n a beautiful balmy evening during my visit I sat down with NCU president Herbert Thompson and Mrs. Avery Thompson for dinner at the hilltop Bloomfield Great House restaurant, the lights of Mandeville stretched out in panoramic beauty in the valley below our outdoor table. Over a pleasant meal they allowed me to engage them in conversation for this article.

They talked about Herbert's early life as a sibling in a family of 17 children. About his skittish school attendance as a boy, having to work on his father's farm in his hometown of Newport (some four to five miles from Mandeville). About how he managed to finish high school at what was then West Indies College, leaning heavily on the school's work-study program. About how, after two years of college, he returned to teach at that same high school, where he had in his class a young woman in her senior year, named Avery Douce. And they told how, after many twists and turns in his personal journey, the road to the marriage altar led right back to that senior student who, apart from remembering he was "a very good teacher," never dreamed of ever being part of his future.* They've now been NCU's "first couple" since 1990.

So you were president when the school was West Indies College?
HT: That's right.

What factors triggered the drive to become a university?
HT: For a long time, when students would finish their undergraduate programs here, there was no direct link with the University of the West Indies (UWI), the only institution offering higher degrees on the island. As a liberal arts college we didn't mesh into the British system, and UWI gave that as the main reason they couldn't accept our students. To be sure, a number of our graduates were able to go on to the U.S. and elsewhere for study and do very well, but that was only a small percentage. The majority were just not able to continue their education. And we felt that for a college that's been around since 1919, it was time we started answering some of the needs of the church, the nation, and the region. (I say "the region" since, as you know, the school is owned and operated by the West Indies Union of Seventh-day Adventists, which takes in Jamaica, the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos islands, and the Cayman Islands.) So we felt a sense of obligation to provide something more marketable, something that commanded more respect.

What was the process?
HT: About 13 or 14 years ago the Jamaican government established the University Council of Jamaica as the accrediting agency in the country for all tertiary institutions. And the approach taken by West Indies College was to apply for accreditation program by program as we moved toward university status. First in the area of teaching, then biology, then nursing. That done, we presented our case. Bringing together an international team drawn from the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, and Jamaica, the council examined us over a number of days. And they said, "Look, you're ready for this. Keep your graduate programs in the areas where you have undergraduate strength-in business, biology, nursing," etc. And those were the guidelines we followed.

I notice you offer the doctorate degree.
HT: In education-our only doctoral program. And it came as a result of our long relationship with Andrews University (AU) (reaching back some 30-odd years) in their extension program. Over time they offered the master's in education and had just started offering the doctorate at about the time we made the transition to university status. We then discovered we could offer the program ourselves, with 27 people in the first group of Ph.D. candidates. We use personnel from AU, from Michigan State University, from Loma Linda University, and from our own UWI. We pull in faculty from wherever. In 2003 we'll graduate the first Ph.D. candidates.

Do you plan to increase your doctoral level offerings?
HT: Yes. But as you'd appreciate, the doctoral degree calls for a very strong base. You have to have structure, and you have to have faculty with expertise not only to do lecturing but to do advisement, etc. We went with education since it's our biggest department on campus. The College of Education and Religion has almost 1,000 students, and it's in that area that we have most of the qualified people who can deliver the needed expertise. So we'll move on to other doctoral programs, albeit cautiously, because we have to build faculty.

I understand enrollment rapidly increased
after you achieved university status.
HT: Oh, yes. It more than doubled! Today our undergraduate enrollment is about 3,600. And in our graduate programs we have maybe about another 300.

Now, the 3,600-plus students-they're not
all on the [Mandeville] campus, are they?
HT: No, we operate three extension sites: one in Kingston, one in Montego Bay, and the third in Browns Town. We also have an extension facility right here on the Mandeville campus.

AT: The students on the extension campuses also get a feel of campus life through their participation in things like honors convocations, special events, president's convocations, senior class presentations, etc. Through such activities, they become part of the campus community.

What are some of the challenges facing NCU at the moment?
HT: Since we've become a university, so many people are coming to us that the Adventist/non-Adventist ratio has become tilted. That's one challenge. But the approach we take to education is that it's a branch of evangelism. Our assemblies and other religious programs give us a chance to witness. So we're not driving people away simply because they're not members of our faith.

Then there is the resource challenge. When you move as fast as we have, you run the risk of outdoing yourself, and we never want to do that. We want to make certain we have adequate staff, adequate lecture halls, laboratories, computers, and other basic equipment. As I reported to the [university] board yesterday, we're almost at the point now where we can't take any more students at the undergraduate level.

So you'd have to turn students away?
HT: Yes, yes. Another challenge we face is housing. We have the capacity to house 700, that's all. Seven hundred! And see, we have almost 3,700 students! We have almost 2,000 students living off campus and commuting, some of them driving long distances to get to school.

Tell me, Avery, what do you do at the university?
AT: I'm director of admissions and records [registrar]. And right now I'm also chairing the department of information science.

Where did you do your training?
AT: I did my bachelor's here at West Indies College, and my master's at Florida International University-in math, with computer as the other emphasis.

Apart from the Caribbean area, what are some
of the other countries represented at NCU?
AT: We have students from the Ukraine, India, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Hong Kong, Philippines-

HT: Vietnam, Uganda, Ethiopia, Botswana-quite a collection.

So UWI is now accepting students from NCU-
HT: That's right-in the fields of medicine, engineering, mathematics, etc. They now take our students and are proud to do so.

AT: There's another aspect to that. In the U.S. when somebody says they're going to college it has a different meaning than it has here. Here in Jamaica we have some high schools that are called colleges. Some of the primary schools are called colleges. So when we were a college, people didn't always look at us as being different from a teacher training college or maybe a high school extension. But with having university status, all of a sudden it said to them, Hey, you're on the level with the UWI. And for many parents, that's all they wanted-that kind of status.

Avery, you mentioned that non-Adventist
parents, when they call, many of them--
AT: Many of them are asking that their child get a space at NCU because of the Christian principles we stand for. And they want them in the dorm!

HT: And we hardly ever have space!

How would you solve this problem?
HT: We are in the process of doing that now. The board has authorized us to go ahead and enter into a relationship with the National Housing Trust (NHT) for the building of housing for 1,500 students, and that will begin shortly. NHT will fund 80 percent at a low rate of interest, and the university will fund 20 percent.

You have the space for it?
HT: Oh, we are on 250 acres of land, you know. we have the space.

What's your dream for NCU?
AT: That we become a reference point for the community at large on a variety of issues. Right now when people speak about needing expert knowledge, they're talking about the University of the West Indies. But little by little we can become a reference point. For example, we're engaged at NCU in crop-enhancement research projects. In such a field, it's possible for NCU to become a resource center for the farming community. I see it starting with Jamaica, then spreading out beyond.

HT: I see a private university with additional graduate programs over time and with a graduate enrollment of between 500 and 600. Then we can talk about a university of about 5,000. Because we have land space, there is no limit to the infrastructure development we can put in.

I see us continuing to serve, first the needs of the church, then participating in nation building by putting out a better quality of graduates, graduates who can influence behavior at the workplace, wherever that is. If we can do all those things and maintain the spiritual ethos, then we'll be well on our way to having as the fundamental principle in our education delivery system the restoration of God's image in humanity. We're working toward that end, and I think we're accomplishing it.

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*Thompson's first book, Rural Gumption, includes chapters on his early life and struggles. The 344-page work is published by Dikah Publishers, Mandeville, Jamaica.