Chancellor Bonnie D. Irwin and the Executive Leadership Team delivered the 2025 State of the University Address on Sept 10.
Click slides to enlarge.
Chancellor Irwin opens the presentation:
He ʻelele au na ke Kulanui o Hawaiʻi ma Hilo, e hāpai aʻe nei i kēia ʻōlelo Hōʻoia ʻĀina, he honua ʻōiwi ʻo Hawaiʻi nona ka poʻe ʻōiwi o ka ʻāina, ʻo ia nā kānaka Hawaiʻi.
Me ke aloha nui au e hāpai nei i kēia Hōʻoia ʻĀina ma ka hoʻokipa ʻana i ka poʻe a pau e kipa mai ana i kēia lā, ma kēia ahupuaʻa ʻo Waiākea, ma ka moku o Hilo.
ʻO Hawaiʻi nei nō kēia ʻāina. Welina pumehana kākou.
On behalf of the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, it is with profound reflection that I offer up this Hōʻoia ʻĀina, Land Acknowledgement, acknowledging Hawaiʻi as an Indigenous space whose original people are today identified as Native Hawaiians.
With much aloha, I offer up this Land Acknowledgement in welcome to all gathered this day, in the land division we call Waiākea, in the district of Hilo.
This land is Hawaiʻi itself. A warm greeting to all of us.
Fall 2025 Enrollment
Aloha and Good Afternoon.
I am pleased to welcome us all back to a new year and a new semester. There is much to celebrate this year and much still to work on in fulfilling our kuleana to our students and our island.
We rolled out the proverbial red carpet for our new students this year, with a full slate of orientation events, the successful Welina Bash last week, as well as some renovations to and painting of buildings and some sprucing up of the grounds.
Fall 2025 Faculty
Our faculty have been engaged in professional development around community engagement and career readiness, and some will be serving on newly formed AI task forces and committees.
Fall 2025 Staff
Our staff council continues to thrive, and our staff headcount has increased from last year, helping us to support students and get the word out about the great work we do.
Trends: New Freshmen and New Transfer Students
The numbers are not final yet. We are still a couple of weeks before census, but here is what I can tell you today.
While our total enrollment is down slightly from last year, we have had the largest increase in new freshmen in four years (18.8% as of 9/10/2025), outpacing in percentage both Mānoa and West Oʻahu. Transfers are up slightly. Hawaiʻi resident students are up and those of Filipino, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander origin, among others, are also up. This shows the good work of our admissions staff, fanning out across the state to tell the story of UH Hilo. As our work with Echo Delta expands this year, we expect to see even stronger numbers next fall.
Trends: 1-Year Retention Rates and Graduation Rates
The freshman to sophomore retention rate for 2024 was the highest in our history, and both 4-year and 6-year graduation rates were up.
I’ll get back to you after census about the 2025 rates, but so far the signs are positive.
Extramural Contract & Grant Awards
Grants earned hit the highest mark in over a decade, and though the total is somewhat misleading, as I will get to in a moment, these numbers reflect a lot of good work on the part of faculty and staff.
We may very well expect a downturn in RTRF [Research, Training, and Revolving Funds] funds next year, as many federal agencies are cutting back on allowable indirect costs, but we will not let that stop us from continuing the good work of applied research in our community.
Federal Impacts
The federal executive orders, funding and personnel cuts, and other changes have certainly had an impact on our work over the last several months.
You will see some different language on our websites, as we pivot from discussing equity to support for all students. Our values remain the same, however, in that we are here to make sure that each student gets the support they need to thrive, both at UH Hilo and when they graduate.
We lost our LSAMP [Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation] grant, which provided research stipends for undergraduates across the Pacific. Both UH Hilo and all our partner institutions are working on ways to provide these valuable experiences for undergraduates in other ways.
We were lucky in that the most concerning changes to student financial aid were emended in the federal funding bill earlier this year, but the UH System continues to monitor new EOs [Executive Orders], ensuing court cases, and any actions which may impact our core operations. We’re working across the [UH] System to ensure that our processes are consistent, and students are treated fairly, regardless of which campus they are on.
WSCUC Visit and Recommendations
Finally, we had a successful WSCUC visit in April. The visiting team as well as the commission noted the hard work we had done on our various plans, and had one major recommendation: implement!!
Sitting on the Commission this summer, I learned that notices of concern and special visits are becoming more frequent across the WSCUC membership, as many of our colleagues are facing the same challenges in enrollment and budget that we are.
I will now turn things over to the members of the Executive Leadership Team, so that they can outline their priorities for the year within the framework of our strategic plan and the [UH] System strategic imperatives. Time permitting, I’ll be back later to talk about some of the actions being undertaken at the system level and their impact on UH Hilo.