Geraldine Adams – quiet leader of the UCC

TWO years ago, the United College of the Caribbean Foundation-US(UCCF) decided to honour each of the founding members of the UCC by creating a scholarship in their name. UCCF executive director, Trish Steger, recalls that Geraldine Adams, the UCC’s CEO, was quite reserved about having a scholarship named in her honour.

Yet, after much debate, she agreed to the Geraldine Adams Hope Scholarship. Today, young women from girls’ homes in the five parishes where UCC has a campus can benefit from this $50,000 award towards a programme of their choice at the institution.

Adams explains that this group was targeted for several reasons. “We’ve found that sometimes the people awarded scholarships can well afford to fund their own way. But as an institution, we have always wanted to help the homes and develop a social commitment [to them] instead of making sporadic contributions to them,” she adds. “I also have a passion for children, and moreso women, because they have proven more serious with the follow through with tertiary education.”

Five Hope scholarships are made available each year, and the UCC is hopeful that qualified applicants will utilise this opportunity. The recipients must meet the UCC’s regular matriculation requirements for acceptance into a diploma programme, have graduated from high school, and submit an essay detailing their purpose for tertiary education and plans for the future. Applicants must also be recommended by the home and their high school.

A concerted effort was made recently to publicise the scholarship among the target group by sending letters to a number of the girls’ homes in the Corporate Area, Manchester, St Ann, St James and Westmoreland, where UCC centres are located.

This ambition for a greater social commitment by the UCC, Adams says, is a long-standing vision that is beginning to take shape. Through the UCC Foundation, the college has forged links and partnerships with a number of social partners and in the last academic year, spent over $14 million on scholarships to assist less privileged students. As more funding becomes available to the scholarship endowment, additional scholarships will be created.

“Every year end we also have a collection drive involving staff and students, the proceeds of which are donated to various children’s homes. The Marigold Children’s home, for example, has benefited from this campaign,” Adams said. “We try to provide items that they really need, practical items like toiletries, clothes and groceries.”

The school also underwrites the venue cost to host a New Year’s Eve children’s banquet, which is committed to sharing with less fortunate children in the Corporate Area.

Adams, a trained teacher, sees to the day-to-day running of the UCC. “I monitor the finances and ensure that we remain in business,” she says. “And I also serve on the Academic Council.”

Her portfolio includes the finance, administration, UCC’s management services and executive education unit and the UCC gift and book centre.

Adams also serves on a committee of 20 other persons who are currently working to establish a home for the elderly. She says the project is in the embryonic stages and the committee has been building a contributions base for the last two years towards establishing this home.

And she has found renewed fulfillment in her various roles. “Even though I am not teaching I have an opportunity to contribute to the educational development of so many persons,” she says. “Everything I learned in teachers’ college I’ve had to draw on, from motivation to curriculum development to assessment, to ways in which people learn. The foundation I got there has prepared me in a lot of ways for what I do now.”

Reflecting on her journey as an entrepreneur in higher education, she points out that the tertiary landscape is far more competitive and more organised than when the UCC entered the market as Institute of Management Sciences (IMS) in the early 1990s. “Back then we did not have the benefit of the full picture and the Jamaican post secondary student today is much more discriminating and knowledgeable. With the University Council of Jamaica, we also now have clearer standards and with globalisation the marketplace is fiercer, demands are greater, and you have to meet them and hold yourself up.”

About surviving in a competitive market, Adams said the focus is on developing programmes students can use anywhere in the world. “We know our people don’t all stay in Jamaica. They go overseas, that is why we have international programmes,” she said. “Any route our graduates take, it is progressive for them. We do not have to take the negative route of the brain drain. We dispel the narrow view that there is greater competition so there must be diminishing need.

The stats don’t show that,” she insists.

The opportunities of the CSME she notes, gives Jamaicans new impetus to pursue tertiary education. “In my view the market is still positive for tertiary education in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. If we can equip people to create jobs not only in the Jamaican society but also in the global arena, then we are headed in the right direction.

We are nowhere near saturation. As it stands, only 16 per cent of Jamaicans have a tertiary level education. We should not limit ourselves to say we do not have jobs so we should not train our people. If we have more and more people trained at the tertiary level, then we have more people who are better equipped to start a meaningful operation, provide jobs for others and have the skills to be progressive much faster.”