THE University of the West Indies (UWI) recognised an entire department as well as four faculty members at its Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence Ceremony last week Monday.

The Department of Life Sciences in the Faculty of Science and Technology at the St Augustine Campus in Trinidad and Tobago is the first recipient of the newly implemented Vice-Chancellor’s Departmental Award for Excellence. Professor Jonas Addae from the Department of Preclinical Sciences at the St Augustine Campus was recognised for his accomplishments in teaching. Professor Simon Mitchell, head of the Department of Geography and Geology, and Professor Marvin Reid, director of

the Tropical Metabolism Research Unit, received the honour for their

research accomplishments, while Professor Hopeton Dunn, director of the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication, was honoured for his contribution to public service. All three are at the Mona Campus in Jamaica.

Since 1994, the UWI’s vice-chancellor has been recognising and rewarding outstanding performance by academic and senior administrative staff. In the 2012 to 2013 academic year, a departmental award for excellence was added, allowing for one annual award valued at US$10,000 to be made to any department, institute, section, site, research unit, or centre that clearly demonstrates the highest commitment to quality, to service and operational excellence.

On the announcement of this year’s awardees, Vice-Chancellor E Nigel Harris expressed his “heartfelt congratulations to this year’s recipients of the Vice Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence”.

“Together they represent the best that our university offers to our students, to new knowledge formation in diverse fields and to the communities in which we live. Their achievement is a reflection not only of what is best about our University but of what is possible in our West Indian societies as a whole,” he emphasised.

The event was held at Mona Visitors’ Lodge and Conference Centre at UWI, Mona.