Newly minted principal of The University of the West Indies, (The UWI) Mona Professor Densil A. Williams says his administration is set to embark on a number of transformational initiatives that are expected to boost the operational output and financial viability of the university.

Despite the university’s financial challenges, Williams stressed that there are opportunities in the internal and external environment that are waiting to be harvested. These will be achieved through the execution of key long-term and short-term initiatives.

“The UWI team at the Mona campus sees of these opportunities and having carefully analysed the environment within which we operate, we are ready to harvest those opportunities,” Williams said.

He was speaking at the university’s first press conference for 2024 on Monday, January 15, held at the Council Room, The Senate Building, UWI, Mona campus.

Among the short-term transformation goals is a re-centring of the operations of the campus to focus on the core business of the academy of teaching and learning, research, innovation and thought leadership.

“The financial issues of the past have really preoccupied us for a long time, but we have to get beyond those and ensure the campus continues to focus on building the relevant human capital to propel national, regional and global developments,” The UWI principal said.

“As we been through where we have a campus, we really have shared vision to become a global activist academy that works for people. Our mission as we dig through how the new ethos will work is really to become the knowledge powerhouse for human capital development for Jamaica and the wider world and to facilitate a national innovation ecosystem fit for a 21st century society and economy,” he added.

Another short-term goal is the restructuring of business processes at the campus in an effort to achieve greater efficiency and streamline revenue-generating areas on the campus, which is dubbed operation RTG (Restructuring Transformation Growth).

“We are also restructuring our balance sheet so that we can free up liquidity in the short term. We will have a specific press conference dealing with particular issue, so I don’t want to delve too much into that now but suffice to say we really hope that having restructured our balance sheet within the short term, we’re able to save at least J$400 million annually in terms of this new exercise,”

PROFESSOR DENSIL WILLIAMS

He further outlined a planned revamping of pricing and restructuring of general and commercial operation on campus, which he anticipates, should generate at least J$1 billion over the academic year 2024/2025.

“We are taking the time in academic year 2023/2024 to look very closely at our pricing mechanisms on the campus, pricing for our programmes, pricing for all the operations, the fees that we charge for commercial operations and we are going to make sure that we have enough appropriate pricing mechanism to keep us competitive in the market place,” Williams stressed.

There are also plans to monetise the physical assets on the campus to provide an immediate injection of cash into the university’s operation.

“For example, we have our housing stock in which we called College Commons, we intend to revitalise that particular area of our operation in terms of our physical infrastructure and based on the target areas, we are looking at that should save us another J$100 million annually, once we get this off the ground,” Williams explained.

In addition to the short-term goals, the university is looking towards the future with long-term initiatives to future enhance the institution. Among these are plans to establish a school of global health to meet the current demands in the global health arena.

“We are also looking at the knowledge process outsourcing operation generally we call it call centre but as a university we are going up stream and we are looking at knowledge process outsourcing in various areas. We are not only looking as a source of revenue for the campus but we are looking a way for our students to earn while they are learning as well. So, we are looking at things like legal process outsourcing, animation, we are accounting processes etc. We have our raw material here and those raw materials will now be suited and ready for knowledge process outsourcing,”

PROFESSOR DENSIL WILLIAMS

The university will be establishing a programme to offer short-cycle courses to cater to industry demand and skill enhancement.

“We will actually add on top of that, the mona credit and the mona credit will give the short-cycle course department the ability to actually use or transform those credits towards degree programmes at the appropriate time,” Williams explained.

An infrastructure fund will also be developed to complement the long-term and short-term goals of the institution to support athletes.

“Overall, the Mona campus is on a path for transformation so that we will build a stronger foundation for the next 70 years of our operation. As a campus, we are mindful of our role as a major player in the creation of human capital to support the national, regional and global development of our society, Therefore, we will position the campus using our skills and capabilities and due partnership with industries, the government and other players to ensure we facilitate balanced development for all,” The UWI Mona principal said.