MONTEGO BAY, St James

Over 1,000 applicants are seeking enrolment at the Western Jamaica campus of the University of the West Indies, according to deputy principal Joseph Pereira.

Consequently, the tertiary organisation will expand its residential as well as academic capacity to meet the demand.

“We have just approved a new programme in digital media to start in the coming year exclusively here at WJC. Our desire is to see this campus offer unique programmes so that students all over the Caribbean will attend and reinforce the reality that we are the University of the West Indies, enjoying the benefits of interaction between students from all over the Caribbean,” he told the WJC’s inaugural co-curricular awards ceremony last Sunday.

Some 30 students were awarded for excelling in the non-academic aspects of university life at the ceremony held at the Jamaica Grandiosa hotel.

Pereira also said that the institution had recently introduced full programmes in alternative energy with courses in wind, solar and hydropower.

“The minister will be happy to know,” he quipped in reference to former energy minister Clive Mullings who gave the keynote address at the function.

Mullings who was shunted out of his ministry by Prime Minister Bruce Golding on Monday, encouraged the students to strive for excellence as nothing less would suffice to ensure a successful weathering of the economic recession.