma­jor em­pha­sis on art and cul­ture.

“There’s the To­ba­go Per­form­ing Arts Com­pa­ny but arts and cul­ture is not for­mal­ly taught and there is no re­search cen­tre for arts and cul­ture, so we will have one. There will be a strong fo­cus on pre­serv­ing that tan­gi­ble and in­tan­gi­ble her­itage. To­ba­go has an ex­treme­ly rich cul­tur­al her­itage.”

The an­nu­al To­ba­go Her­itage Fes­ti­val pro­vides an av­enue for the is­land’s rich cul­tur­al her­itage to be show­cased but Shep­pard said a re­search cen­tre will al­low for ac­cess through­out the year.

The THTI CEO said they are cur­rent­ly at the stage of tran­si­tion, which in­volves look­ing at the ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment but will soon com­plete the busi­ness plan for the Uni­ver­si­ty of To­ba­go. He said COVID presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to il­lus­trate where “school does not need a phys­i­cal build­ing.”

He gave a time­line of be­tween two to three months for the launch of the first bach­e­lor’s de­gree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of To­ba­go, pend­ing ap­proval from the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the first mas­ter’s de­gree with­in the next year.