UH Hilo academic advisor Comfort Sumida explores student success in book review
An alumna of UH Hilo, Sumida is praised for her commitment to providing quality advising to students.
By Susan Enright/UH Hilo Stories.
The upcoming issue of the National Academic Advising Association’s Journal will include a book review by a senior academic advisor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo’s Advising Center.
Charlie Nutt, executive director of NACADA, says Comfort Sumida‘s review of the book, How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough, “indicates commitment to providing quality of advising for your students as well as demonstrates dedication to the profession of advising and the academic success of all students.”
The Journal is a national publication distributed twice a year to over 12,000 NACADA members, institutions, and libraries nationally and internationally.
From Sumida’s review:
Can a person’s chances of academic and personal success be increased? For years the prominent assumption was that a person’s cognitive skills are the key; kids with higher intelligence become more successful adults. As a result, much of modern education focuses on an early start and exposure with repetition in hopes of raising test scores. This approach works well for mechanical skills, such as reading and arithmetic, and centers on the idea that a person’s I.Q. is a leading factor in his/her chances of success. This idea is what Paul Tough refers to as “The Cognitive Hypothesis”, based on the cognitive skills measured by standard I.Q. tests.
In How Children Succeed, Tough challenged the cognitive hypothesis and further asserted what truly matters in success were a person’s non-cognitive skills: persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence, the collection of which is broadly referred to as character.
He explored recent studies showing character as having a significant positive influence on a student’s probability of success, with greater impact than I.Q. scores. Through interviews with researchers, and their subjects, he found these results hold beyond academic success through other life measures (e.g. employment, income, health, alcohol and drug abuse, illegal activities etc.). Furthermore, character may explain the challenges students face and subsequent failures when transitioning to college, regardless of their socioeconomic background.
Sumida was born and raised in Hilo. She attended Waiākea High School and received a bachelor of arts in economics and a bachelor of arts in mathematics from UH Hilo and a master of arts in economics from UH Mānoa.
Story by Susan Enright, a public information specialist for the Office of the Chancellor and editor of UH Hilo Stories. She received her bachelor of arts in English and certificate in women’s studies from UH Hilo.
