P.M. offers details of U.B. presidential shuffle

The rumours were confirmed by University officials earlier this week: that is the replacement of Dr. Corinth Morter-Lewis as President of the University of Belize. During his press conference this morning, the Prime Minister explained the rationale behind the decision.

Prime Minister Said Musa
“Let me say that I’ve had only but excellent relations with Dr. Corinth Morter Lewis. I was the one at the time as Minister of Education and Prime Minister who appointed her. We’ve enjoyed a very good relationship, but we felt, I felt, and the Minister of Education as well agreed, that the time had come for us to move ahead with working towards having a clearer picture, a vision of what we want to do with tertiary education in our country. As you know for instance, we are grappling right now with the standards of Associate degrees. Just yesterday I met with the Caribbean Examination Council and they had the CAPE project to replace the Cambridge and all that and that has been working successfully with several of the junior colleges, unfortunately not yet with the U.B., which is ironic and we are hoping that will be sorted out. The point I am making is there is a need for us to have a clear, coordinated position on higher education in our country and Dr. Lewis will be filling that spot, she will be heading a secretariat to work on that sort of a visionary planning process, whereas Dr. Mahung will come in as the president of U.B. And this was done very amicably, Dr. Lewis agreed. I just wanted to make that clear.”

Earlier this week, Chairman of the U.B. board Dr. Louis Zabaneh informed us that Dr. Santos Mahung would assume his post as President of the university in June.