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Three UWI Professors awarded National Honours

Three University of the West Indies (The UWI) professors have been awarded the Order of Distinction in the rank of Commander. The Awards were presented at the Ceremony of Investiture and Presentation of National Honours and Awards held at King’s House on National Heroes Day, Monday, October 21, 2013. They are University Director of the Centre for Gender and Development Studies’ Regional Coordinating Unit, Professor Verene Shepherd, Professor  of Literary and Cultural Studies Carolyn Cooper and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry, Tara Dasgupta.
 
Professor Shepherd  was awarded the CD for “outstanding service to Education in particular History and Gender Studies’,  Professor Cooper  was awarded for “outstanding contribution to Education”, while Professor Dasgupta received his honorary award for significant contribution to Science, Education and Research.
 
Professor Shepherd’s reaction was one of total surprise. “It really is an honour. I must say it was a surprise. Maybe everybody says that, but it really was a surprise to me.” She noted that a highlight of her career is her radio programme ‘Talking History’ which has given her a wider space than the classroom to teach and discuss a wide range of issues. She says she continues to be concerned about gender relations in the region, and that in some parts of the world, girls still do not have access to education.  
 
Reacting to the award, Professor Cooper noted: I am happy. I felt yes … it’s nice to be awarded by your own country.” Professor Cooper noted that a highlight of her work to date is the contribution made to the intellectual development of students: “To feel my contributions have helped somebody see the world in a different way”.
 
In his own reaction to the honorary CD, Professor Dasgupta said: “I am very much pleased to be awarded. It is particularly gratifying as my students nominated me for this award”.  He noted that it is very important that science and technology receive this recognition. 
 
Verene A. Shepherd, Professor of Social History at the UWI, is the second woman to hold a professorship in the Mona History Department, the first being the late Guyanese historian Elsa Goveia. She has contributed to the advancement of Women’s History in the History Department, helping to develop the course, “Women and Gender in the History of the English-speaking Caribbean” which she has taught since 1993. She compiled Women in Caribbean History (I999) on behalf of the Mona History Department’s Social History Project, which she directed from 1993-1996; and, while a Board member of the CGDS, conceived the idea of the Lucille Mathurin Mair Lecture Series. She has authored two books focused on the Indian Diaspora in the Caribbean and has edited/co-edited seven other books including Working Slavery, Pricing Freedom: Perspectives from the Caribbean, Africa and the African Diaspora (2002) and Slavery without Sugar: Diversity in Caribbean Economy and Society Since the 17th Century (2002).
 
Professor Cooper joined the staff of UWI Mona in 1980, after teaching for five years at a small private college in New England. In 1992, she initiated the establishment of the University's Reggae Studies Unit and, for more than a decade, served as its innovative Co-ordinator, sustaining a vibrant public education programme of lectures, seminars and conferences  on Jamaican popular music.  The  Reggae Studies Unit introduced at Mona an oversubscribed undergraduate degree in Entertainment and Cultural Enterprise Management in 2007.   Professor Cooper has  also provided academic leadership as Campus Co-ordinator of the Women's Studies Working Group, Head of the Department of Literatures in English and Director of the Institute of Caribbean Studies.  She is the author of Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender and the 'Vulgar' Body of Jamaican Popular Culture (1993) and Sound Clash: Jamaican Dancehall Culture at Large (2004).  She is the co-editior, with Dr. Eleanor Wint, of Bob Marley:  The Man and His Music (2003), a selection of papers from the 1995 symposium convened by the Reggae Studies Unit and the Bob Marley Foundation to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the icon's birth.  She is the editor of the award-winning Global Reggae book (2012),  a collection of  the plenary lectures given at  the eponymous conference held at Mona in 2008.  An engaging public intellectual, Professor Cooper currently writes a popular weekly column for the Jamaica Gleaner.
 
Professor Emeritus, Tara Dasgupta, is currently Distinguished University Research Fellow attached to the Institute for Sustainable Development, Head of the Pesticide Research Laboratory, Jamaica Racing Commission laboratory and the Mechanical Engineering Workshop.   He served in the Department of Chemistry at the University of West Indies Mona for some forty years. Professor Dasgupta obtained his PhD degree from the University of Calcutta, India and did postdoctoral research at University of the Buffalo, at Boston University, U.S.A., and University College London, U.K. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Caribbean Academy of Sciences, and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. Professor Dasgupta has nearly 120 research publications in top international refereed journals and has supervised a record 50 PhD and M.Phil students. He has received the Vice-Chancellor's award, Principal's award (3 times) and the Jamaican Society of Scientists and Technologists award for his outstanding research work. He has also been invited by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences to submit a proposal for the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for 1988.  


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