Bringing people together through knowledge dissemination

Dr. Elaine Dawn Wallace (ellainew@nsric.ca) is the Head of Department in the area of Public Administration. She is also the  Distinguished  Faculty in Public Administration at Commerce and Management (COM) Unit of OE Division, NSRIC. Her professional life began in 1968 as a trainee journalist at the Daily Gleaner after leaving secondary (high) school.  There began her profession in the field of communications.  As a journalist worked as reporter, feature writer and sub-editor in the newspaper environment; production assistant at Radio Jamaica and at the Jamaica Information Service/Agency for Public Information as reporter and editor for print in the public information system.  While at the Jamaica Information Service she began studies at the University of the West Indies, graduating in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree.  She pursued higher studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, and returned to Jamaica in 1991 after completing a PhD in cultural studies.  On her return to Jamaica, she was engaged to head the Information Division, which had portfolio responsibility for media and communication policy development and management, the National Records Office and the Jamaica Archives.  This was a department of the Office of the Prime Minister. During this period, she was also adjunct lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus and the St Augustine Campus in Trinidad.

Dr. Wallace’s next undertaking was to establish a consultancy, undertaking projects relating to information and communications policy, before taking a position as lecturer in communication studies at the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTECH, Jamaica). During her tenure at UTECH, she was assigned various responsibilities – project manager for the introduction of the semester system at the university; University Registrar and Secretary of the University Council; leader of the UTECH team in wage negotiations with respective trade unions for Academic and Administrative staff at the local level and at the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service. Since her retirement from UTECH in 2017, she has been offering copyediting services, having completed an online course at the Berkeley University (Extension).