Afzal Mehdi, Additional Director at the American University of Barbados (AUB); Meesam Khan, Director at AUB; Senator Geoffrey Cave; and Minister of Education, Ronald Jones in attendance at a press briefingyesterday morning at Ministry headquarters.
BET building sold
Fri, 12/02/2016 - 12:00am
Education boost as American University of Barbados buys Wildey property
The recent purchase of the BET building in Wildey by the American University of Barbados (AUB) will further help to place this medical school as an institution of choice.
Speaking to the media yesterday at the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, Education Minister Ronald Jones gave a brief history of how this institution has progressed in Barbados.
“As you know, the American University of Barbados is just about five years old. It started in Wildey in one of the smaller spaces and it has grown from there to be now located at Lands- down in Silver Sands...
“…It was the first external medical institution to be established in Barbados. We [Ministry of Education] have walked with them and they have in fact responded quite well, both in the expansion of numbers and in the quality of its programmes in improvement of both domestic and foreign medical tutors and professors and lecturers, and that has augured well for the interest being generated now across many spaces in the world,” Jones stated.
He said that now that American students can receive grants to study, more and more persons can come to this island for medical education – not just at the AUB, but also at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus.
The Minister of Education further stated that he believes that this island has the capacity to rise up and meet the demands of these students.
Senator Darcy W. Boyce, Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister with respon-
sibility for Energy, Immigration, Telecommunications and Invest Barbados, agreed with Jones, stating that they have spent many hours discussing how they can turn education into a valuable source of foreign exchange and a mechanism for creating employment as he end result.
“You and I have spent many hours discussing how we recapture and improve the position that we once had in the Caribbean as a place for regional education as a means of educational tourism, and as a significant earner of foreign exchange and a creator of jobs.
“This transition is very important to us because of the significant growth that it represents in a major school because it cements our relationship with a major country in the world and a growing country and one that is going to be much more significant in the scheme of what we can do,” he added.