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HomeNewsArchivesUVI COMMENCEMENT IS SUNDAY AFTERNOON

UVI COMMENCEMENT IS SUNDAY AFTERNOON

May 15, 2001 – More than 300 students will receive degrees in the 37th annual University of the Virgin Islands commencement exercises, set for 7 p.m. Saturday on the St. Thomas campus and 4:30 p.m. Sunday on the St. Croix campus.
The St. Thomas commencement, which has traditionally filled the Reichhold Center for the Arts to overflowing, will take place this year in the new and more spacious Sports & Fitness Center. The St. Croix commencement will be at Island Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are required for both ceremonies.
The keynote address on both campuses will be delivered by Joel H. Webbe, chief executive officer of W&W Electronics of Grenada. The firm provides electronics assembly, manufacturing and testing services to such companies as Wang Labs, Digital Equipment Corp., Texas Instruments, Intel, Ford Motors and Chrysler Motors.
Webbe, a native of Montserrat, started his company with 10 employees in a Boston basement. He moved the business to his home island in 1978, but after his factory there was destroyed by Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and again by a volcanic eruption in 1995, he relocated to Grenada in 1997. Today W&W employs some 600 workers — and plans are in place to add 1,000 more, with construction under way that will add 54,000 more square feet of manufacturing space.
Webbe was named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 1999 for Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Grenada, in addition to being named the top manufacturer. In last year's competition, he repeated his win of the Caribbean Manufacturing Award.
In accepting his 1999 award, Webbe said,"Globalization is the reason for our success." Even from such a seemingly isolated base as Grenada, he said, W&W is able to supply a "good product at a competitive price" to world markets.
Webbe has diversified into other manufacturing areas, too, including the just-launched W&W Spices, which will process such long-exported raw products in Grenada as nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and lemon grass into products to be marketed in the United States, Europe and the Caribbean. He also recently acquired a Grenada radio station and switched it to a gospel music format, and he had said he is considering expansions into the food and beverage, rubber, cosmetics and medicine processing fields.
Last December, PBS television host Tony Brown was the keynote speaker at the second annual W&W Electronics employee awards banquet. Now the new W&W Spices Grenada Ltd. has signed to replace Texaco as sponsor of "Tony Brown's Journal," making it the first black-owned company to sponsor a PBS television series.
Also speaking at their respective commencement exercises will be Kevin Cook, the student representative on St. Thomas, and Janin Butler, the student representative on St. Croix.
UVI President Orville Kean, who will preside over what is generally expected to be his last commencement exercises before retiring, expressed pride in "the role the university plays in adding value to the lives of our students and, through their accomplishments, to the community." He said UVI graduates "continue to excel in the working world and in graduate and professional schools."
For more details about the commencement program on either campus, visit the UVI web page at UVI/commencement2001.

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