UWI seeks Belizean alumni
If you are a graduate of the University of the West Indies, then the institution wants you…to join its Alumni Association. The first Annual General Meeting of the Belize Chapter the UWI Alumni Association is scheduled for Friday evening at the Radisson Fort George. Resident Tutor Luz Longsworth says this weekend’s reunion is the culmination of an effort that began last September to identify Belizeans who have passed through the institution over the last half century. Programme Officer in the university’s administration and special initiatives department, Francis Severin, says the university is up against the common belief that UWI and the impact it is making on regional development is the best-kept secret in the Western Hemisphere.
Luz Longsworth, Resident Tutor, UWI School of Continuing Studies
?The theme is vision relevance and excellence and so this is what the alumni would like to portray to the society.?
Patrick Jones
?How important is it for the Belize Chapter of the Alumni Association to be fully constituted??
Luz Longsworth
?Well, without being properly constituted then obviously we won?t be recognised. What has happened in the past with Belizean alumni of U.W.I is that we have fallen under the alumni in Jamaica. But Patrick we have hundreds of Belizeans who have graduated from UWI Mona Campus, St. Augustine and Cave Hill as well as right here form the School of Continuing Studies. We have the critical mass to be full fledged chapters. And in view of all of the developments with the CARICOM Single Market and Economy we feel that the Belizean alumni of U.W.I. are strategically placed to help Belize in moving forward in this new area.?
Francis Severin, Programme Officer, UWI Administration
?I can say that we are confident given the quality of alumni that we have that they have taken their rightful places all over. In fact we have six regional leaders, that is heads of governments, in addition to Governors General and Presidents, in fact I think your Governor General here as well, alumni of our University. So that shows you that we have in fact trained people in the political arena, in the business arena, well in the religious as well. So now the thing that we want to work on is to make the public aware of that because while these people are all about the place, very few of the rest of the public may be aware that they are the alumni of this University.?
Governor General Sir Colville Young, who is among the first Belizeans to graduate from UWI, will be the patron of the Association. During Friday night’s AGM the first executive will be elected. Guest speaker at the meeting will be the director of the CARICOM Climate Change Centre, Dr. Kenrick Leslie.
