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Five Promoted to Rank of Professor

The University of the West Indies, Mona is pleased to announce the promotion of five members of staff to the rank of Professor. They are Senior Lecturers in the Tropical Medicine Research Institute, Dr. Michael Boyne and Dr. Colin McKenzie; Senior Lecturer in the Department of Community Health and Psychiatry, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Dr. Maria Jackson; Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities & Education, Dr. Matthew Smith and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics and Associate Dean (Graduate Studies) in the Faculty of Social Sciences, Dr. David Tennant.

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A Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, (FRCPS), Canada, Dr. Michael Boyne holds the Bachelor of Science and the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery from The University of the West Indies, Mona.  On graduation, he entered the Internal Medicine Residency Programme at the University of Virginia securing the Diplomate from the American Board of Internal Medicine. This was followed by a Fellowship in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, after which he was awarded the Diplomate from the American Board of Medical Specialties. During this fellowship, he also obtained a graduate degree in Business of Medicine at John Hopkins University.  

Michael Boyne joined the staff of The UWI, Mona in 2000 as Lecturer in Endocrinology in the Tropical Medicine Research Institute. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2006.

Over the period, Michael Boyne has established a record of distinguished original work in the field of the developmental origins of health and disease and diabetes research.  This effort has made a substantial contribution to understanding the impact of maternal and early development factors in determining susceptibility to type 2 diabetes and obesity. 

Research conducted by the newly-appointed professor has demonstrated that deficiencies in nutrition during early childhood and pregnancy have serious as well as enormous health care and public health implications. The long-term potential impact of severe malnutrition in childhood (i.e. Kwashiorkor and Marasmus) on cardiovascular risk factors are novel and unique. In making these connections, Professor Boyne has contributed significantly to knowledge of the developmental origins of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases particularly in Afro-Caribbean populations. 

Professor Boyne has also done important work on the role of early nutrition on insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance in adult life as well as the relationship between early puberty and cardio-metabolic risk factors in girls. He has also been able to relate intra-uterine factors, childhood growth and hormones (such as cortisol and adiponectin) to cardiovascular risk.  

His excellent work has seen him receiving the Principal’s Award for Best Research Publication for two consecutive years (2010-2011). He has also received grants as principal investigator and acted as co-investigator on several large research grants. He has initiated several international collaborations, including with the University of Southampton and the Liggins Institute, New Zealand, Johns Hopkins University, Loyola University and Kings College, London.   

Professor Boyne is a well-respected teacher, having taught at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels in endocrinology and nutrition, engaged in clinical teaching in the MBBS programme as well as in the supervision of DM candidates.  He has also served as faculty advisor and as reviewer for a number of peer-reviewed journals. 

He has served as President of the Caribbean Endocrine Society, in several areas of responsibility in the Association of Consultant Physicians, and as member of the editorial board of the West Indian Medical Journal. Further, Professor Boyne has acted as reviewer for several prestigious internal journals.

Dr. Maria Jackson joined the staff at The UWI, Mona in 1997 as a Research Fellow in the then Section of Child Health and later as a Lecturer in the Department of Community Health and Psychiatry. As a result of her distinguished work in research she was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2007. 

Professor Jackson has conducted nutritional epidemiological studies, an area of epidemiologic research in which the role of diet and nutrition is examined in health and disease.  Her work in Jamaica and elsewhere quantifies the risk of dietary and nutritional factors in obesity, prostate cancer and other conditions.   

She has published studies that examine overweight and obesity in early adolescence in Jamaica and extended her investigations to adult populations of African origin in Cameroon, Jamaica and the UK.  In her study of diet and prostate cancer, Professor Jackson included nutritional biomarkers (constituents in blood or urine) to improve estimates of the contribution of diet to prostate cancer risk.   She forged international collaborations with a highly esteemed cancer research institute in the USA to examine genetic factors that influence the development of prostate cancer.  thereby enhancing her international reputation and that of the UWI.   She has contributed to iron deficiency research, in which she investigated iron supplementation in pregnancy and developed an instrument to evaluate habitual dietary intakes of adults in Botswana.  

