The University of the West Indies

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.

Prof Rex Nettleford (1933-2010) was a brilliant undergraduate at the then University College of the West Indies (UCWI); an Oxford University postgrad on a Rhodes scholarship who was renowned for his choreographic as well as his intellectual work; a dynamic academic, social and cultural actor back in post-independence Jamaica and on the regional and world stage; Vice-Chancellor of his alma mater, the by then UWI from 1998-2004.