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It's been almost 2 years in that post, and it's our first encounter, and things appear more or less to have calmed down drastically. Yesterday was our first press encounter with the new president, and we took the opportunity to talk UB's education business with him. Here's how that conversation went:

Alan Slusher, UB President
"The relationship between UB and the Ministry of Education, relationship are excellent and it is absolutely necessary that we maintained those excellent relationship. In fact the university reports to the Ministry of Education. The university is part of the entire complex of instruments available to the government to boost the level of education in Belize and we pride ourselves as being an important part of the arsenal that the government has to develop the knowledge and capacity of our people. Because if we do that, we will then develop the country. People development is an essential part of country development and we are very happy to be as full supportive as we possibly can in this initiative and the part of the Ministry of Education. And as I say our relationships are absolutely excellent and it is my intention to make sure that they remained that way."

Daniel Ortiz
"Can you say categorically that that relationship is not just one of being a yes man if you have particular doubts of the policies of Ministry of Education is having that you will voice them to the best your ability."

Alan Slusher, UB President
"Of course, relationships always have all kind of arrangements. Even in the best of families there are differences in points of view. But once a group recognizes a common objective and we are fully satisfied with the education objective of the Ministry of Education, any differences that may exist are minor and because they are minor, they can be solved and satisfied very easily without argument, without division, without fuss."

Slusher, according to Board President, was given a sort of transitional tenure to streamline the administration of the University, given his past well-known successes in the public service. We asked Slusher yesterday about the progress on that front:

Alan Slusher, UB President
"I came in on a two year contract to see how we can address some of the issues facing the university. UB has been in existence since 2000 - 16 years old and as with any organization there are going to be issues, there are going to be things that perhaps one doesn't like and there are a lots of good things about UB and UB suffers from a problem I guess that all of us know our community suffers from and that is there is a gap between what we would like to do and what we can pay for and the issue is how to use the available resources that we have in the best possible way so that we can move the education capacity, the education absorption, the knowledge capacity of our people forward as quickly as we can within the resource constraints that we have."