She has authored several technical reports with policy implications for local, regional and international organizations and has been a reviewer for several scientific journals. Her work has been published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals and was awarded The Principal’s Research Award for the Most Outstanding Researcher / Research Activity in 2012; The Principal’s Research Award for the Best Research Publication (Article) – 2004; 2013 and The Principal’s Research Award for the Project with the greatest multidisciplinary /cross faculty collaboration in 2014.   She has mentored medical and other students who have received research awards at local and international conferences.   

Professor Jackson has served as an editorial board member for Ethnicity and Health, a corresponding member of Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Project (WHO, Gates Foundation and World Bank):  Nutrition Expert Group  and a member of the African-Caribbean Cancer Consortium (AC3) Research Review Committee.

Professor Jackson is the coordinator of the 4th year Community Health rotation and supervises theses/ reports of fourth year MBBS students as well as graduate students.  She has served as an examiner of MSc, MPhil and PhD theses and is the coordinator of the department’s MPhil/ PhD (Public Health) programme. 

Professor Colin McKenzie holds the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degree with Honours from The UWI, Mona and the Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Oxford. He has been a member of staff of The UWI, Mona since 1992 as Research Fellow based at the TMRU, and advanced to the rank of Senior Lecturer in 2006.  

Dr. McKenzie is an outstandingly well published and respected scientific leader and collaborator in the areas of population as well as human genetics.  His specialization is in the field of chronic disease, in particular the contribution of genetic factors to health and disease. Over the years, he has engaged in international collaborations with colleagues in North America, to explore important genetic variability for diseases of special relevance to Africa, such as sickle cell disease. He has also collaborated with colleagues in the United Kingdom, for diseases such as hypertension which are common across all populations, but particularly problematic in Jamaica and the Caribbean.  His studies have provided important insight into genetic risk factors in chronic human disease in African derived population, and have played a major role in understanding the diseases susceptibility of these populations.

As a teacher, Professor McKenzie has contributed to the MSc Nutrition programme at the TMRI and to curriculum development for the MBBS and the Bachelor of Basic Medical Sciences (BBMedSci) programmes. He was the University Examiner for ‘Human Molecular Biology” and course coordinator and principal lecturer for the ‘Population Genetics’ course in the MSc programme  in Forensic Sciences. 

Other professional activities have centred on service to the University community   as non-Professorial representative to Academic Board, membership on the Board of the National Commercial Bank Insurance Company (NCBIC) Limited and on the Selection Committee for the Rhodes Scholarship for Jamaica. He has also served as reviewer for several journals such as the West Indian Medical Journal, Atherosclerosis, Biotechniques, the Cochrane Collaboration, Heart, the Journal of Human Hypertension, Molecular Genetics and Metabolism, Molecular Biology Reports, the Pan-American Health Organization, Caribbean Health Research Council (CHRC) dietary manuals for hypertension and for diabetes, and the Rhodes Trust.

Professor McKenzie has presented his research work at several academic regional and international conferences and produced some 51 manuscripts which have appeared in high impact peer reviewed journals, including one paper in the Lancet which has been cited 347 times, and several papers in Nature Genetics which has an impact factor of 35.2.

He has served as the principal investigator on several grants and secured a large number of grants from local and international agencies.

Professor Matthew Smith holds the Bachelor of Arts degree with First Class Honours in History and the Master of Science degree in Government (Political Theory and Comparative Politics) from The UWI, Mona Campus and the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Caribbean/Latin American History (Major) and US History (Minor) from the University of Florida.

He joined the staff of The UWI, Mona in 2002 as an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of History and Archaeology and was promoted to Lecturer in 2004 and Senior Lecturer in 2010.

