The University of Guyana has announced the first in a series of public lectures which form part of the selection process for the next Vice Chancellor.
In a brief statement yesterday UG invited the general public to attend on May 14, the lecture which will be delivered from 6 to 8 pm Eastern Time (US and Canada) via Zoom Webinar by Professor Stafford Griffith, the Interim Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal, University of the West Indies (UWI) Five Island Campus.
Griffith is apparently one of the short-listed candidates. He has been interim Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the UWI Five Islands Campus located in Antigua and Barbuda since August 15, 2019.
The only other information provided is that the three other lectures will be conducted between the 14th and 21st of May.
Stabroek News has previously reported that a search committee was established by the university council on September 18, 2019 and was looking to have a Vice Chancellor in place before the beginning of the new academic year.
A few month earlier on June 7th, it was announced that VC Professor Ivelaw Griffith withdrew his request to renew his contract, which ended on June 14th. Since that time a transitional management team led by Professor Paloma Mohamed-Martin has been running the university.
University Registrar Nigel Gravesande had told this newspaper in an interview that the search committee would be advertising the position for two months to attract the widest possible variety of suitable persons from which five will be shortlisted.
He explained that the university would conduct a “process of due diligence” to establish the suitability of the five candidates who would spend months auditioning for the role of VC.
“They will be provided with a number of documents which give background into the university’s operations [and then participate in] comprehensive activities [such as] an interactive meeting with the Council and Academic Board as well as two public lectures; one at Tain and the other at Turkeyen and a face-to-face interview with the search committee,” Gravesande explained.
A University profile explained that Stafford Griffith previously served as Regional Director of the University’s Office of Online Learning (OOL) since October 2017, Director of The 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, according to the profile, 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 holder of a Professorial Chair in Research, Measurement and Evaluation, Professor Griffith’s 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, among them: Director of the USAID-funded Caribbean Centre of Excellence for Teacher Training (CCETT) headquartered at The UWI 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.
