The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (The UWI) has ad­dressed the sta­tus and fu­ture of its South Cam­pus in Pe­nal-Debe, out­lin­ing restora­tion ef­forts, fi­nan­cial needs and a re­newed strate­gic di­rec­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to a UWI state­ment, “The Cam­pus was found to be in a state re­quir­ing ur­gent restora­tion” fol­low­ing an as­sess­ment con­duct­ed be­tween May and Ju­ly 2022. Since then, the uni­ver­si­ty has sub­mit­ted bud­get pro­pos­als to gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing cost es­ti­mates and up­grade plans.

De­spite lim­it­ed re­sources, UWI pri­ori­tised and ex­e­cut­ed “crit­i­cal re­pair works and se­cu­ri­ty en­hance­ments” in prepa­ra­tion for a phased re­open­ing. The uni­ver­si­ty con­firmed that restora­tion of key build­ings such as the Aca­d­e­m­ic Build­ing, Stu­dents’ Union, Au­di­to­ri­um/Moot Court, Health Fa­cil­i­ty, Cafe­te­ria and Gym­na­si­um has been com­plet­ed “to a high stan­dard,” and those ar­eas are “ready for oc­cu­pa­tion.”

While the South Cam­pus was ini­tial­ly in­tend­ed to house the Fac­ul­ty of Law, protests from staff and stu­dents in 2017 led to a 2018 de­ci­sion not to re­lo­cate the fac­ul­ty. UWI has since shift­ed its fo­cus to the de­vel­op­ment of a Glob­al School of Med­i­cine (GSM).

The fa­cil­i­ty, large­ly com­plet­ed in 2019, was tem­porar­i­ly re­pur­posed as a step-down med­ical fa­cil­i­ty dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Up­on its re­turn to UWI in May 2022, the cam­pus was found to be in need of ur­gent re­pairs.

The GSM will cater main­ly to in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents as ap­proved in 2021 by the Uni­ver­si­ty Coun­cil. This move is part of UWI’s broad­er “Triple A” strat­e­gy – Ac­cess, Align­ment and Agili­ty – and aims to boost the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment through “in­creased ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion, med­ical ser­vices, in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­bil­i­ty and for­eign ex­change earn­ings.”

The South Cam­pus will al­so sup­port se­lect­ed pro­grammes from the Fac­ul­ties of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, Food and Agri­cul­ture, En­gi­neer­ing, Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion, and Med­ical Sci­ences. These of­fer­ings are in­tend­ed to pro­vide greater ac­cess to stu­dents from South and Cen­tral Trinidad who may not be able to at­tend the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus.

UWI al­so sig­nalled open­ness to fur­ther dis­cus­sions about the pos­si­ble in­clu­sion of the Fac­ul­ty of Law in the cam­pus’s fu­ture of­fer­ings and con­firmed that UWI-ROYTEC will be housed at the South Cam­pus.

Restora­tion of key aca­d­e­m­ic spaces has been com­plet­ed,  while work on non-aca­d­e­m­ic fa­cil­i­ties such as the ten­nis courts, crick­et pavil­ion and swim­ming pool will pro­ceed as fund­ing be­comes avail­able. A land­scape main­te­nance con­tract is cur­rent­ly at the ten­der stage.

The uni­ver­si­ty said in­fra­struc­ture chal­lenges are not unique to the South Cam­pus. “The UWI St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus it­self is al­so man­ag­ing the re­al­i­ties of an ag­ing in­fra­struc­ture,” the state­ment read. “The Uni­ver­si­ty must bal­ance its com­mit­ment to aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence with the fis­cal lim­i­ta­tions of main­tain­ing and mod­ernising its phys­i­cal as­sets.”

De­spite re­duc­ing costs by ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$300 mil­lion over re­cent years and pur­su­ing en­tre­pre­neur­ial strate­gies, UWI stressed that gov­ern­ment sup­port re­mains “crit­i­cal to ful­ly op­er­a­tionalise the fa­cil­i­ty as a hub for high-qual­i­ty, in­ter­na­tion­al-stan­dard ed­u­ca­tion.”

UWI reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to trans­paren­cy and en­gage­ment with key stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing. A me­dia walk­through of the South Cam­pus is be­ing planned for a lat­er date, fol­low­ing a re­cent pre­lim­i­nary site vis­it that was not in­tend­ed for pub­lic or press par­tic­i­pa­tion.