Guyanese Professor Stafford A. Griffith has been named as Interim Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Five Islands Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), located in Antigua and Barbuda.
According to a report published by UWITV, the public information and education service of the university, Professor Griffith will lead the campus for its initial year of operation.
His appointment became effective as of August 15th, 2019 and is to last until July 31st, 2020.
In September, the Cam-pus is expected to welcome its first cohort of students.
The UWITV report explained that it was established to provide a development platform for Antigua and Barbuda and will also function as a hub for the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and serve to expand UWI’s regional capacity in the delivery of higher education for the 21st century.
It is to begin with three schools—the School of Health and Behavioural Sciences, the School of Management, Sciences and Technology, and the School of Humanities and Education. The report added that approval of the regional university’s newest campus was announced by UWI Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, during a media conference on June 26th, 2019.
Professor Griffith previously served as Regional Director of UWI’s Office of Online Learning (OOL) since October 2017, Director of UWI’s School of Education, and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the Mona Campus from August 2012 to September 2017. “He has spent more than 35 years of his career at the professional and senior management levels in fields covering educational measurement and evaluation, programme planning and management, curriculum development, and teaching, the report noted.
It further said Professor Griffith is the holder of a Professorial Chair in Research, Measurement and Evaluation and his postgraduate qualifications consist of specialised study in research, measurement and evaluation, and curriculum development. He also holds an LLB degree and has completed graduate studies in the areas of Political Science and Development Studies.
In addition to academia, Professor Griffith’s career spans multiple roles, including Director of the USAID-funded Caribbean Centre of Excellence for Teacher Training (CCETT) headquartered at UWI’s Mona Campus, Pro-Registrar of the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC), having previously served the Council as Assistant Registrar as well as Head of a Project Unit; Consultant/National Coordinator of a World Bank and Ministry of Education Reform of Secondary Education (ROSE) Project, Jamaica; Director of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the UWI Institutional Strengthening Project; and Senior Education Project Manager of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Regional Development Office/Caribbean.
In addition, he has also served as a resource person in a number of regional and national curriculum development, teacher training and measurement and evaluation activities, and as a consultant to a number of regional and international institutions and organisations, including the Minis-try of Education (Guyana), the University of Guyana, CXC, the Norman Manley Law School (Jamaica), the Eugene Dupuch Law School (The Bahamas), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the United Nations Educa-tional Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), TECSULT International Limited (Montreal) and the Van Leer Foundation (Holland).
According to the report, Professor Griffith also boasts an impressive record of public service, research and scholarly work. He has served on a number of national boards, committees and commissions and currently serves as the Chairman of the Technical Advisory Committee of the CXC.