The Masters Programme in Human Resource Development was initiated in 1995 by the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the University of the West Indies, with significant input from the professional fraternity of human resource practitioners in Jamaica. Students are drawn from the NGO, public and private sectors, and work in HRD contexts as well as in direct management ositions, service organisations and private consultancies. 

The idea to teach human resource development at the UWI Mona campus emerged from several sources, and coalesced as the programme launched in January 1995. One of these strands occurred during a coffee break at a conference of the Jamaica Association of Training and Development (JATAD) (now the Human Resource Management Association of Jamaica (HRMAJ)) in the early 1990s. At that time, one of the participants asked the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Professor Don Robotham, why it was that UWI wasn’t teaching a comprehensive programme in this discipline. Professor Robotham agreed with Dr. Grace Martin-Hall and asked his former department to remedy that gap.

Interestingly, Professor Robotham did not realise that the seeds of that dream had already been sown in the department, and that a pair of staff members had begun to discuss the possibility of this endeavour with a group of HR professionals. After much work by the Department’s staff to define their interpretation of the philosophy of the discipline in the roots of the sociology, psychology and social psychology taught within the department, the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work launched the Masters Programme in Human Resource Development in 1995with Professor Patricia Anderson and Mr. Clement Branche as Academic Coordinators, Administrative Assistant Mrs. Simone Wong and Clerical Officer, Ms. Sophia Morgan leading a faculty of practitioners and academic theorists.

This programme was built upon the traditional strengths of the department in teaching sociological and psychological theory and sociological psychology and applying these to Caribbean organisational life. These foundations are still to be
seen at the core of the programme that pays close attention to the interpersonal and group processes at the dyad, small group and organisational levels along with the theories of training, adult education, learning and development, as well as the traditional human resource management functions and the principles of strategic management. These have been blended into an amalgam of theory and practice in a scientist-practitioner model of education that prepares students to contribute to their organisations’ long-term as well as immediate development. 

The programme also capitalises upon the opportunities that present themselves to develop its students through the augmentation of the core programme with several workshops. Many of these were developed in response to the gaps perceived in the students’ readiness for the competitive environment in the workplace. Others were prepared as answer to the employee challenges posed by our stakeholder groups. The result is a programme that has been pronounced, publicly, the best HR programme in the Caribbean by some members of the University Council of Jamaica.