The University College of the West Indies

Pete the Pelican has become an unofficial symbol of the UWI and the label ‘Pelicans’ has started to attach to a lot of teams at the university. But the first promotional use of the university’s crest seems to date back to February 1951, when the students of the then University College of the West Indies (UCWI) attached the name to their new student publication.

by Suzanne Francis-Brown, UWI Museum Curator
One of my bucket list items this past few weeks was tracking early documents relating to the UWI’s lost Charter – the first Royal Charter, granted in 1949 and lost in a plane crash en route to the founding Mona campus in Jamaica. Some of those documents are on deposit at the UK National Archives, and they include  explanations of why a Royal Charter was considered the best option as the nascent university developed its governance and administrative structures.