UWI Five Islands, University of Toronto Move to Make Summer Programme Annual

The University of the West Indies Five Islands Campus and the University of Toronto are working to make their summer study abroad programme an annual initiative following the successful completion of its first staging in the Caribbean.

The three-week programme, hosted at UWI Five Islands in Antigua and Barbuda, focused on the course “Rethinking Crime, Law and Power in the Caribbean.”

The institutions are also seeking to renew their memorandum of understanding, which is expected to provide opportunities for exchanges involving students and faculty.

“This is really the beginning of resurrecting that,” a university official said. “Built into that MOU would be the capacity to have exchanges of students and faculty between the two universities.”

This year’s cohort included students studying pre-law, prison reform, criminology, public policy, computer science and mathematics.

Academics involved in the programme said the experience challenged students to reconsider their understanding of race relations, poverty, crime and dispossession.

“All, if not the majority of our students, have profoundly changed the way that they think about the nature of race relations [and] the nature of poverty,” one academic said.

The programme combined lectures and classroom discussions with field visits to Barbuda, Betty’s Hope, the Dennis Bowers Rehabilitation Centre and His Majesty’s Prison.

Officials said students were deeply affected by their experience in Antigua and Barbuda, with some already discussing plans to return independently for a reunion within the next two years.

The collaboration could also provide UWI Five Islands students with greater exposure to educational and social issues in Canada.

“Our geographic space and location, our economy, our culture is affected by the international world,” a UWI official said. “Having students being able to understand what happens in a country like Canada is a good start for us to ensure that we expand their knowledge base.”

The official also noted that the University of Toronto offers a diverse criminology curriculum that could support future academic cooperation between the institutions.

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