Eight Questions for Dr Violet V Cuffy
Violet firmly believes that tourism education should be a lifelong process and that there is a huge knowledge gap among the tourism industry personnel in Dominica especially about our unique tourism product. In fact Dr. Violet V Cuffy has named her doctoral thesis: “From Womb to Tomb: A Comprehensive Analysis of Tourism Education and Training in the Commonwealth of Dominica”
In June 2011 Dr Cuffy visited her native island after completing the PhD at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom to hold a thanksgiving celebration for the individuals who supported her during the research process.
Before that major step, she earned a Masters Degree in Tourism Hospitality Management from the University of the West Indies but her first degree was in education. In addition, Dr Cuffy has varied experience in tourism, business and in education and training. Outside academia, she was employed as a Community Tourism Business Development Officer of the Eco-Tourism Development Programme funded by the European Union, taught at the St. Martin’s School and worked at the Royal Bank of Canada.
During her stay we spoke to Dr. Cuffy about her thesis. Here are her responses to some of the questions that we asked.
SUN: How did you come up with that title for your thesis?
Dr Cuffy: One of my interviewees, during the interview process, was assessing the whole situation of training and development of tourism on the island and she said that there is such a need for more structures and more planning because of the significance that tourism seem to have on the island that the subject just had to be taught from womb to tomb. This was a phrase that really stuck with me and at the end of the interviews and the analysis I realised that that phrase would capture the essence of the study very well.
SUN: Do you mean that tourism, as a subject, should be taught from preschool right through tertiary education levels and in adult education settings as well?
Dr. Cuffy: For argument sake, science subjects are taught from kindergarten up to university levels and post-university and at different tertiary programmes but we don’t approach tourism like that. I think very recently while I was here I think there was an initiative to get some text done for the primary schools. But tourism was always something to be taught at a higher level but you have children exposed to the tourism industry from a very young age. Yes, we say, as marketing tool “tourism is everybody’s business” but we don’t prepare everybody for it. We have a small number of persons involved in training, haphazardly, whenever there is a need. We are very short term in our approach to education and training in tourism.
SUN: You conducted that study for your PhD in 2007 and 2008 when you interviewed a number of persons including politicians, planners, policy-makers, educators and so on. What were your main findings?
Dr Cuffy: That we need to approach tourism training and education from a unique perspective because we are so different from the other islands. Although we are part of the archipelago, but unlike the other islands we are not so much focused on sun, sea and sand tourism that almost everybody in Europe seem to think about whenever they think of the Caribbean.
As I said to you before there is now this move to try and standardize everything on a whole and I guess, by extension, tourism education and training. But this is what my thesis challenges. Is that the answer for Dominica? Is that the way we should go? Where does the individuality of the whole product fit into the whole scheme of things in that setting? What do we need?
These are the questions that my study is raising. What my thesis is saying is: no, we do not have to follow the trend because we are so different; we are selling a different product. And yes, we need to generate courses and programmes and skills but we need to have some sort of differentiation in the education and training system because our product is different. This is one of the things that came out loudly and it challenges how things are now being done.
SUN: The next question then is the knowledge to be different available locally so that we can develop these unique training programmes?
Dr. Cuffy: What I found even from the experts in the field locally is that there may be one or two, I could count the number of people, who you could define as “experts”. But in terms of professionals trained education and training of tourism, there was a big, big gap and void in that area on island at the time. And even with the persons who should be planning and organizing, I would ask them certain questions and based on the answers, I felt that the knowledge of what should be done was not there. So the problem was very vivid at the time. If you are at the top and you are responsible for planning, structuring and you cannot respond to certain issues how then you are going to create that sort of curriculum to address the needs that we have locally.
I asked for example, what can we do differently and people were saying to me things like hair braiding, taxi training- nobody said to me that okay, we have Sulphur springs, we are the only island in the Caribbean with a boiling lake why don’t we have studies or programmes about the benefits of healing and so on. We have many centenarians yet not one person could recognise that this was something very unique in our tourism product. Nobody in education and training said to me this is something to offer to our visitors, something very different that they would not get anywhere else. Everybody was talking about the taxi training, the hair braiding, nothing unique to Dominica. People were still thinking within that box.
SUN: Your research was restricted to Dominica; would you say that was a major limitation?
Dr. Cuffy From the researcher’s perspective, one could always benefit from comparative analysis and this is the next stage, now that the PhD is over, that I am going to peruse. Within the limited time in which you have to do a piece of research, you have to have valid data, you have to have reliable data and to do a comparable analysis, if the data is not available, you have to spend an equal amount of time everywhere to collect it to make meaningful what you want to comment about. Within the context of what I was doing it was not a limitation since I was studying Dominica .What I had to ensure is that I studied the island thoroughly enough to be able to make the comments and to make the claims that I’m making.
SUN: Sustainable tourism management and development was the theme of your study. What, in the context of Dominica, is sustainable tourism?
Dr. Cuffy: In terms of what I researched sustainability really speaks to longevity continuity. If we are looking at tourism as the mainstay of the economy or one of the sectors to contribute to our GDP, we need to approach it in a manner that is sustainable, meaning it will be around for a very long time, it would contribute to the betterment of the people of the country. You don’t damage your assets; you create as you go along.
In terms of sustainable education you want to have a programme that will create that sort of tourism that you are hoping to produce. You want to train people who can go out there and create a sustainable tourism product within our context, a small island with a lot of challenges, with a lot of limitations, great gap in terms of professionals in the field, people who think outside the box, people who can think of the issues critically and come up with a curriculum that would address the needs of our unique product
SUN: That takes us to the issue of Dominicans who seem to take our gifts so rich and rare for granted. How can we change that attitude?
Dr. Cuffy: As my thesis now advocates, education and training in tourism must be from birth to the tomb. But I must admit that during my research it was revealed that there are some pockets here and there of education and training being done along the life cycle already. It is happening. However, in terms of the continuity, the sustainability, quality, expert knowledge being passed on, the void is right there.
SUN: What lessons have you learned from your life in academia that you could advise young persons who want to follow in your footsteps?
Dr Cuffy: Reach for the sky. Some people say to me “you walk as if you do not want to touch the ground”. But I say to people that’s okay, better they say that to you and you are worth your salt rather than people say bad things about you because they are going to say things about you anyway. When they say things about you let it be because you walk with your head up because your ambitions are high. But you have to be grounded as well, grounded in the reality of your situation. As I told you from the time I knew myself I wanted to reach the top of the academic field that I chose. It took me quite some to get here and I had to go up and down a few ladders
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