Five members of the UWI academic staff will on October 24, 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.

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.

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.