Live. Laugh. Learn!

Welcome to the Mona Campus of The University of the West Indies. As you find your way around the campus over the next few weeks, you’ll understand why we think you’ve made the right choice in becoming a student here. There are so many reasons why the Mona Campus is special.

The Campus is located at the foot of the Blue Mountain Range. It spreads over some 653 acres, so you will have many opportunities for exercise as you explore its nooks and crannies to find the right spot for quiet time. It is also the oldest and largest of the four campuses that make up the UWI, having been established in 1948. Diehard Mona enthusiasts will tell you that it is the most beautiful of the UWI campuses, (others are located at Cave Hill, Barbados, St. Augustine, in Trinidad & Tobago and there is the Open Campus which incorporates distance education and continuing studies centres in the remaining countries in the English speaking Caribbean).

Mona is also one of the most beautiful in the western hemisphere. At no time of year is this more evident than at the start of this Christmas semester. You may be overwhelmed by the riotous scarlet and green of the Poinciana trees, the pink and white of the bougainvilleas and there are few trees more spectacular than the pouis in full bloom, flaunting their pink and yellow blossoms. There is a popular campus legend that if you haven’t started studying by the time the poui trees begin to blossom, then your chances of excelling in your exams are very slim. Many will swear by the truth of that saying. You now have the opportunity to test it for yourself.

There are many relics of Mona’s rich history. The University Chapel began its life as part of a sugar estate in Gale’s Valley, Trelawny and was transported brick by brick over the mountains to its present site. The Aqueduct once carried water from the Hope River to water the sugar cane fields. Both Chapel and Aqueduct have been named National Monuments.

Every facet of the campus has its own tale to tell. The Bookkeeper’s Cottage, located on Princess Alice Close, was once an important part of the sugar estate. Now it houses the Archaeology Lab and the James W. Lee Collection of Arawak artefacts. Ackee trees, located at either end of the campus, near to the Biotechnology Centre and just outside of West Road, speak to the history of the grounds, when sugar was king and slave villages dotted what was then the site of the Mona and Papine sugar estates. The Dramatic Theatre and Old Library, wooden frame buildings which housed prisoners of war and refugees during the Second World War, are now used as examination centres.

Mango season is a good time to be at Mona as trees are plentiful. Plum trees, too, are handy when funds are low. And take note of the mahogany trees which line Gibraltar Hall Road. They were planted by the first thirty three students who entered the then University College of the West Indies in 1948 in the fledgling Faculty of Medicine.

A monument to these students may be seen in University Square just beneath the central flagpole in front of the Undercroft of the Senate Building. A few chains from there is the statue of founding father, Sir Philip Sherlock.

This is a dynamic, regional university, with students coming from the contributing countries: Anguilla, Antigua/Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, and Jamaica. Montserrat, St. Kitts-Nevis, St.Lucia, St.Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Others hail from Africa, Europe, Canada and the United States of America. The accents you hear may not always be the same as yours and familiar words may have very different meanings: the ‘ackee’ is a ‘guinep’ to some persons in the Eastern Caribbean and if your new friend asks you for ‘herbs’, don’t direct enquiries to the nearest ganja seller, thereby running the risk of getting yourself, and your friend, arrested and off to an inauspicious beginning at Mona. That student may merely be seeking herb seasonings like escallion and thyme.

One thing that draws the whole campus together is the richness of our Caribbean culture. Nowhere is this more evident than at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, hub of cultural activity on the campus. The Centre is home to the internationally acclaimed University Singers, the University Dramatic Arts Society, the Camera Club and a host of other clubs and societies. No matter what your talent, (or absence thereof) make your way to the Centre, particularly on Thursday afternoons when there’s a Lunch Hour concert and a range of activities in which you can participate.

The Orientation period allows you many opportunities to find out other important facts and details about Mona: the location of the Post Office, or where you can go to send an email home.