Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) grad­u­ate Faith Wil­son, who suf­fers from cere­bral pal­sy (CP), says the re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tion made com­plet­ing her Mas­ter’s De­gree pos­si­ble by pro­vid­ing the as­sis­tance she need­ed.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on day one of the 2024 UWI St Au­gus­tine grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies on Thurs­day, Wil­son, who grad­u­at­ed with her de­gree in Oc­cu­pa­tion­al and En­vi­ron­men­tal Safe­ty and Health, said, “The Di­vi­sion of Stu­dent Ser­vices and De­vel­op­ment (SLDD) helps stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties to cope and ease their uni­ver­si­ty ex­pe­ri­ence.”

She said the SLDD made sure that stu­dents with learn­ing and phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties were ac­com­mo­dat­ed and en­sured there were not too many course clash­es.

Wil­son was di­ag­nosed with CP at a young age and while phys­io­ther­a­py helped im­prove her walk­ing, she said she still strug­gled with her mo­tor skills.

Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Neu­ro­log­i­cal Dis­or­ders and Stroke, cere­bral pal­sy (CP) refers to a group of neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders that ap­pear in in­fan­cy or ear­ly child­hood and per­ma­nent­ly af­fect body move­ment and mus­cle co­or­di­na­tion. CP is caused by dam­age to or ab­nor­mal­i­ties in­side the de­vel­op­ing brain that dis­rupt the brain’s abil­i­ty to con­trol move­ment and main­tain pos­ture and bal­ance. The term cere­bral refers to the brain; pal­sy refers to the loss or im­pair­ment of mo­tor func­tion.

“For me, it’s more so the phys­i­cal as­pect and I have shakes a lot, so I write a bit slow­er, I move slow­er and I walk a bit dif­fer­ent­ly,” she said of her con­di­tion.

Wil­son said her fam­i­ly en­cour­aged her to do as much as she could even with the dis­abil­i­ty, and that sup­port, com­bined with as­sis­tance from the UWI, showed her that the sky was the lim­it. She wants oth­ers with sim­i­lar dis­abil­i­ties to know the pos­si­bil­i­ties.

“I felt like I could ac­com­plish much even though it would not be sport-re­lat­ed or phys­i­cal­ly re­lat­ed. I def­i­nite­ly did what I could aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly,” she ex­plained.

She added that with in­creased aware­ness about peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and the sup­port they need­ed, there had been a pos­i­tive shift in the way they were treat­ed.

Al­so grad­u­at­ing with his PhD in Bio-Chem­istry was Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Dr An­drew Dhanoo. He ad­mit­ted that be­cause of his work in the as­so­ci­a­tion, it took longer for him to fin­ish his doc­tor­al de­gree but said it was worth it.

“I think that the grad­u­a­tion is more for the peo­ple who sup­port you and I am very hap­py that I’ve made it to the end I can do so much more now that I’ve com­plet­ed the PhD,” he said.

Dhanoo said “thank you” to his moth­er, who he said was his biggest ad­vo­cate.