UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES (UWI) vice-chancellor-designate Sir Hilary Beckles says he is keen to take up his new position, which is based at the Mona Campus in Jamaica.
But the Barbadian, who has headed the Cave Hill Campus for the past 12 years, said he would definitely not be staying in Jamaica every day, though he said the land of wood and water was his “second home”.
He told the SUNDAY SUN he would be focused on moving between the three campuses as he tried to bridge the perceived divide between the Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Jamaica physical campuses.
Speaking against suggestions that he wanted to remain in Barbados from which he would run the three campuses and the Open Campus, Sir Hilary said: “I will be relocating to the Vice-Chancery in Mona but I am not going to be there every day of the month. I am going to be spending a week at Mona, a week at St Augustine, a week at Cave Hill and do my best to have the vice-chancellor’s presence to help the principals tighten the governance.”
He dismissed suggestions that a new office was being constructed at Cave Hill for him.
“At the moment the vice-chancellor has an office in the building where I reside . . . . But I have been principal here for 12 years and as you would appreciate, it might be politic for the vice-chancellor to come out of the building and give the new principal a chance to fill out the building.
“If I am going to come out of the building to give the new principal a sense of ownership, where should I go? They have been looking around the campus to find a place where I can scotch.
“They thought of building on an addition to a current building, a little room somewhere, an extension, but we do not have the money to do that,” Sir Hilary said.
He added that a possible new home for him at Cave Hill was the Academy of Sports near the entrance to the campus, which will soon be moving into the new sports complex at The Lazaretto in Black Rock.
“So when they move out into their sports complex . . . the current sport academy building will be vacant. The sport academy people will move out into their new place so then we will have a little space to juggle with to see what we can do. It is what we are looking at . . . trying to find a little place to fit me in.”
Sir Hilary said he would make it his remit to bring the three campuses together.
“People believe they have drifted apart and that they need to be more strongly re-integrated. That is clearly going to be a principal remit . . . . And to do that I will need to spend a fair amount of time on all the campuses.”
