Dean of the Faculty of Science and Sport at the University of Technology (UTech), Dr Colin Gyles, says the institution continues to develop academic sport programmes that are aimed at ultimately assisting in sustaining Jamaica’s sporting capital.

Dr Gyles, in addressing reporters and editors at yesterday’s edition of the weekly Monday Exchange at the Observer’s Beechwood Avenue headquarters, noted that skills development across the essential planks of the sport infrastructure will lead to safeguarding its future.

“UTech has developed a sport programme of training athletes to world-class standard and this has been demonstrated in the successes on the international stage at the Olympics and the World Championships, but UTech has a vision of going much further than that,” he said.

“We want to develop sports professionals to support our successes in sport to ensure that these successes are sustainable and also to ensure that we have the professionals to develop athletes and to spread the success across the country,” Dr Gyles added.

Dr Gyle’s vision also embraces the delivery of these programmes even beyond Jamaica’s shores.

“We have established in the Faculty of Science and Sports, a Caribbean School of Sports Science, we call it this because we seek to reach out beyond the shores of Jamaica to train professionals in sports from the (wider) Caribbean as well,” he noted.

He said UTech has over the years established a number of sport elective courses, which include technical certification courses, Bachelor of Science (BSc) degrees in sports sciences and a Master of Science (MSc) in physical education and sports in collaboration with GC Foster College.

“The BSc has options in sport management, sport coaching, sport athletic training. Sport athletic training is really physiotherapy and conditioning. If one does a major in sport coaching, one would be able to major in two sports, so you would be trained at the highest level as a coach for two sports, and of course our flagship is track and field, so all the coaches would have some exposure to training in track and field.

“We recognise there is a great need for persons to manage clubs, manage facilities, management of events, and to manage all the other elements associated with delivery of successful sport programmes. All of these we deliver in the BSc sport science programme,” Dr Gyles explained.

In one area of technical certification, UTech has partnered with the Jamaica Football Federation to establish the “highly successful” JFF/UTech Coaching School, which offers courses in Advanced Level One and Two.

“(These courses are done) with the input of FIFA as well, and we are developing similar courses with the Jamaica Netball Association and other associations,” Dr Gyles said.

“One of the things we aim to do is not only to have degree courses, but short courses in association with the various sporting (bodies), so we can do short-term training,” he added.

In addition, the Faculty of Science and Sport has spearheaded a research programme in association with the University of Glasgow, plus there is work underway “to develop other masters programmes and ultimately PhD programmes”, Dr Gyles disclosed.

“There is a research programme going… and along this line we are seeking to train researchers locally, so in a nutshell that captures much of what we are doing on the academic front,” he stated.

Dr Gyles, who also serves as chairman of the curriculum committee at the JFF/UTech Coaching School, said contrary to widespread belief, developing the sport academic programmes did not come at a high cost as the university built “on what was already there”.

“When we speak of sport elective for example, that is not new. Sport elective has been on offer for a number of years. Many of the courses that we are offering now, there was already a structure in place that allows us to deliver these courses,” he outlined.

“We have used the little that we have to accomplish a lot,” Dr Gyles concluded.