An old Trade Fair site at the Deep Water Harbour in Bridgetown provided modest beginnings and a temporary location for what would become The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus. Evolving out of a College of Arts and Sciences that was established in 1963 with an inaugural enrolment of 118, The UWI’s third oldest campus received its permanent home at Cave Hill in 1966, amidst picturesque surroundings. It achieved full-fledged campus status with the establishment of the Faculty of Law in 1970.
Beginnings of The UWI
The University of the West Indies (UWI) was founded in 1948 as the nucleus of a dream to bring “light, liberty and learning” within the reaches of the people of the Caribbean. The University grew rapidly, beyond all projections, and today is a multi-campus institution with an international reputation for excellence in teaching and research, and a focus on providing West Indian society with the tools for unlocking its potential for growth.
Over the last seven decades, The UWI has grown from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 medical students to a full-fledged University with an enrolment of over 50,000 across five campuses. Today, The UWI is the largest and most longstanding, higher education provider in the English-speaking Caribbean; comprising Mona Campus in Jamaica, St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad and Tobago, Cave Hill Campus in Barbados, Five Islands Campus in Antigua and an online-based Open Campus.
Picturesque Site
Cave Hill Campus commands a breathtaking vista of Barbados’s capital Bridgetown with stunning views of the Caribbean Sea, majestic cruise liners and other sailing vessels. Its sits on an escarpment whose landscape of limestone, gullies and terraces once comprised several small and medium sized farm-based and other commercial enterprises. During 1964-1966 the Government of Barbados acquired 29 lots of land to create the original Cave Hill campus site on 53 acres in the parish of St. Michael. In 2005, Government gifted an additional 33 acres which have been used to create a lower campus on lands situated at Paradise and Lazaretto, and this means that today the UWI Cave Hill straddles the boundaries of the parishes of St. Michael and St. James; its 86 acres of built up and natural environment running along an urban corridor.
International Links
The UWI is an international university with faculty and students from over 40 countries and collaborative links with over 60 universities around the world. The UWI offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options through its nine faculties of Culture, Creative and Performing Arts; Engineering; Humanities & Education; Law; Medical Sciences; Pure & Applied Sciences; Science and Agriculture; Social Sciences; and Sport. In Barbados, affiliated to The UWI, there is Codrington College which offers the Bachelor of Arts and the Licentiate in Theology; and the Caribbean Meteorological Institute which teaches the meteorology portion of the Bachelor of Science with Meteorology.
