The University of the West Indies, Mona

Welcome to the Department of Economics! As new and returning students, we recognize that your enrolment in our economics programme is a critical juncture in your lives. Our academic and well-equipped administrative staff will help you to navigate your way during your time with us and be a part of your positive life experience. Ensuring that our students possess the essential attributes of the distinctive UWI graduate is of first-order importance to us. We offer an eclectic mix of courses that will allow you to capitalize on your strengths and strengthen your weaknesses. We implore you to increase the depth and breadth of your existing reservoir of knowledge by completing courses that challenge you and allow you to entertain and digest different perspectives.

Embracing academic challenges is one way in which you can help to hone your critical thinking skills. Our lecturers endeavour to vivify learning and encourage students' engagement within their lectures and tutorials. These strategies align with our view that a teaching space is a valuable ecosystem in which the exchange of ideas forms a significant symbiotic relationship between lecturers and students. Of course, truancy from tutorials or lectures will not allow you to realize the benefits of this symbiosis. In essence, our commitment to excellence in teaching and learning deserves your commitment to extracting the benefits from our pedagogical approaches. Indeed, a key metric of the value-added nature of any academic programme is the feats and placement of its graduates. Historically, our graduates have been recipients of world-renowned awards such as the Rhodes, Commonwealth, and Fulbright scholarships. Many of our graduates hold high-level positions in, for example, government and the most dominant financial institutions in the Caribbean. You have, therefore, made the right choice.

Our department is committed to excellence in research and service to our Caribbean community. A part of our department's mission is to explore new frontiers of knowledge through academic studies that contribute to our understanding of the challenges of Caribbean societies and available remedies. We use different modes to disseminate the knowledge we garner from our research. Our annual West Indies Economic Conference (WECON) hosts world-renowned keynote speakers. WECON also provides a platform for local, regional, and international-based academics to present their research on salient policy issues. Our policy discussion fora allow us to engage the broader public in topical issues affecting Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean.

We crave for your participation in these research initiatives. Early exposure to our research milieu is an initial step in developing our graduates' research skills, who are active donors of knowledge in critical economic and political spheres. Indeed, as future leaders, you need to recognize that the present and ensuing economic challenges stemming from this pandemic present a plethora of research opportunities that you can exploit to delve into feasible solutions to improving different aspects of our Caribbean community. We strongly encourage you to seek opportunities to have fun and build and deepen your social capital during your time in the Department of Economics. There are many student-driven initiatives to allow you to interact with your peers in meaningful ways. Positive peer interactions can help you to, among other things, solve problems, cope with exam pressures, collaborate on outreach and class projects, and develop tolerance and respect for your peers. Your success in life is not only dependent on your academic feats but also on how you socially interact with your peers. Once again, welcome! Inquire, inspire, interact, and have fun!

Dr. Nadine McCloud-Rose
Head of Department