Members of the business community and other benefactors who give financial and other tangible support to university students will be acknowledged next week during a special ceremony to award the beneficiaries and salute the educational donor community.

The annual UWI Cave Hill Students Awards Ceremony, marking  a critical and enduring partnership between The University of the West Indies and partners in the goal of national and regional development, will be held under the theme “Rewarding Excellence: Championing Success.” It takes place in Lecture Theatre 1, Roy Marshall Teaching Complex on Tuesday, April 3.

The ceremony will see more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate students being recognised for excellent performances in their academic, sporting and co-curricular pursuits, and benefitting from awards totaling in excess of one million dollars.

Underscoring the UWI’s increasing emphasis on graduate studies and research, over $850 000 in scholarship funding will be awarded to some 40 post graduate students. In addition, about 86 undergraduate enrollees will benefit from nearly $270 000 in monetary grants and awards with commercial banks CIBC First Caribbean International Bank and Scotiabank listed among the top donors supporting education at that level.

Principal Sir Hilary Beckles noted that all the awardees have been selected through a highly competitive and rigourous process and therefore represent some of the finest talent in the UWI. He pointed out that the awardees by their demonstrated excellence were continuing a tradition of accomplishment upheld by many graduates in the campus’s near 50-year existence, who have gone on to assume leadership roles nationally, regionally and internationally.