Over the past five years, the University of Guyana (UG) added 30 new programmes and two oil and gas institutes to help meet the country’s growing demand for a skilled workforce. This is according to the university’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Paloma Mohamed-Martin.
During an episode of the Energy Perspectives Podcast, Professor Mohamed-Martin underscored that for the past 61 years, UG has remained the country’s sole state university, and as such, she believes that it is the mandate of the university to respond to the needs of the country.
“But not only to respond, [UG’s role is] to predict, to help to be able to predict what is likely to come,” she said.
She explained that training is short term and tactical, while academic education at the tertiary level usually takes longer. “So, if you are going to wait until something is needed to start training people, you’re going to be four or five years behind, which is highly problematic, because it leaves a gap that has to be filled, right?” Professor Mohamed-Martin added.
She acknowledged that while bringing in foreign workers can fill immediate gaps, the challenge lies in ensuring that the local workforce can also participate when adequately qualified.
“So UG has been really focused on several things, one, identifying and helping to strengthen the pipeline, what we call going all the way back into primary, right. Because again, we can’t wait until people are ready to get into the university and then you realize, oh my gosh, they need this kind of mathematics, or they need this, or they need that,” she said.
To this end, Professor Mohamed-Martin also highlighted UG’s collaborative efforts with the Ministry of Education (MOE) and other stakeholders to ensure seamless education progression. She suggested that the education curriculum needs to be refined to bring it into synergy with what is needed.
“And so, in the last four or five years, we have added about 30 new programmes inside the university and two institutes that are very specific to oil and gas. So, one of them is the Institute for Energy Diplomacy, and the other one is the recent Institute for Marine and Riverine Ecologies & Economics,” she disclosed.
The Vice Chancellor explained that the Institute for Marine and Riverine Ecologies & Economics equips students with knowledge in areas such as port management, a critical need for the country’s growing maritime sector. She noted that UG has significantly expanded its marine studies offerings to meet this demand.
On the other hand, she said the Institute for Energy Diplomacy is designed for graduates seeking specialization in the oil and gas industry. “We have persons who we’ve graduated, you know, hundreds of lawyers, hundreds of accountants, hundreds of people working in different fields, but they did not have a specialization in oil and gas, so this is the institute does that work and offers what we call the bolt-on degrees, the specializations and courses that you can [get] microcredits that you can build,” Professor Mohamed-Martin explained.
Notably, she said that the university has also added new programmes to existing faculties. Professor Mohamed-Martin said that UG has introduced two degrees in supply chain management, both at the undergraduate and master’s levels, within the School of Business. Additionally, UG now offers a master’s degree in oil and gas monitoring under the Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
Vice Chancellor Mohamed-Martin continued, “Then you also have people looking at sustainable development side and the biodiversity side of what happens to the environment and to water and on those things in the Faculty of Natural Sciences, even in the College of Medical Sciences, they included a degree for environmental monitoring on the health side.”
To this end, she underscored that while UG may not be able to produce the entire workforce needed for the oil and gas sector, the university has responded swiftly to the demands of the rapidly evolving industry.
“A lot of this work was being done during the COVID-19 period,” Professor Mohamed-Martin said.
