The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) has ap­point­ed Dr Emi­ly Gaynor Dick-Forde as Deputy Prin­ci­pal (Act­ing) ef­fec­tive Au­gust 1st. The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from UWI:

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (The UWI) Open Cam­pus is pleased to an­nounce the ap­point­ment of Dr Emi­ly Gaynor Dick-Forde as Deputy Prin­ci­pal (Act­ing) ef­fec­tive Au­gust 1, 2021.

Dr Dick-Forde has served in The UWI for over 28 years. She com­menced her ca­reer as an Ac­count­ing Aca­d­e­m­ic at the Cave Hill Cam­pus in 1991 in the De­part­ment of Man­age­ment Stud­ies af­ter at­tain­ing a BSc in Ac­count­ing from the Cave Hill Cam­pus with First Class Ho­n­ours and an MPhil in Fi­nance from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge Eng­land, on full schol­ar­ship from the Cam­bridge Com­mon­wealth Fel­low­ship.

She al­so read for her PhD in Ac­count­ing (So­cial and En­vi­ron­men­tal Ac­count­ing) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Dundee Scot­land, with full schol­ar­ships from the Dundee Uni­ver­si­ty In­ter­na­tion­al Stu­dents’ Schol­ar­ship for year one and an As­so­ci­a­tion of Com­mon­wealth Uni­ver­si­ties Schol­ar­ship for the re­main­ing two years.

While com­plet­ing her doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion, Dr Dick-Forde pur­sued the Cer­ti­fied Man­age­ment Ac­count­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion with CMA Cana­da. This was ful­ly fund­ed by The So­ci­ety of Man­age­ment Ac­coun­tants of Cana­da as a part of their sup­port for pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment for ac­count­ing aca­d­e­mics at the Cave Hill Cam­pus. She al­so earned Fel­low­ship sta­tus with CPA Cana­da in 2014.

Over her 17 years at The UWI Cave Hill Cam­pus, she served as an Act­ing Head of De­part­ment and Deputy Head of De­part­ment and led the first self-as­sess­ment re­port for the pro­gramme re­view of the BSc Ac­count­ing de­gree. She al­so served as As­sis­tant Chief Ex­am­in­er for CAPE Ac­count­ing with the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil and as Deputy Dean Dis­tance and Out­reach for three years un­der the Dean­ship of Sir Frank Al­leyne from 2000-2003. As a Lec­tur­er in Ac­count­ing, Dr Dick-Forde was al­so giv­en re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for over­sight of the var­i­ous dis­tance, out­reach and chal­lenge pro­grammes across the OECS, trav­el­ling to An­tigua, Saint Lu­cia and Montser­rat on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions to sup­port stu­dents as they pre­pared for their ex­am­i­na­tions.

A ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment that Dr Dick-Forde re­calls was work­ing along­side Sir Frank Al­leyne and Dr Far­ley Brath­waite as part of a three-per­son team and un­der­tak­ing a fact-find­ing tour in the USA as a key part of re­search which led to the de­vel­op­ment of the very suc­cess­ful MSc Project Man­age­ment de­gree at the Cave Hill Cam­pus Dr Dick-Forde re­signed from the Cave Hill Cam­pus at the end of 2007 af­ter she was asked to serve in the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go by then Prime Min­is­ter, the Hon. Patrick Man­ning.

From No­vem­ber 2007 to May 2010, she served as Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor and Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment. In this port­fo­lio, un­der her strate­gic di­rec­tion, the Gov­ern­ment ad­vanced ef­forts to in­te­grate the dis­tinct ar­eas of the port­fo­lio for syn­er­gy and im­proved plan­ning for cli­mate re­silience. She al­so served as T&T’s Gov­er­nor on the Boards of both the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) and the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB).

In ad­di­tion to spear­head­ing sev­er­al no­table and crit­i­cal sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and cli­mate-re­lat­ed ini­tia­tives, she ob­tained Cab­i­net’s ap­proval for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s first Cli­mate Change Pol­i­cy and Car­bon Re­duc­tion Strat­e­gy. In her min­is­te­r­i­al ca­pac­i­ty, sup­port­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s host­ing of the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as and the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment con­fer­ence (CHOGM), Dr Dick-Forde was an ex­pert pan­elist at the Com­mon­wealth Busi­ness Fo­rum (CHOGM) speak­ing on busi­ness and the en­vi­ron­ment and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. Her tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise was al­so recog­nised in her rep­re­sen­ta­tion of T&T at the Fif­teenth Ses­sion of the UN Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change in De­cem­ber 2009.

