Five members of the UWI academic staff will on October 24, 2007 receive the coveted Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence for academic year 2006/2007, during a special ceremony at the Cave Hill Campus. Dr Tomlin J. Paul, Lecturer in the Department of Community Health and Psychiatry, Mona and Dr John Campbell, Lecturer in the Department of History at the St Augustine Campus will receive the Award for excellence in teaching, while for outstanding accomplishments in research the awardees will be Professor Susan P. Walker of the Tropical Medicine Research Institute (TMRI) at Mona and Professor Alvin O. Thompson from the Department of History and Philosophy at Cave Hill. The fifth individual to be honoured is Professor Pranay Chaudhuri, Head of the Department of Computer Science, Mathematics and Physics at the Cave Hill Campus, for all-round excellent performance in research and service to the University community. No individual awards will be given for the categories of Service to the University Community and Public Service; also no awards will be made to members of the Senior Administrative Staff or to the Professional Staff category.

Dr Tomlin Paul, an alumnus of The University of the West Indies, has been teaching in the Department of Community Health and Psychiatry (formerly, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine), Faculty of Medical Sciences at Mona, since 1988. Dr Paul is not only an excellent teacher, but remarkable in his command of a diverse range of subjects, including primary health care, epidemiology, health services management, health promotion, ageing and family medicine. In recent years he has added a focus on curriculum development, quality assurance and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Dr Paul’s prowess as a teacher is acknowledged and validated by his students as he has consistently achieved excellent student evaluations; on one occasion in 2006, receiving the maximum possible rating. In that same year, he was awarded the UWI/Guardian Life Award for excellence in teaching.

Dr John Campbell, who is also a UWI alumnus, began his teaching career at the Mona Campus in 1999, immediately after completing PhD studies at Cambridge University, and later transferred to the St Augustine Campus in 2003. Dr Campbell is passionate about teaching – to the extent that he has written down his ‘teaching philosophy’ which, he says, is grounded in and shaped by his own schooling experience. Not surprisingly, underpinning his philosophy is a student-oriented approach which maintains high standards of work expectation and, at the same time, full enjoyment of the courses he delivers. He is known as an innovator and has introduced many ‘firsts’ into the classroom experience at St Augustine, such as use of online library research as a compulsory component of his course on Caribbean Civilisation and the use of ‘table marking’ for the evaluation of large classes. Ultimately, the best judge of his prowess lies in the accolades from his students. It became a practice for students who had already completed his courses, to ‘sneak’ into the lecture halls to hear current lectures. And, for the first time in the history of the University, students advocated for and created a voluntary academic club based on his Caribbean Civilisation course. Dr Campbell was recipient in 2006 of the Guardian Premium Teaching Award.

Professor Susan Walker joined the Tropical Metabolism Research Unit of the Tropical Medicine Research Institute (TMRI) in 1985 on her return to Jamaica from studies in the UK and, through her pioneering work over the years, has garnered the reputation of being a worldwide authority on the impact of nutrition and health on the growth and development of children. She is the lead or co-author of 73 publications in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals such as The Lancet, the British Medical Journal and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In addition, she has published twelve book chapters, four Technical Reports and numerous abstracts in regional and international professional publications. In recognition of the high quality of her work, she received tenure in 1990, was made a Senior Lecturer in 1995 and promoted to Professor of Nutrition in 1999, one of the youngest professors to be appointed by the UWI. Her recognised expertise in child nutrition has resulted in her being invited to give lectures at international conferences the world over. More significantly, the research conducted by Professor Walker and her team has influenced new policy directions of organisations such as the WHO, UNICEF and the World Bank and findings from these studies have also been taken up into policy by Jamaica and other Governments in the region. Professor Walker currently heads the Child Development Research Group within the Epidemiology Research Unit, TMRI. The quality of the team’s work was recognised by the UWI Mona Campus with the award in 2006 of the Principal’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Public Policy.

Professor Alvin Thompson, Professor of History in the Department of History and Philosophy at Cave Hill is a UWI alumnus and a Super Lion (i.e. a 2005 inductee into the Hall of Fame of Chancellor Hall, UWI Mona). His selection for the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in the category Research Accomplishments is based mainly on his prolific research and publication record. In the past five years, Professor Thompson has produced six books, four of which he is the sole author, the fifth he edited and the sixth being a compilation of historic documents. In addition, he has authored a number of scholarly papers and served with distinction as editor of the Journal of Caribbean History. Owing to his highly efficient editorship, the Journal was rescued from a four-year lapse in publication to reclaim its position as one of the leading international journals in the field. Professor Thompson’s outstanding achievements in research and publication has gained him a reputation as one of the most prolific and highly respected historians working in the Caribbean today. In recognition of this, Professor Thompson was an inaugural recipient of the Cave Hill Principal’s Award for Excellence in scholarly research and publication in 2005.

Professor Pranay Chaudhuri was appointed Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Computer Science, Mathematics and Physics in the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences, Cave Hill Campus in 2000, following a successful academic career over the period 1984 – 2000 at Universities in India, Australia and Kuwait. Since becoming Head of the Department in 2001, Professor Chaudhuri has completely restructured the Computer Science programme at UWI Cave Hill, bringing it up to international standards. He was instrumental in introducing or restarting Certificate and Diploma courses in Information Technology, which have proved very popular and have generated additional income for the Department. He spearheaded the quality assurance review of all the disciplines in the Department and was part of the review team for quality assurance review of the Computer Science programme at Mona. In partnership with the corporate sector in Barbados, Professor Chaudhuri initiated an internship summer job attachment programme for Computer Science/IT students and also launched in 2003 a very successful internship programme as an option in the undergraduate Computer Science course. Under his leadership seven new full-time academic posts have been secured for his Department, in response to the increased demand for CS and IT courses. Postgraduate enrolment has also increased significantly and this academic year saw the launch of a new taught Masters programme in E-Commerce.
Professor Chaudhuri also boasts outstanding research accomplishments, with twenty-three high quality research publications over the last five years. These include one co-edited book, two book chapters, ten refereed international journal publications and ten refereed presentations to international conferences. The three PhD students he supervised over this period completed their degrees in a very timely manner, one receiving high commendation.

These five outstanding UWI academics join 62 other recipients of this prestigious Award since the inaugural presentation of The Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in 1994. The University of the West Indies will continue to encourage and reward excellent performances by staff – whether from the academic, senior administrative or professional categories and each year the competition is keenly contested.