Dr Saran Stewart received the award for her work with the Global Access to Postsecondary Education (GAPS) initiative established in 2013 on the principle that education is a basic human right.  The collaboration’s vast network spans 40 universities across 20 countries and advances the goals of inclusive education and global learning.

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 aims at ensuring equal access to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education by 2030. GAPS supports this goal but extends its focus to student preparation for, access to, enrolment in, and completion of postsecondary education. GAPS is an established global, engaged, and collaborative initiative focused on both access and success. It champions post-secondary education for all and transforms student opportunity. The GAPS initiative has taken deliberate steps toward core objectives which include building the scientific evidence base for increasing access to post-secondary education; investigating the type of organisational culture transformation required for a positive shift in student opportunity; creating awareness of inequities and promoting equality in access to technology; as well as promoting inclusive campuses, pedagogy and equal access to post-secondary education for minorities and indigenous peoples around the world.

Dr Saran Stewart, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities and Education, Mona Campus is a leading international scholar and practitioner focused on access, equity and inclusive education in higher education. In the GAPS initiative she co-leads the areas of inclusive education and pedagogy as well as access and success.  Since her involvement with GAPS, Dr Stewart has presented some 50 scholarly presentations including eight keynote addresses and lectures across 14 countries. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including an African Diaspora Emerging Scholar award by the Comparative and International Education Society; an International Scholars Award from the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Education and the Inter-American Development Bank; the Principal’s Award for Most Outstanding Researcher, Mona Campus, in 2017 and 2018; and a Salzburg Global Fellowship.
Dr Stewart has played a leading role in key outputs of the GAPS project: the development and publication of ‘Think Pieces’ featuring leading international scholars, as well as awareness campaigns rolled out across the 40 higher education institutions that make up the project’s network. GAPS has sponsored student participation in conferences and learning communities globally. Dr Stewart’s international work in access has resulted in two cohorts of UWI students sponsored for professional development institute programmes at the University of Denver and ECHO, Center for Diversity Policy in the Netherlands. One of The UWI students was granted a full scholarship for doctoral studies in Higher Education.