The University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona campus offers world class, accredited higher education programmes to Jamaica, the region and the globe. We engage in research and development designed to support the social and economic growth of the Caribbean region, the provision of community service, and the enrichment of the academic experience. Mona, Jamaica is the founding campus of the unique, multipart, multi-national University of the West Indies.
The square mile site welcomed its first undergraduates " 33 medical students from across the West Indies or now, more often, the Caribbean " in October 1948. To medicine was added Natural Science in 1949, Arts in 1950 and, gradually, the full range of the modern university. The campus was chosen not just for its salubrious location, a plateau in the arms of the mountains on the outskirts of the city of Kingston, but also because it came with basic but usable accommodation built during World War II (1939 " 1945) when the site was a wartime camp.
Gibraltar Camp as it was known, offered refuge to evacuees from the British island fortress of Gibraltar at the tip of Spain and, eventually, to Jewish refugees marooned in Spain and Portugal. There was even a civilian internment camp on the site in 1943.
The barracks style buildings constructed to house these longstay visitors became the university's offices, lecture rooms, laboratories, halls of residence and recreational and other facilities, before the construction of new buildings started in the early 1950s
A regionally integrated, innovative, internationally competitive university
#1 on the island
#1 on the island
