Across the Ring Road: Universities and the Next Generation of Problem-Solvers

Real-world problems do not respect faculty boundaries. Our universities, and the young people they train, should not either.

Dr. Peter Edwards
3 min read

During the 2015 drought, I wrote a letter to the editor arguing that my alma mater, the University of the West Indies at Mona, had not done enough to provide policy solutions to Jamaica's water crisis. Like a distracted slip fielder, I said, UWI had dropped the ball. It was a tough-love letter from a proud graduate, and its central point still stands.

The missing disciplines

Water resource economics, agricultural and natural resource economics and environmental economics help a country decide how to price water, where to build storage and how to weigh farming against mining or development. At the time, they were thin on the ground. Problems like drought need these fields working alongside hydrologists, agronomists, engineers and lawyers.

Walk across the Ring Road

My advice then was for social science faculty and students to walk across the Ring Road and talk to their colleagues in science, technology and law, and to pick up the phone to sister campuses such as the engineering and agriculture faculties at St Augustine. Interdisciplinary teams produce research governments can use, and graduates who can work on real problems. Many people at UWI and other Caribbean institutions are doing exactly this work today. It deserves to be better known and better used.

The next wave

This is also why EcoNexus will feature early-career scientists and practitioners, including former students and mentees, in our Next Wave conversations. Universities stay relevant by producing useful knowledge before a crisis, not after it. The same responsibility falls on all of us who train and mentor the next generation.

Adapted from “The UWI's Role and Jamaica's Current Water Crisis” (letter to the editor, 2015).