Five ladies in academia

In higher educational institutions of the British tradition, one of the highest levels of recognition for academic achievement is to be appointed as a professor.

For example, at the University of the West Indies (UWI), professorships are conferred on persons who have “a record of distinguished original work; have achieved “outstanding success in, and wide recognition of professional activities; and who have enhanced the reputation of the university in their field of work.”

The post of dean of a faculty within a university carries both academic and administrative responsibilities of great magnitude. It is through the office of the dean of a faculty that the academic policies of a university are implemented. The dean generally has overall responsibility for academic and administrative staff, students and financial management of the faculty.

Although the student body at the UWI, Mona Campus, consists of a majority of females (some 71% in 2001-2002), the gender distribution among teaching staff is male-dominated. Of a total of 574 teaching staff (regular and temporary), 261 (45%) are female and 313 (55%) are male. There are currently some 61 professors, of which only 13 (21%) are women, two having attained senior administrative posts.

Four (31%) of these female professors – Celia Christie-Samuels, Fay Durrant, Helen Jacobs and Carolyn Cooper – are past students of St Hugh’s High School (SHHS).

At the University of Technology, SHHS past student, Carrol Ann White, is dean of the Faculty of Health and Applied Sciences.

In recognition of their achievement in academia, the St Hugh’s Past Students’ Association (SHPSA) will be honouring these five ladies during the SHPSA Annual General Meeting, to be held on Thursday, September 26, 2002.

All Woman presents a brief profile of each of these ladies.

Dr Celia Christie- Samuels is Professor of Child Health and Head of the Child Health Section in the Faculty of Medical Sciences, UWI. She holds a Doctor of Medicine in Paediatrics from UWI and a Masters degree in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. She has pursued post-doctoral fellowships in paediatrics, infectious diseases and epidemiology, molecular epidemiology and hospital infection control.

Christie-Samuels has written extensively in her field and her research on the reduced efficacy of a vaccine after an epidemic of whooping cough among immunized children in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, has led to a change in whooping cough vaccine policy in the USA.

“My best years were those spent at St Hugh’s,” she says, “and between 1965 and 1971 made lifelong friends.”

Professor Carolyn Cooper is professor in the Department of Literatures in English at the University of the West Indies. She gained the Jamaica Scholarship in 1968 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts at UWI and a Master of Arts and Doctorate in Philosophy in English from the University of Toronto. Her writings have been significant on the study analysis of the forms of language idioms and social meanings of Jamaican popular culture. She has spearheaded the Reggae Studies Unit in the Institute of Caribbean Studies at UWI.

Cooper-Gutzmore says that her love of language was nurtured at St Hugh’s where she did French, Spanish, Latin and German and this made her more determined not to, ‘dash weh’ her mother tongue, Jamaican. Carolyn is married to Cecil Gutzmore, a social science lecturer.

Professor of Library and Information Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Education at the University of the West Indies, Fay Durrant-Payne attended St Hughes from 1956 to 1962. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish with Honours from UWI, a Bachelor of Library Science from the University of Toronto and a Masters in Library Science from Syracuse University. She has worked as a consultant to various regional and international organizations including UNESCO, CARDI, FAO, and CARICOM.

Durrant-Payne is married to marketing consultant, Phillip Payne.

Dr Helen Jacobs is professor in the Department of Chemistry in the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences, UWI. She has a Bachelor of Science degree with First Class Honours in Chemistry and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Organic Chemistry, both from the University of the West Indies. Jacobs has held many appointments at Universities in the Americas and has made an indelible mark in Guyana, where, between 1983 and 1987, she headed a programme that established a self-sustaining centre for natural products chemistry at the University of Guyana. She transferred to St Hugh’s in 1965 from St Hilda’s and boarded in the hostel until she left sixth form in 1971.

Carrol Howell-White is the first Dean of the Faculty of Health and Applied Sciences at the University of Technology. She was granted a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry and Applied Chemistry from the University of the West Indies in 1969. She also holds a Master’s degree in Business and Education as well as Post-Graduate professional diplomas and certificates. Carrol is currently pursuing a doctoral programme at the University of Bath, England.

Her professional life has been dedicated to the education of others and she is an active participant in the school’s past students’ association, and served on the executive from 1970-73.

She is married to Ryan White for 32 years and is the proud mother of Diahann and Craig. She spends hours pursuing her hobby of photography, and her favourite subjects are her two grandsons, Julian and Rainier.