the UCWI

One December morning, a woman knocked on the door to the UWI Museum’s office and asked for the Curator. She said that a friend had told her to come. In one arm, clutched to her chest, was a ceramic platter, the back bearing the mark of Dunn Bennett & Co, Burslem, UK.  On placing it flat, it turned out to be a part of a set once used in the Mary Seacole Hall, one of the University of the West Indies (UWI)s early halls of residence built and opened during the 1950s. Three others of this vintage were Irvine, Taylor and Chancellor Halls.

Today, the University of the West Indies is a full-blown, degree granting institution with seven faculties across four campuses and some 50,000 students! Fifty-six years ago, on July 1, 1962, it blossomed out of its initial incarnation as the University College of the West Indies (UCWI), which had been chartered in 1948/49, the same year it took its first batch of 33 pioneering medical students from across the Caribbean region. The UCWI granted its degrees through a special association with the University of London.