Professor Stafford Griffith appointed as interim pro-vice-chancellor and principal of UWI’s Five Islands Campus located in Antigua and Barbuda
Professor Griffith will lead the initial year of operation for the campus, which is expected to welcome its first cohort of students in September. A formal launch of the campus with the UWI executive management team is also planned in that month.
The Five Islands Campus was established to provide a development platform for Antigua and Barbuda. It will also function as a hub for the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, and serve to expand the UWI’s regional capacity in the delivery of higher education for the 21st century. It will begin with three schools — the School of Health and Behavioural Sciences; the School of Management, Sciences and Technology; and the School of Humanities and Education.
Professor Griffith served as regional director of the university’s Office of Online Learning from October 2017, and as director of The UWI’s School of Education, and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the Mona Campus from August 2012 to September 2017. He has spent more than 35 years of his career at the professional and senior management levels in fields covering educational measurement and evaluation, programme planning and management, curriculum development, and teaching. He holds a Professorial Chair in Research, Measurement and Evaluation, with his postgraduate qualifications consisting specialised study in research, measurement and evaluation, and curriculum development. He also holds an LLB degree and has completed graduate studies in the areas of political science and development studies.
In addition to academia, Professor Griffith’s career has included the following roles: director of the United States Agency for International Development-funded Caribbean Centre of Excellence for Teacher Training; pro-registrar of the Caribbean Examinations Council (having previously served as assistant registrar as well as head of a project unit); consultant/national coordinator of the World Bank and Ministry of Education Reform of Secondary Education project, Jamaica; director of the Canadian International Development Agency and the UWI Institutional Strengthening Project; and senior education project manager of the USAID Regional Development Office — Caribbean.
He has also served as a resource person in a number of regional and national curriculum development, teacher training, and measurement and evaluation activities, and as a consultant to a number of regional and international institutions and organisations, including the Ministry of Education (Guyana), University of Guyana, the Caribbean Examinations Council, Norman Manley Law School (Jamaica), Eugene Dupuch Law School (the Bahamas), Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), TECSULT International Limited (Montreal) and Van Leer Foundation (Holland).
Professor Griffith boasts an impressive record of public service, research and scholarly work. He has served on a number of national boards, committees and commissions and currently serves as the chairman of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Caribbean Examinations Council. His research and publications include at least 90 items comprising journal articles, scientific/scholarly papers, technical reports, book and book chapters, and monographs in areas related to various aspects of education, including innovations in education, educational reforms, educational measurement and evaluation, and online learning. His book School-Based Assessment in a Caribbean Public Examination (UWI Press) received the Principal’s Research Award in 2016 for Best Research Publication (book category) in the Faculty of Humanities and Education, at the UWI, Mona Campus.