Wisdom: All cultures have accumulated indigenous wisdom and information that provide valuable insights on the relationship between humanity and communication. Consequently, our department is committed to the advancement of diverse theoretical standpoints. We explore both traditional and non-traditional theories of communication. We seek to provide students with a wide range of communication models and concepts that they can meaningfully relate to their diverse cultural backgrounds and experiences.

Context: Given UH Hilo’s unique location, our department especially aims to broaden and deepen our students’ understanding of communication in Pacific-Asian contexts. We strive to encourage students to continually consider the role that context plays in organizational, professional, interpersonal, and media communication. Additionally, we foster the ability to respect, adapt to, bridge, change, translate, and transcend this context, as is appropriate.

Process: As the metaphor of “island laboratory” indicates, our department encourages students to experience the multicultural aspects of Hawaiʻi. We believe that seeing local events in the global context and globalization in the local context is an important asset of a world citizen in the 21st century. Culture can be a contested zone that generates conflicting views and clashes of opinions. Conflict, however, also opens up the possibility of dialogue.

Community: Communication and culture work together in the formation of communities. In an “ideal” multicultural community, human dialogue overshadows monologue, and connection replaces fragmentation. Our program encourages multicultural team-building, community-building, and dialogue. Further, our program seeks to empower our students as facilitators of intercultural dialogue.