THA Chief Secretary Orville London is quite excited about the introduction of the Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business EMBA programme in Tobago, noting that the institution already had the IMBA programme for Tobagonians.

“I am excited because what we are looking at here is the development of an institution and the prospects of the development of people and I think that combination is pretty exciting to me,” he told the launch of the graduate school’s EMBA programme at Rovanel’s Resort on Tuesday night.

London said he had looked at the development of the graduate school, where it has come from in 1989 to where it was today and there were as number of issues he considered critical, in the first place from where it started combining the private sector and the UWI that has led to a very pragmatic user friendly approach in education and the development of people.

He said the people of Tobago were now benefitting from that pragmatic user friendly approach because “all of us recognise the challenges Tobagonians face in accessing tertiary level and more so graduate education”. He added that there were even more challenges when dealing with part time education like the EMBA programme.

In complimenting the graduate school in ensuring that it started the IMBA programme and was now introducing the EMBA programme for Tobagonians, the Chief Secretary said it was a very unique opportunity because it would be a group of Tobago leaders and potential leaders meeting in a Tobago environment and therefore being able to put into perspective the unique problems and challenges and opportunities that existed in Tobago and therefore this could be a learning experience for the participants, the lecturers and the graduate school.

London told his listeners that greater autonomy was being sought for Tobago and greater autonomy meant greater responsibility, greater responsibility as leading to greater preparedness and the programme was all part of the preparation. He added that it was extremely important there was a programme geared towards those individuals who have been in the system for a very long time.

However, London said, one of the things he was concerned about was the sustainability of the programme because there were programmes in the past that were not sustained. He therefore urged the graduate school to market their programmes since it meant a lot for the future development of Tobago. He said he was pleasantly surprised that in a population of 55,000 there were 37 Tobagonians seeking to get into the programme.

He also promised the THA’s support for the programme which includes six semesters consisting of 13 core courses, four workshops, three electives and two non-credit courses over a period of 13 months.