U.B. announces deal with North Dakota University

This morning, officials of the University of Belize gathered in Belize City for a press briefing designed to highlight the accomplishments of the educational institution and its plans for the future. According to President of U.B., Dr. Corinth Morter-Lewis, one of the centres of excellence of the school is its Natural Resource Management degree programme, supported by the Protected Areas Conservation Trust and the OAK foundation. Dr. Lewis maintains that progress in that area of research is integral to the country’s overall development. But another crowning achievement of the university didn’t start out in the classroom, rather the basketball court. Thanks to a memorandum of understanding signed between the University of North Dakota and U.B., local ballers will get a chance to earn a degree and rack up points on the scoreboard. We understand twelve Belizean students have already been recruited and their counterparts from the U.S. are scheduled to arrive in January. Today, Dr. Lewis told us how the programme will work.

Corinth Morter-Lewis, President, University of Belize
?They will be housed in dorms at the University, they will be mentored by a director of sports and coaches that we are hiring for that purpose. We have the required facility for them to train and over the next semester, these boys are going to receive the best of the best in terms of support for them to use their basketball skills. So they will have the opportunity to complete their education in whatever programme they are currently in, get their degree at the Associate?s or Bachelor?s level and at the same time we are giving them that added opportunity to develop their basketball talent. So those are two things that I think will be exciting, and not just for the University of Belize, but for the country because the team we are forming are boys who come from SJC, Ecumenical, from Muffles, from St. John?s College.?