Professor Lawrence Carrington UG’s new VC

The University of Guyana (UG) says Professor Lawrence Carrington assum-ed duty as its interim Vice-Chancellor (VC) on Wednesday.

Lawrence Carrington
Lawrence Carrington

In a press release UG said Carrington is a national of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) and holds a doctorate in French from the University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona Campus. He has had a distinguished career as a university professor, researcher and administrator.

“His teaching and research have made him an internationally recognised specialist in Creole linguistics, language education and language planning for Creole societies and in educational issues affecting their development,” the release said. Carrington has also lectured widely in his field in several countries outside the UWI orbit.

The new VC’s publication record is extensive. He has also influenced scholarship as a member of the editorial boards of several international journals: Caribbean Journal of Education, Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages and the Creole Language Library among others. In 1994, the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bern, Switzerland, recognised his work with an honorary doctorate.

UG said Carrington has also served as a member of critical committees shaping cultural policy for his homeland. He was a pivotal member of the Caricom Advisory Task Force on education in the Commonwealth Carib-bean. Between 1983 and 1990, Carrington was also the Chairman of the standing Committee on the Selection of Textbooks for schools in T&T on the Executive Board of UNESCO.

Prior to taking up this new post Carrington was also the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Chairman, Board of Non-Campus Countries and Distance Educator UWI from 2000-2007 and the Director, School of Continuing Studies, UWI from 1996-2007. He was instrumental in the creation of UWI’s Open Campus. Incidentally, the professor is no stranger to the Turkeyen Campus.

He is chair of the UG-UWI Working Group on collaboration between the two universities. UG said Carrington brings to his new post a wealth of administrative experience at the tertiary level and an understanding of the nuances of the Caribbean psyche.

He has taken over from Dr James Rose whose tenure ended in 2008, having served as VC since 2000.