Since the end of Ms. Olivia Saunders’ two-year tenure as principal of Sir Arthur Lewis Community College (SALCC) in January 2018, the island’s main tertiary institution has operated without a successor. Merle St. Clair currently serves as the Vice Principal. This week, education minister Gale Rigobert said her office should be in a position to announce a new principal “before the end of the month”.
Commenting on the long vacancy, she explained that SALCC is “at a very critical juncture at this point”, therefore fine-tuning of the recruitment process was important to the board and management “to ensure the best fit, especially at this time”.
Talk of a transition of the college into a university college has been ongoing for many years. Addressing this pertinent issue, Dr. Rigobert said that SALCC first needs to be a “very good college and any transition can only benefit from a strong foundation”. At this juncture, she says, SALCC recognizes it has to be responsive to the needs of the labour market and must position itself to provide the skillsets and graduates who will be poised to capitalise on emerging opportunities.
She stated that for the last few weeks the curriculum, packaging of subjects and associate degrees available have all been under intense scrutiny. Rigobert said it will be determined whether these areas need revisiting to ensure that SALCC “remains relevant, is responsive to the needs of the current labour market, and can anticipate the skillset that will be required, given some of the significant shifts in the global economy”.
Some of the shifts she cited are opportunities in areas such as robotics, digital media, and the green, blue and orange economy. Also, that students view SALCC as the preferred choice for their post-secondary education.
While Dr. Rigobert declared that there were “some exciting things” which will emerge shortly, exact details on a possible transition to a university college remain uncertain.
Last October Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI), said that UWI had for 20 years tried to persuade successive governments here to let them develop SALCC into a university college. In a subsequent interview with Dr. Rigobert last year, the minister said that she had “productive preliminary meetings” with representatives from UWI.
This week she said: “The conversations that we continue to have with UWI include how we can strengthen or expand the two-year offering programme that we have here, for the Social Sciences programme out of St. Augustine; with respect to the Teacher Education Department, in particular, whether we can transition from what is currently being offered as an associate degree to a first degree offering in partnership with UWI; and that teacher education has been earmarked as a potential partner for the delivery of a masters programme in education.”
She said there are also conversations about whether a UWI partnership can expand access that is affordable and responds to the needs of students.
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