These diplo­mat­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties con­tributed to her fur­ther evo­lu­tion and in­formed a strong Caribbean-wide fo­cus in her sub­se­quent work to ad­dress sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and cli­mate re­silience in the re­gion.
In Sep­tem­ber 2010 Dr Dick-Forde re­sumed her ser­vice to the re­gion at The UWI when she joined the Open Cam­pus as Head, Spe­cial Projects. Her abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly or­ga­nize and lead teams through com­plex in­ter­ven­tions, was demon­strat­ed at the crit­i­cal mo­ment of in­creased pro­gramme de­sign un­der the Cana­di­an-fund­ed Strength­en­ing Dis­tance Ed­u­ca­tion in the Caribbean (SDEC) project. She and a small team of Pro­gramme Co­or­di­na­tors, work­ing with over 35 sub­ject mat­ter ex­perts, led the de­sign and plan­ning for 21 new and 2 re­vised pro­grammes to add to the Open Cam­pus’ on­line of­fer­ings.

As Head of the Pro­gramme Plan­ning De­part­ment, she led the first qual­i­ty as­sur­ance re­view for on­line pro­grammes and the de­vel­op­ment of a frame­work and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing for these re­views in the Aca­d­e­m­ic Pro­gram­ming and De­liv­ery Di­vi­sion (APAD). Dr Dick-Forde’s for­mu­la­tion of ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tees fur­ther sup­port­ed the APAD by en­sur­ing pro­gramme rel­e­vance even while ad­dress­ing ini­tial con­sid­er­a­tions on Con­tin­u­ing Ed­u­ca­tion Units (CEU) for con­tin­u­ing and pro­fes­sion­al ed­u­ca­tion cours­es. Her pas­sion for re­search and fos­ter­ing a com­mu­ni­ty of re­searchers led to the es­tab­lish­ment of the Re­search Fo­rum in the Pro­gramme Plan­ning De­part­ment.

Since join­ing the Open Cam­pus, she has pre­sent­ed pa­pers and de­liv­ered dis­tin­guished lec­tures in col­lab­o­ra­tion with our coun­try Sites in Be­lize (2010), An­guil­la (2016), Be­lize Cham­ber of Com­merce (2017), Do­mini­ca (2017) and St Kitts (2018).
From 2017 to 2021 Dr Dick-Forde was as­signed to the Of­fice of the Prin­ci­pal as Man­ag­er Spe­cial Ini­tia­tives and Chair of the Open Cam­pus Re­search Ethics Com­mit­tee. In this role she sup­port­ed the work of The UWI’s thrust for cli­mate ac­tion, with par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on on­line de­liv­ery of knowl­edge prod­ucts and part­ner­ships with re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al stake­hold­ers on sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and cli­mate re­silience build­ing in the Caribbean. One such part­ner­ship with aca­d­e­mics from Uni­ver­si­ty of Trom­so re­sult­ed in two pub­li­ca­tions.

On­go­ing work with cli­mate change ex­perts from across The UWI, un­der the Vice-Chan­cel­lor’s Of­fice, sup­ports the nascent Glob­al In­sti­tute for Cli­mate Smart and Re­silience De­vel­op­ment (GIC­SRD) af­ford­ing the Open Cam­pus a place on the Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee of this soon-to-be-launched in­sti­tute. She con­tributed to the stake­hold­er en­gage­ments/con­sul­ta­tion for The UWI Cli­mate Jus­tice Strat­e­gy and com­ment­ed on the re­cent­ly cir­cu­lat­ed first draft.
Dr Dick-Forde stat­ed, “Af­ter 28 years of ser­vice to The UWI, I feel blessed to be in­vit­ed at this time to sup­port Prin­ci­pal Sev­erin as he serves as In­ter­im Prin­ci­pal at this crit­i­cal mo­ment for The UWI Open Cam­pus for the aca­d­e­m­ic year 2021/2022.”

She fur­ther shared the fol­low­ing quote which she be­lieves cap­tures her fo­cus, as she serves the stu­dents and staff of the Open Cam­pus and the wider UWI:
“Ac­cept­ing the lead­er­ship chal­lenge re­quires prac­tice, re­flec­tion, hu­mil­i­ty, and com­mit­ment to mak­ing a dif­fer­ence.” Kouzes, James M.; Pos­ner, Bar­ry Z. The Lead­er­ship Chal­lenge.

The UWI Open Cam­pus con­grat­u­lates Dr Dick-Forde on her achieve­ments and wish her suc­cess in this new role. Dr Fran­cis O. Sev­erin, In­ter­im Prin­ci­pal of the Open Cam­pus af­firms that, “Dr Dick-Forde and I are al­ready dili­gent­ly work­ing, with the full sup­port of the Cam­pus’ se­nior lead­ers, to con­struct a sol­id foun­da­tion as we ad­vance in­ex­orably to­wards the Glob­al Cam­pus.

We fit­ting­ly un­der­stand this as our man­date, which we hold sacro­sanct. In light of the fore­go­ing, I am in­deed grat­i­fied that we have the sup­port, en­er­gy, wis­dom, frank­ness, in­tegri­ty and tenac­i­ty that Dr Dick-Forde brings to the post of Deputy Prin­ci­pal. I warm­ly con­grat­u­late her and I know that this ap­point­ment is for her, sim­ply an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve her al­ma mater, which she tru­ly loves.”