Dr Haldane Davies officially goes into the president’s chair at University of the Commonwealth Caribbean (UCC) today, eager to implement a number of projects that, he expects, will not only expand the institution but increase its reputation and influence here and across the region.

Among them is a programme designed to develop high-quality public managers, something with which he is very familiar, having chaired the National Certified Public Manager Consortium in the United States.

“It’s a programme that is across the United States; it’s sort of similar to the UK civil service college, where we prepare public officers for further roles to serve as permanent secretaries, directors, department heads… about the running of government,” Dr Davies told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview.

“We are in the process of establishing such an entity here at UCC that would allow us to have a similar type programme, not only for Jamaica, but the rest of the Caribbean region,” added Davies, who revealed that he led the development of such a programme in the US Virgin Islands — his home country — and operated it for the last 10 years. “But I’ve passed it on to others now and I want to be able to see something similar established here in Jamaica as we as we move forward.”

Information on the National Certified Public Manager Consortium website states that the idea emerged in the early 1970s at the University of Georgia with the realisation that the state was experiencing explosive growth in information and knowledge, significant new social legislation, and rapidly altering social values.

Eventually the consortium was developed in 1980 with the completion of its constitution and since then the certified public manager programme has expanded across the United States, having initially been in operation in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Vermont.

Davies had pointed to the development of the programme after being asked what, typically, would the UCC graduate of 2025 be like.

“Our graduates will be resilient-ready, and they will be innovative, they will be able to think, not only critically, but they will be able to take strategic risks, being able to analyse what the risks are, and to look at the benefits, to look at the challenges, and to see what will be best for them; that’s what we want to see from the UCC graduate,” he told the Observer.