HOW far ahead is St. Lucia in its plans to transform the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College into a university college campus?
The question is not readily answered although both past and present governments have given a commitment to either accelerate the process towards the establishment of the Sir Arthur Lewis University College, or upgrade the college to a university.
Both administrations are of the view that the challenges confronting St. Lucians seeking higher education makes this an urgent endeavour.
So far, however, it has been just all talk from the political directorate. In fact, Prime Minister Allen Chastanet noted in his party’s recent manifesto that the period 2007 – 2011, when his party was in power, much of the groundwork for the attainment of this objective was completed.
College principal, Olivia Saunders, will not be drawn into predicting a time-frame for the attainment of this objective, at least not yet, moreso now that the College’s Board of Governors has yet to sit since the change of government in June.
“I do not want to set a time for the move to a University College until we have had that conversation,” she said Thursday at a press conference, in reference to the Board which is expected to be in place within a few weeks.
However, she was quick to note that whatever the College does presently is in furtherance of ascertaining the university college status of “Sir Arthur”.
“We are moving towards becoming a university college,” Saunders said, noting that within the next 12 months ‘Sir Arthur’ should solidly be on its way to that objective.
Principal Saunders admitted that there will be challenges in attaining the university college status as some administrative and organizational tructures at “Sir Arthur” will have to be changed along with its operational policies.
“We want to become an institution that is well respected in the world,” she said.
One of the goals of ‘Sir Arthu’r as it limps towards university status is to implement five or more bachelor’s degree programmes by the next academic year and forge relations with other institutions of higher learning.
“There’s a number of institutions wishing to forge relations with us and we are pursuing all of them,” Saunders said, adding that the main issue is to have mutually beneficial relationships with institutions Sir Arthur partners with, citing the University of the West Indies as one of those institutions.
