The following is the second of a two-part interview by Mike Jarrett with the President of the Caribbean Maritime University, Professor Andrew Spencer.
Ten years before Professor Andrew Spencer set foot on the campus of the Caribbean Maritime University (CMU), his PhD thesis on tourism strategy – completed at Bournemouth University’s School of Tourism in the United Kingdom – was formally recognised by the Institute for Travel and Tourism’s Education and Training Committee (ITT). The ITT named the Jamaican academic its 2011/2012 PhD Student of the Year.
Holding both BSc and MSc degrees in Tourism Management from the University of the West Indies (UWI), Spencer later became the first UWI academic appointed as a full Professor of Tourism. He served as Director of the Centre for Hotel and Tourism Management (CHTM), UWI Nassau, from 2013 to 2017, and by the time he assumed office at CMU, he had authored over 50 scholarly works, including three books. Beyond academia, he was frequently called upon to consult for regional governments on tourism development and had served on the boards of 12 public entities in Jamaica.
Spencer arrived at CMU in Kingston in September 2022, bringing the drive, passion, and perspective of an educator, coupled with the insight gained from years immersed in teaching, research, and analysis of the Caribbean’s foremost industry: tourism. This fusion of scholarship and experience shaped his early decisions and informed strategies that are already yielding results in the complex evolution of CMU – and, by extension, the wider Caribbean maritime sector.
It was with this backdrop – and in light of CMU’s growing role in the region’s development – that my one-on-one conversation with Professor Andrew Spencer began in October 2024.
Mike Jarrett: It seems that the CMU has increasingly managed to get the respect and support of the wider maritime community, would you say?
Prof. Andrew Spencer: Since coming here, I’m happy to say that the team and I have been able to seal the deal with Carnival Cruise Lines. We have a solid MOU with them where they’re taking 15 students every year – sea time plus employment. We’re getting scholarships. They’re about to assist us with some of our tech upgrades. Every time there’s a Carnival ship in Ocho Rios, we can send a group of students and faculty down there so that they can benefit from understanding the inner workings of these massive vessels.
Disney is now about to sign with us as well. Royal Caribbean has a partnership with us, and I could go on and on – so that was kind of the nexus for me: bringing the softer side of shipping to the space and making it congeal.
So that’s one degree in the Faculty of Shipping and Logistics. But we also have International Shipping. There’s the Centre for Security, Counter-Terrorism and Non-Proliferation – which existed on its own at first – is now in this faculty. It offers all the programmes that the port security side will need, but also the police force. So, we have degrees in Digital Forensics, in Cyber Security... it’s just an exciting Centre that self-sustains. It’s not a burden to the rest of the university; in fact, it returns a surplus to the university each year.
Also in the Faculty of Shipping and Logistics, we have the Bachelor of Science degree in what we used to call Customs, Freight-Forwarding and Immigration. We’ve rebranded that. So, students who came in September 2024 are now coming into a degree in Border Operations and Management.
Mike Jarrett: Why the change?
Prof. Andrew Spencer: I think it sums up the elements of that degree, because that degree is an Operations Management degree. And in the same way that our engineers are being gobbled up by manufacturing and by the power companies, we want our Shipping and Logistics students to understand that they can work anywhere in Operations and Processes.
The programme is also managing their expectations, because a student doing that programme will feel that Jamaica Customs must hire them. The reality is: can Customs and Immigration absorb everyone? So, it’s a broader programme. But I will tell you that those students are being hired.
Mike Jarrett: Tell us about CMU’s relationship with its graduates.
Prof. Andrew Spencer: No university makes any sense without a strong graduate school. So, we do have a School of Graduate Studies and Research, with master’s degrees in Logistics and Supply Chain Management; Cruise Shipping and Marine Tourism; Engineering and Industrial Systems; and a Master of Science in Logistics Engineering.
Now, let me say this. The pervasive impact of logistics and engineering must not be lost on anyone. Michael Lee-Chin came here recently and hired our top 10 engineers. I am sure there are those who are annoyed at that. But his argument is, he needs more logisticians and engineers because he runs a process business. And because he doesn’t have enough process-oriented people – as engineers are – he’s ending up with business-minded people who can’t take a process through to the end.
