Vincent Alexander:
Exemplary contributions to Guyana’s education sector
For more than 20 years, Guyana’s first Deputy Registrar of the University of Guyana (UG), Vincent Alexander, has demonstrated an unyielding commitment to the improvement of tertiary education in Guyana.
Mr. Alexander’s capability in the field of education has been acknowledged and lauded not only in his 83,000 square mile home, but also abroad.
Since he joined UG in 1988, his tangible and intangible contributions towards the growth and development of the institution have not gone unnoticed. In fact, they have been considered invaluable. His first post at UG was as a Research-Fellow/Lecturer in the Institute of Development Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences. He was then promoted and elected to serve as Assistant Dean of the faculty from 1993 to 1994. In 1994, the academic was appointed the first Deputy Registrar of UG and after 2009, was asked to serve as Registrar in 2009 until his retirement in 2015.
As Registrar, he was responsible for overseeing the reorganisation of the Registry, which, on completion, enhanced the delivery of the services offered in the division.
Alexander, an aficionado of politics, history and culture brought to the posts he held at the university, an unmatched wealth of technical knowledge given his diverse background in both the junior and senior administrative levels of education in Guyana.
He is also a Commissioner of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) since 2007. Alexander explained that Commissioners are like members of a board where they can monitor the operations of the organisation. The commission which is responsible for holding General and Regional Elections in Guyana, among other functions, comprises of seven commissioners, one of whom is the Chairman, Dr. Steve Surujbally. Three are appointed by the President and three by Leader of the Opposition. The Chairman is appointed from a list of five persons.
Alexander is also an active member of the Burnham Foundation which celebrates the life of former President L.F.S. Burnham, as well as his doctrines.
The GECOM Commissioner also holds an LLM (Master of Law Degree) and a Post Graduate Diploma in Legislative Drafting. He is the recipient of numerous awards, among them the Twenty-Year Long Service Award in 2008 and the 40th Anniversary Award for Meritorious Service to the University of Guyana in 2003.
Alexander was recently appointed as a Special Advisor on Tertiary Education to the Minister of Education, Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine.
The Great Walter A. Rodney: Outstanding politician, perceptive historian and formidable orator
Some remember him as the radical politician who spoke fearlessly, while others consider him the brilliant historian who had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and was an excellent orator.
Until his assassination in 1980, Walter Anthony Rodney was a highly respected and revered Guyanese scholar on the international and regional stage.
He was born into a working-class family and a former student of Queen’s College, where he became a champion debater and athlete. After successfully graduating from high school, he received a scholarship and progressed to the University College of the West Indies (UCWI) in Jamaica, graduating in 1963 with a first-class degree in History, thereby winning the Faculty of Arts prize.
Rodney earned a PhD in African History in 1966 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, England, at the age of 24. His dissertation, which focused on the slave trade on the Upper Guinea Coast, was published by the Oxford University Press in 1970 under the title A History of the Upper Guinea Coast 1545-1800 and was widely acclaimed for its originality in challenging the conventional wisdom on the topic.
Rodney travelled widely and became very well known internationally as an activist, scholar and formidable orator. He taught at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania during the period 1966-67 and later in Jamaica at his alma mater UWI Mona. He was sharply critical of the middle class for its role in the post-independence Caribbean. He was also a strong critic of capitalism and argued for a socialist development template.
On October 15, 1968 the government of Jamaica, led by prime minister Hugh Shearer, declared Rodney persona non grata. The decision to ban him from ever returning to Jamaica was because of his advocacy for the working class in that country. It caused riots to break out, eventually claiming the lives of several people and causing millions of dollars in damages.
Rodney became a prominent Pan-Africanist, and was important in the Black Power movement in the Caribbean and North America. While living in Dar es Salaam, he was influential in developing a new centre of African learning and discussion.
Presidential Advisor Dr. Clive Thomas is a goldmine of economic knowledge
There are two things Dr. Clive Thomas, Presidential Advisor, is passionate about: the fight against the scourge of corruption and the practicality of economics in everyday life.
Given his invaluable contributions to shaping economies regionally, and even economic policies at home, Professor Thomas could arguably be considered one of the most prolific Caribbean economist of his generation. His scholarship spans all aspects of Economics including theoretical, empirical, mathematical, sociological and political.
He has authored and co-authored 30 books, research monographs and papers. These include, “Guyana: Countering the Risks of Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Arms Proliferation (With Addendum)”; “Eight Essays on the Amaila Falls Hydro Project”; “Thirty Years After the Third World Debt Crisis: Sovereign Debt Stress in CARICOM (With Specific Reference to Guyana)”, and a study prepared for the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, March 2011, co-authored with Dr. Thomas Singh.
Dr. Thomas has also published over 154 academic articles and contributions to books/research monographs and presented invited papers to a similar number of academic conferences, symposia and seminars.
His major fields of research interests and publications include Macro-economics and Finance; as well as in Small and Micro-Economies; Development Economics, with special emphasis on growth, trade, finance, agriculture (sugar), environment, and natural resources; and Social Sector Economics, with special emphasis on poverty analysis and eradication measures.
He was the recipient of the Cacique Crown of Honour for contributions to education; Government of Guyana National Awards Scheme in 1994 and the George Beckford Award for Contributions to Caribbean Economy, Association of Caribbean Economists, in 2001.
Since the APNU+AFC government took office, Dr. Thomas in his writings has been calling for a State Asset Recovery Programme. The government took his advice and is currently pursuing such.
For over five decades, the academic and political contributions of Thomas, who retired from the University of Guyana at the end of 2014, have helped shape intellectual and economic thinking in the Caribbean and beyond.
Valerie Rodway:
The prolific musical composer of some of Guyana’s national songs
The mastermind behind some of Guyana’s most transcending national songs is none other than the great Ms. Valerie Rodway who passed away in 1970.
She is still hailed as one of Guyana’s most prized musical composers.
Rodway is best known for her national songs, which include, “O Beautiful Guyana,” “Kanaïma,” “Hymn for Guyana’s Children,” “Arise, Guyana,” and “Guyana the Free”. She also put to music the well-known Guyanese independence poem by Martin Carter, “Let Freedom Awaken.”
Rodway was born in New Amsterdam in 1919 and was the fourth daughter and the fifth of eight children.
Her musical talents were first recognised during a visit to her relatives in Barbados. According to her sister Lucille Wharton, Valerie, then a toddler, would visit a neighbour to “tinkle the keys” of the piano. When that was not available, she would create a make-believe piano from the Venetian blinds in the family’s home and hum to her own compositions.
In time, she became one of Guyana’s celebrated composers of patriotic and classical music. She was trained by the leading music teachers of her time – Winifred McDavid, Ruby McGregor, Edna Jordan, and Eleanor Kerry.
With her impressive body of work, she earned the Licentiate of the Royal College of Music (LRCM). In 1978, eight years after her death, twenty-three of her compositions were published under the title National Songs Composed by Valerie Rodway. The collection included 20 songs, and three classical pieces.
An assessment of her works reveals that she composed nationalistic music which are still used in schools and at local music festivals.
Several of her compositions were to the poems of some of Guyana’s best – Carter, Chinapen, Daly, Harper Smith, Ramcharitar-Lalla, Seymour, and Wishart. The selected poems encouraged and nurtured constructive ways of thinking such as service to the nation and respect for the heritage. For example, the ever popular and moving “O Beautiful Guyana” (lyrics by Walter MacA Lawrence) touches a responsive chord and speaks to patriotism.
She was later awarded the Cacique Crown of Honour, and in 2002 the Guyana Folk Festival Committee bestowed upon her a Wordsworth McAndrew Award for her unselfish service to the development of Guyanese culture.
