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Charlotte Amalie
Friday, March 29, 2024
HomeNewsArchivesCELL Expands to Reach St. John Professionals

CELL Expands to Reach St. John Professionals

Oct. 27, 2004 – Since the University of the Virgin Islands began offering continuing education programs through the UVI CELL program, St. John residents have been making the trip from their home island to western St. Thomas.
Now UVI CELL is venturing out towards Love City.
For the past few weeks a group has been gathering at the St. Ursula's Multipurpose Center, preparing to take a Real Estate exam. On a recent Saturday morning, the program director for UVI CELL was on hand to observe the class of roughly 25.
"The relationship we just developed with Multipurpose Center Director Clarence Scipio will afford UVI CELL an opportunity to bring our classes here instead of having students travel to St. Thomas, which some of them have done," Carolyn Cabbell, UVI CELL administrator, said.
Expansion of the continuing education program, which until now has largely been relegated to the St. Thomas and St. Croix campuses of UVI, reflects the success of the two-and-a-half-year-old program. But for businesses based on St. John, the benefit comes from the opportunity to improve the expertise of their personnel without the expense of sending them away.
The CELL program offers professional and personal enrichment courses. Some courses help people in business complete the class work required to keep their professional standing. In fact, Eileen Garner, UVI CELL director, said the first class offered on St. John was arranged in cooperation with St. John members of the V.I. Board of Realtors.
"They were concerned about getting continuing education credits, which are required for them to keep their licenses, so we had a full day seminar for them and we granted them continuing education credits," Garner said.
John Ford, president of the St. John realtor's board, said the value of having UVI CELL at St. John enable the class to be groomed for locals to meet industry requirements.
"Our profession requires continuing education. We're twice as stringent as the national board because we require an educational course every two years where the national board requires a course every four years," he said.
The turnout for the current class, the five-week real estate course has been a satisfying development for Garner. "We have been very happy and pleased to offer that. We've had a great, great response and may have to offer a second one," she said during an on campus gathering last week.
CELL administrators had planned a homeland security class as their next offering but as they discovered, different courses bring differing responses. Cindy Hunt, an administrative specialist with UVI Cell, said the class scheduled for Oct. 23 had to be postponed because of low enrollment but will be offered to security personnel at St. John's Caneel Bay Resort at a later date.
Next on the St. John continuing education agenda is a computer course designed to familiarize users to QuickBooks accounting software. "A number of small businesses use that software to manage their money. In addition we have a hotel there on St. John that is very interested in training their employees on QuickBooks and QuickBooks Pro, and we will be bringing that course directly to them so they don't have to travel anywhere," she said.
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