When I say that to people, I like to repeat it, because if I said to you ‘banking and finance’ and ‘the CMU’, you’d probably roll your eyes – until someone explains that.
So, it’s a really big deal and we’re very proud of it. And he intends to come back for 10 to 15 top logisticians and engineers every year until he has the right fit for his bank.
Another big development since is our Tracer Study 2024, which indicates that 45% of students get jobs before graduation, 71% are employed in their field of qualification within six months of graduation, and 81% within nine months.
Mike Jarrett: Does the CMU initiative in Suriname, which is not an English-speaking country, allow the university to continue the current development process?
Prof. Andrew Spencer: Yes. So, we’ve been talking about the Caribbean expansion. We’ve been expanding elsewhere. As regards our five-year strategic plan, years one and two were the stability phases. Years three and four will be growth phases; and, year five will be full consolidation of all of that.
So, as we started year three, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the French Maritime Academy; we’ve also signed an MOU with the Olusegun Agagu University of Science and Technology in Nigeria for a two-plus-two arrangement. They are planning to train a lot of people up to a point and then we look at how we treated the issue of distance and how a few students can come across.
We are about to sign with Shanghai Maritime University, which is one of the top maritime universities in the world. And we’re having conversations with Cal Maritime University in California towards a partnership. So, when you talk about expansion, that’s what we’re talking about. But we can’t do that while ignoring the Caribbean. And so that’s why we’ve been thinking seriously about how we establish a presence throughout the rest of the Caribbean.
The CMU brand, to my mind, has been rebuilt. People are focusing on us again. We do get a lot of offers for partnerships and we turn some down. D’you know why? There are two guiding principles for me: Does it fit our strategic plan… does it serve us? And, two: Can we, in all honesty, serve that partnership?
Well, I’m not getting into any partnership that will make us deliver shoddy service and not able to hold up our end of the bargain. And so, we ask ourselves questions.
And we are very deliberate about it. And because of that we have had to be very judicious in terms of what we sign.
Mike Jarrett: Of course. Otherwise, you’re setting for a tragic downturn.
Prof. Andrew Spencer: Absolutely! Absolutely!
Mike Jarrett: In those quiet, ‘alone with your thoughts’ moments when you thought about taking the job as President of the CMU, what objectives and development strategies came to mind? What did you see?
Prof. Andrew Spencer: What did I see? Actually, it’s in our strat plan. I saw talented individuals who were not necessarily where they ought to have been on paper. And so we embarked on a plan … and we’re now almost there. We wanted to have all of our full-time faculty meet minimum qualification requirements, as many of them were practitioners who transitioned from the Institute and never necessarily upgraded their qualification on paper. We’ve gone through a process of getting individuals upgraded. So, the human resources we started out with … 54% to be exact … had the required degree levels. Not the knowledge, y’know! We’ve managed to move that number up to over 80% now, and we will, by year four, have everyone at the minimum required qualification.
In the process of that happening, we have seen a number of PhD programmes being completed in the last year. That process has seen a number of individuals coming through with more technical master’s degrees on the side of Marine and Nautical Studies. We’ve seen more people move up the ranks in terms of how that system operates. We start seeing individuals believing that they can contribute and be the voice of real rigour surrounding policy issues in the Region.
So, what is the long view? What do I see?
I see the Caribbean Maritime University not competing anywhere in the Caribbean. So, we feel proud to say that we are the only institution in the Region on the IMO White List for maritime. We feel proud to say that, at the university level, we’re the only institution that exists. So, you have MatPal (Marine Institute) in Guyana; you have LJM (Maritime Academy) in The Bahamas … and you have others around. But the idea is, at our level, we are the only ones that exist.
We are no longer content to say that we want to be … and I said it when I just came … top 20 maritime university in the world.
Now, the struggle for us is that we are unable to find a ranking system for maritime universities. You have the universal ranking systems and you do have a listing of maritime universities. But to find a maritime ranking system is another thing. That’s something we’ll explore. But we want to be top of mind whenever anyone in Latin America … maybe even North America and the Caribbean … talks about getting an education in Shipping, in Port Management, in any area to do with the maritime and engineering spaces … that we are their automatic go-to … much to the point where we become a ‘premium’ institution of higher learning, so much so that we have to come up with quotas for admissions.