The Anguilla Community College had “a delightful week of activities” as part of an effort to showcase its services to the island, the President, Professor Delroy Louden, said.
“This is the second year of our activities,” he told The Anguillian.“It was a delightful week of activities. We started off with a Sunday Service at the Church of God (Holiness). The rest of the week included a debate on the Anguilla Constitution; the Certificate Award Ceremony; an outing at the Ronald Webster Park with faculty and students; and an Open Day with visits by lots of school children during which we showed them the possibilities of studying later on at the Anguilla Community College and what it does.
“As I said on graduation night, the range of courses we do at the college is amazing. They include taxation, business, accounting, finance, early childhood education, health education, sanitation and all the hospitality courses. It is remarkable and we have come a long way within a relatively short period of three years. I hope that the community will see that we are making an impact – not just in serving them and providing training for persons – but we are doing something more than that. We are building an academic traditionon the island of which they can be proud. It was a delightful week for the college.
Professor Louden, who said he was awaiting the final decision to obtain a loan from the Caribbean Development Bank to build the new campus for the Anguilla Community College, explained some of the institution’s agenda items: “We have on our agenda the introduction of a nursing programme obviously for persons who are already nurses but want to meet regional requirements for a Bachelor’s degree in nursing,” he stated. “We want to prepare ourselves for accreditation and for moving to the new site. We will them be able to offer a wider range and depth of courses.
“We also want, to come in place, the linkages and collaborations. We are doing these with the University of Pennsylvania, the University of the Virgin Islands and across the region with several institutions. We want those to be of fruition so that next year this time we will have our first graduation of the Associate Degree Programme. I would then want our graduates to be ready to take on the mantle of going on towards the baccalaureate which we are hoping to do in Anguilla. This is because many students have families and the cost of education is increasingly high.
“We also need to raise funds for the college. We need to get the Board of Governors of the college to embark on a major fund-raising scheme to raise, may be, about half a million dollars towards our building project. Government cannot do it alone. I can write some of the grant applications but we also need Board members to help us to raise some of the major funds – and it can be done. It is not insurmountable. I believe in what I am doing, so I just need to put my shoulders to the wheel yet again.”
