‘UG Got 90% of Me’: Paloma Mohamed reflects on seven demanding years as Vice Chancellor

Mar 15, 2026 News

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…to continue building on her Specialist work as Futurist Strategist

By Davina Bagot

(Kaieteur News) – When Professor Paloma Mohamed applied to become Vice Chancellor (VC) of the University of Guyana (UG) she did not envisage the extra loads of responsibility that came with the portfolio.  While she executed with Lazer focused excellence for the past years she is now eager to reconnect with aspects of her life that were neglected.

Before she was appointed VC, the professor served as Chair of the Transition Management Committee following the departure of the then VC in 2019. Dr. Mohamed was officially appointed as VC in June 2020, where she became the first female to hold the position at any University in the Anglophone Caribbean.

Her decision to apply was one heavily influenced by her peers, Dr. Mohamed recalled, during an interview with Kaieteur News.

“I didn’t really want to apply the position. That’s the first thing. I hate applying for anything… I was asked when I was Deputy Vice Chancellor because I’d been on faculty, I was asked to do the Deputy Vice Chancellor job. I told you, my reaction to that was like, no, no, no, no, for six months. But the then Vice Chancellor kept at it and then I was like, eventually, okay,” she said.

Her friends also encouraged her to take on the responsibility recognising her ability to influence changes at the institution. At the time- February 2020- the world was grappling with a pandemic that later hit these shores, an epidemic that the Change Specialist maneuvered with grace and excellence. Under her astute leadership, the University, with just around 6900 students at the time, managed to transition to online classes.

“We’re state funded, we could sit down and say, well, look, you know what, it’s COVID, nobody’s teaching, we still get paid. But that was never a conversation. The conversation was we are state; we have to ensure that when this is over, we pick up the pieces, people are there to pick up these jobs and that we are going to be able to function if ever this happens again,” she remarked.

She rallied through numerous difficult seasons during her tenure, including an impasse that lasted several months after the tumultuous national elections in 2020, heightened border threats from Venezuela and more recently the decision to make tertiary education free for Guyanese nationals.

Reflecting on her years of service, the professor said she almost gave up her personal life to focus on UG, but one thing that she made sure was never compromised was her spiritual life, an anchor that led her through various challenges. The number 7, she has said, is significant for her. “It speaks of completion, perfection, appreciation”.  She said her social life started to “disappear” with dinner plans often being cancelled and her loved ones left disappointed too many times.

At just 14-years old, the VC said her eldest son at the time looked into her eyes and protested, “You have 11,000 children and I am not one of them. It was like a blow to my stomach,” she added with tears settling in her eyes.

Professor Mohamed shared, “There could be no balance. Too much needed to be done, and the resources were never enough… I don’t think in these conditions there could have ever been any kind of work-life balance at one point when I was carrying the portfolios of Vice Chancellor, Pro Chancellor and Chancellor all at once. So UG got 90%, everything else got 10 or less. And that’s just because of how much the place needs…there have been times when I (had) people waiting for me for hours for social events and then eventually I have to say, I can’t do it because I have this thing that is urgent or something happened with a student. I have to go by the police station to help some staff, or somebody’s pregnant and needs to get to hospital …. last minute request for a brief …opportunity with a tight deadline….”

The scholar said she is grateful for her support group and friends including her mom who has been helping to nurture her six children, five of whom were adopted.

“I missed so many things, you know, birthdays, parties. I, you know, have not seen my own husband for eight months now. Because he’s away and looking after his parents who have been unwell, and if I spoke to him five times in the last six or eight months… and then, of course, I miss my own work as a scholar… so I wanted to really kind of refocus my logic and my intellect on things that I was interested and have passion for because that has suffered a tremendous lot.” She added.  “Bitter-sweet …. it was also my greatest privilege and honour to be entrusted with this place I love so much… this responsibility which totally consumed me.”

Beyond her personal challenges and numerous different circumstances at the University, Dr. Mohamed was able to achieve monumental accomplishments, which she humbly acknowledged is not due to her role alone. “I have had a generally great team and it’s not enough” as the University still requires tremendous work.

Some of the notable achievements highlighted by her between 2020 and 2026 were the growth of the campus from 6900 to 16000 students. The addition of several new buildings including new laboratories where the first time in the country’s history 23 new species of flora and fauna were genetically sequenced in 2025, the construction of a new dental clinic to benefit staff, a sports facility and the tremendous back-end work, of setting up systems and polices to support the rapid growth in programs and delivery sites.  The number of campuses has grown from around five to 10.  “There are hundreds of ways in which we changed UG for the better “she says.

One thing was the increased ranking of UG internationally. She explained, “Not only did we achieve institutional accreditation for the first time but we had accreditation for our petroleum engineering programmes, our medical school which was accredited but got reaccredited, accreditations for the business school and for the engineering and faculty of engineering and technology, on the way ISO for the faculty of Agriculture so we’re kind of continuously working on international standards and accreditation for various programmes. And I am very proud of our Maka Tawa Forest Campus at Aishalton…a model for the world. As well as the achievements of my colleagues and our students. Any success associated with my tenure is a collective one. Could not have achieved anything alone.”

Dr. Mohamed is also proud that the University enhanced its online services with local online payments, other services and registration to benefit students as well as reducing the time for grades to be available. “I am a systems person. A lot of time had to be spent on building good systems, with more still to be done.”

While many are deeply concerned about whether the scholar will be joining the political stage, Dr. Mohamed said she has no such intentions and never had any. “I have a very strong personal aversion to partisan politics. “

She said she received numerous phone calls from people who were curious to know whether she was ill or plans to team up with a politician given her decision not to reapply for the position.

The Vice Chancellor, however, clarified that she had two terms as VC, the longest tenure of a Vice Chancellor at UG for at least 20 years. “I don’t know why a person cannot wish to return to their first love in peace”. She smiles, “I tried to balance my intellectual passions with the work of a high-level manager. It cannot work; it’s time to connect to other things. She plans to complete several books that she started working on years ago and get back to other things that she neglected such as her nurturing work in the Theatre, teaching and research.

Moreover, Dr. Mohamed is thinking of   creating an Institute for Futurist Strategy, Research and Policy. “One of the things that I think that I really want to do is set up an institute for futurists, research and policy, I think not only for institutions but companies, perhaps the region. The changes in technology, geo-politics, environment, their application, implications for human functionality, the changes in society, the changes in workforce, in mentality and attitudes, all of those things somebody or some set of people have to make sense of those things and they have to make sense of them fast enough so that we are able to not only be resilient to these changes but to adapt and leverage what we really have at this point for the best human outcomes.”

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• Futurist Strategist, Paloma Mohamed, UG, Vice Chancellor

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