Nigel Teles­ford

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Every stu­dent en­ter­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) from Sep­tem­ber will grad­u­ate with more than a de­gree. They will al­so be ex­pect­ed to leave with a deep­er un­der­stand­ing of who they are, where they come from and the coun­try they will one day help shape.

In what uni­ver­si­ty of­fi­cials de­scribe as “one of the most sig­nif­i­cant changes to the un­der­grad­u­ate ex­pe­ri­ence since UTT was es­tab­lished more than two decades ago,” the in­sti­tu­tion has in­tro­duced a com­pul­so­ry foun­da­tion course in the His­to­ry and Cul­ture of T&T for every new un­der­grad­u­ate.

For as­sis­tant vice pres­i­dent of Un­der­grad­u­ate Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Solange Kel­ly, the ini­tia­tive is about prepar­ing a gen­er­a­tion of young peo­ple with a stronger sense of iden­ti­ty be­fore they en­ter the pro­fes­sion­al world.

At the launch of the ini­tia­tive last week, she said:

“Be­gin­ning with our Sep­tem­ber 2026 in­take, every UTT un­der­grad­u­ate will en­gage with the his­to­ry and cul­ture of this coun­try as a grad­u­a­tion re­quire­ment.

“We are, quite de­lib­er­ate­ly, teach­ing our stu­dents who they are: their iden­ti­ty, their DNA, the long and lay­ered in­her­i­tance that shaped them be­fore they ever set foot in a UTT class­room.”

Kel­ly said the pro­gramme has de­lib­er­ate­ly moved away from treat­ing his­to­ry as lit­tle more than dates and ex­am­i­na­tions.

“This course will not be de­liv­ered as a recita­tion of dates and events. It will be built on dis­cus­sion. We will look at our his­to­ry to­geth­er, sit hon­est­ly with its beau­ty and its dif­fi­cul­ties, and ex­tract from it the val­ues that will de­ter­mine our way for­ward as a uni­ver­si­ty, and as a na­tion. Be­cause the most un­stop­pable peo­ple on this earth are a peo­ple who know who they are,” Kel­ly said.

Act­ing UTT pres­i­dent, Pro­fes­sor Re­an Ma­haraj, said the new course re­flects UTT’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as the coun­try’s na­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty.

“To­day’s launch is about far more than in­tro­duc­ing a new course in­to our cur­ricu­lum,” he ex­plained.

“It is about af­firm­ing the role of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go as the na­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty and recog­nis­ing that the ed­u­ca­tion of our stu­dents must ex­tend be­yond tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence to in­clude an un­der­stand­ing of the na­tion they will serve.”

Pro­fes­sor Ma­haraj said pro­duc­ing grad­u­ates with tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise alone is no longer enough.

“As the na­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty, our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is not sim­ply to pro­duce en­gi­neers, teach­ers, pi­lots, mar­itime pro­fes­sion­als, sci­en­tists, en­tre­pre­neurs or artists. Our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to pro­duce grad­u­ates who un­der­stand Trinidad and To­ba­go: its his­to­ry, its di­ver­si­ty, its achieve­ments, its chal­lenges and its as­pi­ra­tions.”

Ac­cord­ing to Ma­haraj, every stu­dent, re­gard­less of dis­ci­pline, will ben­e­fit from un­der­stand­ing the coun­try’s jour­ney.

He added: “What I find par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant is that this course does not sim­ply ask stu­dents to mem­o­rise his­tor­i­cal events. It chal­lenges them to think crit­i­cal­ly about how his­to­ry shapes iden­ti­ty, in­flu­ences pub­lic pol­i­cy, strength­ens com­mu­ni­ties and in­forms our col­lec­tive fu­ture. It en­cour­ages re­flec­tion, di­a­logue and un­der­stand­ing, qual­i­ties that are es­sen­tial for re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship in any pro­fes­sion.”

Ma­haraj said the course is in­tend­ed to leave a last­ing im­pact on gen­er­a­tions of grad­u­ates.

“’A peo­ple with­out the knowl­edge of their past his­to­ry, ori­gin and cul­ture is like a tree with­out roots. To­day, through this course, UTT is help­ing to strength­en those roots.”

He added: “For a na­tion that un­der­stands its his­to­ry, val­ues its cul­ture and in­vests in the ed­u­ca­tion of its peo­ple is a na­tion that is well equipped to imag­ine, in­no­vate and build a more pros­per­ous, in­clu­sive and re­silient fu­ture.”

Ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the board of gov­er­nors, Pro­fes­sor Sel­wyn Cud­joe, de­scribed the in­tro­duc­tion of the course as the next stage in UTT’s evo­lu­tion.

“Now that the pil­lars have been put in place over the past 20 years, we are mov­ing on to an­oth­er step in our on­ward march to de­vel­op­ing our uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem: that is, cre­at­ing a manda­to­ry course on the his­to­ry and cul­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go to strength­en what we have been do­ing in the past,” Cud­joe said.

“In in­tro­duc­ing this course, we are not mov­ing away from our orig­i­nal man­date. We are sim­ply deep­en­ing the roots of what a uni­ver­si­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go is sup­posed to do.”

Cud­joe said un­der­stand­ing T&T is fun­da­men­tal to be­com­ing an ed­u­cat­ed cit­i­zen.

“We took a bold step to­day. We con­tend that one can­not de­fine him­self or her­self as an ed­u­cat­ed Trin­bag­on­ian un­less one knows some­thing about the his­to­ry and cul­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go and this is part of the trans­for­ma­tion ini­ti­at­ed and en­cour­aged by the present Gov­ern­ment and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar her­self,” he said.

He said coun­tries around the world con­tin­ue to draw on their his­to­ry while prepar­ing for the fu­ture.

“... A peo­ple is its his­to­ry and its cul­ture. You might crit­i­cise the so­ci­ety but you must know some­thing about it if you are to serve it well.”

De­vel­oped by Dr Sha­hee­da Ho­sein, Dr Kela Fran­cis and Dr Melisse Thomas-Bai­ley El­lis, the course in­tro­duces stu­dents to the ma­jor his­tor­i­cal, cul­tur­al and so­cial de­vel­op­ments that shaped T&T and ex­plores how those ex­pe­ri­ences con­tin­ue to in­flu­ence the na­tion to­day.

Es­tab­lished in 2003 un­der found­ing pres­i­dent Pro­fes­sor Ken­neth Julien, UTT was cre­at­ed to ex­pand ac­cess to high­er ed­u­ca­tion while sup­port­ing na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment through sci­ence, en­gi­neer­ing, tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion.