250 students graduate from Caribbean Maritime University
THE NEWLY chartered Caribbean Maritime University (CMU) on Tuesday graduated its first cohort of students to be certified since the institution’s formal upgrading in September.
Approximately 250 students were conferred with master’s and bachelor’s degrees and diplomas during the graduation ceremony at the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston, having successfully completed studies in a wide cross section of programmes over the past four years.
These include Logistics and Supply Chain Management; Port Management; Cruise Shipping and Maritime Tourism; International Shipping; Customs Processes, Freight Forwarding and Immigrations; and Security Administration and Management.
Education, youth and information minister, Ruel Reid, headed the dignitaries and officials attending the ceremony, which marked the first to be presided over by newly installed Chancellor, His Royal Highness Drolor Bosso Adamtey I, and President, Professor Fritz Pinnock
Reid lauded the CMU’s staff and graduates on the milestone achievement, noting that “we are witnessing the fruits of many years of toil and nurturing”.
EMBRACE CHANGES
Noting that there is “great change and opportunity” evolving in tertiary education globally, he underscored the need for Jamaica to embrace these.
He argued that to successfully do so, “we have to adjust and change many of the traditional perspectives we have about what education is and ... is supposed to do”.
“A developing society like Education, Youth and Information minister Ruel Reid (second right), shares in the occasion of the Caribbean Maritime University (CMU) conferment of an Honorary Doctorate on Kingston Wharves Limited’s Chief Executive Officer, Grantley Stephenson (second left), during the CMU’s 2017 graduation ceremony at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston on Tuesday. Others (from left) are CMU Council Chair, Hyacinth Bennett; CMU Chancellor, His Royal Highness, Drolor Bosso Adamtey I; and CMU President, Professor Fritz Pinnock. ours cannot afford to get stuck graduation ceremony is “one of in a framework that defines the most memorable events” for education as a privilege for just any student, noting that “it a few. We have to educate and comes at the end of a long train all our people to achieve journey of academic and social their fullest potential, consistent preparations and the beginning with local and global needs,” of yet another passage to the minister added.
achieving one’s life purpose”. Reid said that to this end, the CMU has a special role to play He said the students, by in reframing Jamaica’s highereducation completing their studies at the landscape. CMU, “have made quality
“The Caribbean Maritime decisions to create a bright future University will have to be the for yourselves”. benchmark for other specialist “Today, we are all proud of you universities (and) become a because you have demonstrated bastion of functional education the ability to endure. You have outcomes. I believe that the overcome and tenaciously CMU will shine in this respect. withstood the academic pressures Jamaica, therefore, has high and have succeeded. Remember hopes for you, our fine (that) in life, it’s only from the graduates. You are among the valley that a hill looks like a next generation of leaders who mountain,” the Chancellor added. (are destined to) make Jamaica proud,” he added.
Chancellor Adamtey I said a