I am pleased to announce that Moriba Baker, Associate Dean, Social and Media Communications in the Faculty of Media and Creative Arts, successfully defended his Doctor of Philosophy in Social Policy on December 10, 2021. Moriba completed his Doctor of Philosophy with the University of the West Indies – St. Augustine at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social Economic Studies (SALISES).

Moriba’s study focussed on the effectiveness and efficiency of Sporting Academies especially in Small Island Developing States. It was a qualitative study with data collection and analyses based on Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) and the evaluation based on both the Sport Policy factors Leading to International Sporting Success (SPLISS) and Balance Scorecard (BSC) approaches. The findings of the study are significant as they contribute to the corpus of literature or scholarship on sport in general, and sport policy and evaluation. The study unearths an unexplored and under researched area in sport within the Caribbean region and it is the first sport academy evaluation research in the Caribbean region. This study through its approaches was able to generate a theory which is not only suitable for sport but also several other disciplines. Finally, the study’s methodology which was grounded in the SPLISS, BSC and GT approaches to evaluation is not widely applied and presented an opportunity to show their wider applicability or generalizability.

For more information on Moriba's findings and the Doctoral program please contact him directly at moriba.baker@humber.ca.

Guillermo Acosta
Senior Dean, Faculty of Media & Creative Arts