Reclaiming UVI’s Legacy as a Caribbean Leader

Dr. Safiya George paints a picture of the University of the Virgin Islands’ efforts to reclaim its reputation as a leader in the region. She highlights work to restore prominence in aquaponics and vertical farming, expand marine science partnerships, and invest in biomedical research. Plans for a medical school and expanded health programs tie these efforts to improving life expectancy and wellness in the Caribbean. At its heart, she frames this as a story not just of rebuilding infrastructure but of positioning UVI once again as a hub of discovery, impact, and regional pride.

Yeah. So, we have a great network of historically black colleges, universities across this country who share some similar challenges and capacity, capacity in terms of employees, leadership operations,  because of limited resources at HBCUs, with the exception of a very small handful or even less than a handful. Very limited resources.

And in many HBCUs, you find a lot of people who do multiple roles. So even in terms of leadership being challenged because you're doing too much for many cases, but still offering such high quality education and such a great student experience, for underrepresented students so that they have a safe space to thrive.

However, being the only HBCU in the Caribbean, we're geographically isolated. We're smaller, we can drive down the street and share. We can't share resources in the same way that others might be able to. And so they they're in some cases also barriers to collaboration, right.

Also, our government has a smaller budget and so smaller ability or, or resources to, you know, really contribute. They do contribute and we're grateful. But we're not a state. So in many ways that all of our other states have state funding to support state schools.

We are a semi-autonomous agency. And so we're not, you know, we're on the fringes, although we get support. So that's a challenge. And then, of course, we have a delegate to Congress. We don't get to vote in the presidential election in the territory. And in some cases, our students are somewhat insulated from some of the things happening nationwide.

And have to be very intentional to sort of keep up with what's happening because it's not in front your face, because you're often this little either 32 square mile island or 84 square mile. So lots of challenges in terms of resources, all kinds of resources, human resources, financial resources, building resources. I think most HBCUs, face the challenge of, you know, deferred maintenance.

But if you already have limited resources in terms of human capital, financial capital, the last thing on the list is maintaining a building because you can't afford. So then, right, the challenges that come with that.

And then keeping up with local, responsibilities as well as national and federal responsibilities.

We can't just walk anywhere to just have a conversation with anyone. You can't do that. You can step into U.S. Department of Education or National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health. Everything takes, you know, planning. So we do what we can do. We collaborate as much as we can. I think, you know, when universities are invited at the table, in many cases, an island is the last place you're thinking of.

You're going to think of the big state institutions, the private Ivy leagues. You may not even remember a university on an island floating out there. Right? So in many cases, if you're not giving voice to yourself, you've forgotten. And so, you know, we don't want our students to be forgotten. Of course, for sure. But you're definitely forgotten in funding.

So the list of challenges is not short, but we are resilient. We know that work has to be done. We do it for the sake and benefit of our students and our communities