Professor Smith is a widely respected academic and a leading scholar in Caribbean studies and social and political history, with specialization in Haitian Political and Social History.  His first major publication, Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934-1957, published in 2009, received international acclaim from leading scholars in the field. It was a 2010 co-winner of the Caribbean Studies Association’s prestigious Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Prize for best book on the Caribbean. Other awards include the Principal’s Award for Best Book Publication in the Faculty of Humanities & Education, Mona in 2010, the Principal’s Research Fellowship, and the Award for Most Outstanding Researcher in the Faculty of Humanities & Education. 

 His most recent book Liberty, Fraternity, Exile: Haiti and Jamaica After Emancipation has also been very well received, bridging, as it does, international and domestic political history in interesting and innovative ways. He is editor and co-editor of several other books and journal volumes. He has also published over twenty scholarly articles covering a variety of topics, ranging from analyses of Haitian political thought and Haitian historiography, to the country’s relationship with the wider Caribbean region as well as the issue of colour, race and class in Haiti.  

Professor Smith also has a well-established reputation as a teacher, responsible for lectures at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He has also functioned as University Examiner for history courses in the areas of the Americas.

 Further, he has an exceptional record of professional service.  He was Director of The UWI, Mona Haiti Initiative following the devastating earthquake experienced in that territory in 2010, crafting and executing plans on behalf of the Campus for assistance to Haitian university students, and the Haitian national library. Dr. Smith was also appointed by the vice chancellor to chair an Association of Caribbean Universities and Research Institutions (UNICA) Special Task Force on Haitian Education.

In addition, Professor Smith has served as president of the Haitian Studies Association, is a collaborator on the important Digital Library of the Caribbean online exhibition, Haiti: An Island Luminous, and Director of the UWI’s Social History Project. He is currently a member of the Editorial Board of Small Axe, and that of the Social and Economic Studies academic journals. He also serves on the Board of Museums and Archives of the Institute of Jamaica. 

Dr. David Tennant holds the Bachelor of Science degree with First Class Honours in Economics and Management from The UWI, Mona Campus, and the Master of Arts (M.A. Economics) in Development Finance with Distinction as well as the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Public Policy and Management from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.

He joined the staff of The UWI, Mona in 2002 as an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Economics and was promoted to Lecturer in 2004 and Senior Lecturer in 2009.

David Tennant is a well-established scholar in the field of Development Finance and his work and expertise in this area are recognized locally, regionally and internationally. He has done extensive research evidenced by the large number of research papers published in top elite journals such as World Development, Journal of Banking and Finance, and Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money. His work has also appeared in other respected journals such as Applied Economics, Applied Financial Economics and Journal of Economics and Business. 

Throughout his academic career, Professor Tennant has sought to address issues that are particularly relevant to the financing of development in Jamaican and other developing countries.  He has contributed to the literature on the role of financial markets in fostering economic growth and development, and the impact of the financial sector on growth in developing countries. He has made important contributions in the areas of financial crisis, stock market volatility, Ponzi schemes and bank fees and charges.  He has also focused on the impact of high levels of public indebtedness on a country’s development performance, with a focus on Small Island Developing States. 

David Tennant’s work has received acclaim within the academy, as he has been recipient of the Principal’s Research Day Awards for Best Publication in the Faculty of Social Sciences on four occasions and for Most Outstanding Researcher on two occasions. He also received the Principal’s Academic High Flyers Award in 2007.

Professor Tennant has an excellent record of academic programme leadership, teaching at both the undergraduate and post-graduate levels, restructuring six undergraduate and two postgraduate courses so as to address current issues affecting developing countries and developing a new postgraduate course – Applied Economic Research and Analysis.  He was part of the team that designed and launched the BSc degree programme in Banking and Finance and, as chairman of the Department of Economics’ Undergraduate Committee, developed and implemented a plan for the review of curricula, and teaching learning and assessment methodologies for all undergraduate Economics courses.

The newly appointed professor has a strong record of public and university service, having served as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies for the Faculty of Social Sciences and member of the Board of Commissioners of the Financial Services Commission, the Loans and Investment Committee of the Petro Caribe Development Fund, the Jamaica Survey of Living Conditions Steering Committee and the Government of Jamaica Steering Committee responsible for Reforming the Public Sector Pensions System


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