The University of Guyana, in Georgetown, Guyana, is a public university established in 1963 by the Guyanese government.
Cheddi Jagan, then Premier of British Guiana, considered that the University of the West Indies, to which his government had contributed since 1948, was not meeting the demand of his countrymen for higher education. On 4 January 1962, Jagan wrote to Harold Drayton, then in Ghana, to ask him to seek the advice of W.E.B. Du Bois on starting a new university.
Drayton returned to British Guiana in December 1962, and it was on his advice that Jagan wrote to socialist scholars in the United Kingdom and United States, including Joan Robinson at the University of Cambridge, Paul Baran at Stanford University, and Lancelot Hogben at Birmingham to involve them in the recruitment of staff.
The University opened on the grounds of Queen's College in late 1963. Its first chancellor was Edgar Mortimer Duke and its first Principal and Vice-Chancellor was the British biologist and mathematician Lancelot Hogben.
Organisation and structure
The university is divided into a number of faculties:
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Director - Shanomae Rose
Coordinator - Linda Johnson-Bhola
Faculty of Natural Sciences
Dean - Calvin Bernard
Assistant Dean - Kesha Holder
Faculty of Social Sciences
Dean - Paloma Mohommed
Assistant Dean - Sharon Roopchand Edwards
School of Education and Humanities
Dean - Claudette Austin
Deputy Dean - Bonita Hunter
Faculty of Health Sciences
Dean - Emanuel Cummings
Assistant Dean - Davon Van-Veen
Director - Madan Rambaran
Faculty of Technology
Dean - Verlyn Klass
Assistant Dean - Elena Trim
Institute of Distance and Continuing Education
Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry
It also contains the Institute of Distance and Continuing Education.
Mahadai Das, Guyanese writer
M. Jamal Deen, FRSC FCAE FINAE, Professor and Senior Canada Research Chair, McMaster University, Canada
Odeen Ishmael, Guyanese ambassador Venezuela, formerly to the United States and the Organization of American States
Denis Williams, Guyanese painter and archaeologist
Neil Pierre, Director of Policy Coordination Branch, United Nations
Faculty and administrators
Prem Misir, Pro-Chancellor and Professor in Public Health
Joyce Sparer Adler, American critic, playwright, and teacher, as well as a founding faculty of the University in 1963
Joel Benjamin, former deputy Librarian and archivist at the University
Derek Bickerton, former lecturer, now Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at University of Hawai'i, Honolulu
Janette Bulkan, Guyanese professor and activist of international environmental human rights; visiting professor at Colby College
Harold Drayton, key advisor to Jagan on the founding of the university, Guyanese scientist, former Deputy-Principal and Professor of Biology
Michael Gilkes, Guyanese writer and academic
Stanley Greaves, Guyanese painter, former head of Creative Arts at the University
Richard Hart, Jamaican lawyer and politician
Lancelot Hogben, English zoologist and geneticist
Abdur Rahman Slade Hopkinson, Guyanese writer and professor at the University (1966–68)
Basdeo Mangru, Guyanese historian; current faculty of City University of New York, York
Ali Mazrui, African and Islamic studies academic
Dr Mark Pelling, Reader in Human Geography, King's College, London
Marie Philipneri, M.D., M.P.H. Associate Professor of Internal Medicine, Director of Outpatient Dialysis Program, Saint Louis University School of Medicine
Clem Seecharan, Guyanese writer
Bertrand Ramcharan, current Channcellor of the University
Shridath Ramphal, former Guyanese foreign minister (1972–75) and the second Commonwealth Secreteary General (1975–90)
Walter Rodney, Pan-African writer and political theorist
Rupert Roopnaraine, Guyanese writer, politician and academic
Dr Joycelyn Loncke, Guyanese Linguist, teacher of French Language.
