Queen’s University College of Medicine to open at site of former Society Primary School in St John

A United States medical college is set to open its Barbados campus in January next year following an aborted start in 2018.
Queen’s University College of Medicine (QUCOM) will be housed at the former Society Primary School in St John which is being refurbished.

In an exclusive interview with Barbados TODAY on Tuesday, QUCOM President Dr Donald Dolce disclosed that the Barbadian staff – currently 15 including faculty, administration, clerical and security – is expected to increase over time, and there are also opportunities for off-campus employment through such areas as housing for students, transportation and vending.

“But on an immediate note, I would say for January, when you consider the fact that we will need bussing services, we’re going to have to bring back some of the custodians that maintained the campus to keep everything maintained and so forth,” Dr Dolce said.

“And if you consider those jobs, including the faculty, we’re looking at several faculty who reside in Barbados that will be starting in January. So, I would say anywhere from 12 to 15 or so and that number should increase over time. That doesn’t take into account some of the other outside vendors that benefit from our presence, but just on the campus alone we’re probably looking at maybe 12 to 15.

“Because just security alone, we had four to five employees just working with us on security detail because we had different people coming in at different times. So, I think that’s a realistic number; and then general maintenance.”

Dr Dolce said the medical college is targeting 50 students for the start of the January semester and the programme will initially run for two years, while the administrators work on a possible extension to three years.

In the meantime, the college is making strides in the provision of accommodation for the students.

“The properties that we’re looking at now, the college will secure a lease and the students will then rent from the college because they’ve actually requested that they prefer to have a lease with the university. So, the [school] can collect the fees from the students and ensure that they get paid on time,” the senior consultant educator told this media house.

“The property that we’re looking at is within 15 minutes or 20 minutes maximum from the campus. There may be some other options.”

Dr Dolce said the road to this stage had been filled with challenges and setbacks, dating back to 2018 when classes, which had started, had to be aborted, bringing operations of the university to a premature halt.

“The issue was with the listing in the World Directory of Medical Schools. We were required to get Barbados accreditation which we pursued and we achieved, but then shortly after we received our approval, we were then advised that we also had to have CAAM HP [Caribbean Accreditation Authority and Health Professions and Medicine] approval.

So, then we went through the long process of obtaining CAAM HP,” the university official recalled.

He said that the process delayed the listing which forced the school to close “because, without a listing in the World Directory, the school is not recognised anywhere in the world”.

“None of the courses would be ever recognised and we would be running the risk of jeopardising our students in doing so. So, we had classes started in 2018. Those students had to leave the college because the courses were no longer recognised by any licensing authority. So, we had to regroup and just focus solely on accreditation,” Dr Dolce said.

He lamented that as soon as those accreditation approvals were in place, COVID-19 raised its head, followed by the eruption of La Soufriere Volcano in neighbouring St Vincent in April 2021, and a devastating freak storm.

“Our plan was to start last September, but because of the volcanic activity, there was some damage to the campus. In fact, there was some significant damage, so our contractor had to replace a lot of the A/C units, which I think we’re still in the process of doing.

“There was also some damage done to our IT area computers, so we had to invest more money into the facility. There was also some rain, some damage from the storm and we had some other issues as well, but all of that has been addressed…[is] being dealt with,” the college president said.

He indicated that some general maintenance work also had to be taken care of.

“We are gearing up now for the next class in January. We do have a transfer of students who are currently enrolled that are in their clinical years. So, these were students who transferred to Queen’s University. And so, we actively have students now enrolled in clinical training sites that we are affiliated with in terms of the basic sciences. We are now gearing up and enrolling students for this coming semester,” he highlighted.

“We have one student who’s a Bajan citizen who will be starting with us in January, and other students…. She’s a graduate of the University of the West Indies. In fact, her mom is one of our faculty and we have other students from the United States who will be joining the class,” Dr Dolce added.

He noted that after COVID-19, the college experienced a “huge” drop in applicants because students were essentially not in school.

“So, the numbers of applicants that have been coming in has dropped dramatically since the COVID-19 pandemic, but our goal is 50. So, anything close to 50 would be optimal.

That’s being a little bit optimistic but you know, even if we had half that number, we would be very happy.

“We’re getting inundated with applications now because, obviously, students were back in school last year. After COVID, we anticipate a much larger class next year because obviously, we’ll have more students finishing college this end of 2024,” the medical school administrator surmised. emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb