The UWI Open Campus (St. Vincent Site) is looking to offer specially designed courses that are tailored to meet the needs of the Vincentian populace.
Head of Site Deborah Dalrymple, in an interview with the Agency for Public Information, explained this new community-based approach allows for the university to expand its scope by providing training in areas where there is a need or a demand locally.
Dalrymple, who has been the head of site for the past 11 years, noted that “the campus has to be more than where you go to get a degree, it has to bring with it a sense of responsibility for community so from the onset I tried to get that going through developing programs where we could reach out to the community.”
Dalrymple insists that the community must have this sense of confidence and partnership with the University so that “if we need training on how to load up a truck of sand, then we will offer a course on how to load up a truck with sand” and the University will keep reaching out to the community looking to “offer our own programmes to our own people that is not on a list anywhere”.
Additionally, other activities such the renaming of the UWI special lectures in recognition of prominent Vincentians who made a contribution is part of bridging the gap between the community and the University where they feel a sense of unity; the Sir Dwight Venner’s Independence Memorial Lecture and the Oscar Allen’s Emancipation Memorial lecture are examples of this new thrust.
The University’s Open Campus has over seven hundred (700) students registered in both undergraduate and postgraduate studies.