Lavern Clarke, Business Editor
Vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies, E. Nigel Harris. - File
Professor E. Nigel Harris, vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI), is a career academic with a practical mind and the heart of a salesman.
In two years, he has diagnosed UWI as being desperately in need of modernisation, and has come up with a new blueprint for the regional institution to rebrand and reposition it as a centre of science and applied research whose innovations can be commercialised or otherwise leveraged to the university's advantage, as well as the economies it serves.
Contending with tradition
Harris has 50 years of tradition to contend with, but so far he seems to have struck the right diplomatic notes. Quietly, he has been fashioning a new team.
He has snatched back Professor Gordon Shirley from his ambassadorial posting in Washington to take up the post of principal at the Mona Campus in August, and created a new post of pro vice chancellor for planning and development, a position that will be taken up by Dr. Bhoendradatt Tewari, principal of the St. Augustine campus in Trinidad.
Jeremy Collymore, who ran the Caribbean Disaster and Emergency Response Agency (CDERA), will now head the new Regional Centre for Disaster Risk Reduction, created by Harris.
Time of opportunity
"It really willbe a time of opportunity," he said of the executive movements.
Harris is also in the process of setting up a consultancy company, financed by a Caribbean Development Bank grant of US$150,000 last September. The company will be a registered entity, whose job will be to sell to governments, agencies and companies, the expertise of the university community.
To now, the UWI's expert services have either been pro bono or sold on an ad hoc fee basis by individuals and departments.
On Monday, Harris felt constrained to note the irony that in setting up the consultancy company to sell the expertise of home-grown experts, he had to hire a consultant from overseas.
Last week, in Bridgetown, in the meeting rooms of the Barbados Hilton, Harris began rolling out his new five-year plan to the Caricom heads of government at their 28th annual summit, some of whom would have been the product of the institution.
In fact, in his sales pitch, Harris makes the point that numerous company executives and policymakers, as well as 14 past and current premiers and heads of state, were educated at UWI, tagging it as a glory, and in so doing tacitly acknowledging that others before him had contributed to the university's traditions.
New mandate
But the project-focussed vice chancellor has added a new mandate - buy-in from businesses as bigger sponsors of academic chairs and programmes, and as givers of much more charitable endowments.
He has already wooed big banker Michael Mansoor to head a new Capital Development Task Force, which will advise UWI on options for raising money. The name Arthur Lok Jack now fronts the Graduate School of Business at St. Augustine, following a $20 million donation in late 2005.
Here in Jamaica, the Digicel Foundation has also emerged as a big donor to the university. GraceKennedy sponsors at least two academic chairs, and various companies offer assistance.
But Harris believes he can build an even stronger bond with Corporate Caribbean, saying it really requires him selling them a vision of his mission and the value they will derive from sponsoring a university now intent on turning out 'work-ready graduates' who are steeped in problem solving, analysis and innovation.
Today, some 90 per cent of all regional scholarly work emanates from UWI's three campuses - Mona in Jamaica; St. Augustine Trinidad; and Cave Hill, Barbados. Harris, in discussions with senior journalists this week, made no comment on past criticism that Mona's research and publications, in particular, were heavily skewed toward the study of slavery.
Applied research
Instead, he noted St. Augustine's work on a new anthurium, and Mona's exploration of a tastier tilapia grown in salt water, and other applied research from which economic groups will eventually derive commercial benefit.
Not only has St Augustine now emerged as the larger campus in student enrolment, it is also ahead of Mona and Cave Hill in the number of students who choose to study applied and natural sciences.
UWI has also recently pulled off a first. After almost losing out on the opportunity, the university was commissioned by FirstCaribbean International Bank to do case studies of the merger that created the commercial bank in 2002.
This week, FirstCaribbean reported that 4,378 copies of the case study had been snapped up by worldwide universities.
Western campus to come
Harris' blueprint requires about US$300 million to expand infrastructure that includes a western campus in Montego Bay, and another US$300 million for reform of its academic programmes, the creation of a fourth 'virtual' campus.
The expansion of campuses and facilities is being pushed to accommodate student growth already being experienced across the three campuses.
Called UWI 2012: Strategic Transformation for Relevance Impact Distinctiveness and Excellence, or STRIDE, the plan not only diagnoses the problems and outlines objectives, but also sets out the actions and deliverables linked to specific timeframes.
Over the next five years, UWI projects a 51 per cent growth of student enrolment at Cave Hill, 58 per cent at St. Augustine and 29 per cent at Mona. For the institution, the average growth would be 46 per cent, but the projections exclude non-degree programmes at the three campuses, neither does it include the fourth campus.
Plans
To signal that he means business, Harris' plan talks about wealth creation, increasing the number of patents filed for new inventions, incentives and awards to staff who innovate, and building new revenues from the commercialisation of intellectual property.
Eventually, he hopes to put in place a UWI Venture Capital Fund "by the end of the plan period" in 2012.
STRIDE, some areas of which are already being executed, has four main planks.
The 'Teaching and Learning' component sees course delivery being centred on active learning, problem solving, new thinking and new forms of knowledge, and is project focussed with greater inclusion of technology.
The process requires curriculum reform, an area for which Tewari will have responsibility.
Source of expertise
Component two, 'Graduate Studies', is to become more research oriented and a source of specialised skills. Harris says his mission is to have companies tapping his graduate schools as a source of expertise for their businesses. The challenge is to direct enrolment into 'research-oriented' master's programmes, where subscription to full-time study has been "very modest", compared to the growth in enrolment in 'taught' master's programmes.
The third area, 'Research and Innovation', centres on the creation of new knowledge and inventions, while the fourth is the creation of a virtual campus, to be called the Open Campus of the University of the West Indies, which plans to start accepting applications in January 2008.
That timetable, however, rests with whether Harris is able to secure from the 12 territories without physical campuses, an agreement of the financial and other supportthey will give the 'virtual campus' which will have its own staffing and is to be overseen by a pro vice chancellor.
In fact, government buy-in is also an important element of the financing options that UWI is now contemplating for STRIDE. Its revenues are now 60 per cent of government grants, but Harris wants to reduce that to about 50 per cent in the next five years.
He sees potential income flows from UWI's enterprise programmes and corporate sponsorship, but also under contemplation is the raising debt on the capital markets, backed by government guarantee. A bond is under consideration.
Harris, when asked, did not give a direct reading on how tuition fees would be structured under STRIDE, and whether the programmes would be made more affordable. Instead, he reiterated a position he has enunciated before, that there needs to be a more responsive financial aid programme for students, run by agencies like the Student's Loan Bureau.
