| Several hundred students celebrated the completion of their courses with the Institute of Distance and Continuing Education Saturday evening at their graduation ceremony.They were gathered on the tarmac of the University of Guyana, Turkeyen Campus, where many of them are continuing their studies. The Institute offers Diploma Courses in several areas as well as academic upgrading courses in a number of CSEC subjects.Some of the IDCE graduates Saturday eveningThe latter courses allow students to upgrade their skills in certain subjects areas that would bring them to a level sufficient for matriculation purposes.Delivering the feature address to the graduates was Professor Emeritus, Fred Lockwood, who has long been associated with the challenges of Distance Learning and Education. A visiting scholar and lecturer at Universities around the globe, Professor Lockwood maintains working relationships with the Auckland University of Technology,Cheap Jerseys Online, the University of the South Pacific, Monash University, Australia,Jerseys NFL China, and the University of Hong Kong among others.He also works with a number of international “Open” colleges which duplicate the efforts of our local IDCE – to make higher education accessible to persons who have left school early and are attempting to qualify themselves in tertiary studies.He congratulated the students on their success and told them that he was sympathetic with their efforts to work and to educate themselves at the same time since it was a challenge that both he and his wife had to overcome when they worked while pursuing their degrees.He told the graduates a story of an experience he had while he was a Junior Lecturer at the University of Malawi in Central Africa almost 40 years ago.He said that while there he spoke to another guest at a graduation reception much like this one. The man told Professor Lockwood that he had to leave school when he was 14 because he had to work, and the job he took was as a ‘machine minder’ in a printing company.It entailed standing by that machine for 10 hours a day and ensuring that it kept working – putting oil in the machine,Wholesale Jerseys, ink in the hopper that fed the press, and checking the print as it came off the press.When the man finished reading the newspaper he would sit down to check the quality of the print – he would read the page that came off the press and the next and the next and the next until he got so interested in the material that he decided to go back to school.The books that he read were on sociology, philosophy and psychology. The young man went back to school; he worked ten hours a day and he went to school at nights eventually completing high school.But that still wasn’t enough so he went even further until he eventually gave up his job to go back to the University of Bristol to get his first degree. Still not satisfied … juggling all of the responsibilities of wife,Wholesale Authentic Jerseys, family, home and work he went back to school to get his Master’s Degree and eventually his Doctorate.At the end of his tale,Cheap Jerseys China, Professor Lockwood revealed the man’s identity. His name was Gordon Hunnings … and at the time he related his story to Lockwood,Jerseys NFL Cheap, he was Vice Chancellor of the University of Malawi.Professor Lockwood said that he stood in awe of Hunnings’s drive to achieve such a goal and he asked the graduates to remember Hunnings’s story as they progressed further in their studies; as the challenges of work and family combined to create a situation that might detract from their studies.He said that if they pursued their careers diligently then they would eventually overcome the obstacles in their path.Some of the courses that the students graduated in were Industrial Relations and Management, Marketing Management, Early Childhood Education I & II, Supervisory Management, Developmental Psychology, Language and Communication and Introduction to Social Work I & II. There were more than 1050 graduates listed for all of the programmes offered by the IDCE at all of their centres across the country. |
