Goal 3: Actions, and Measures

Goal 3: Empower Learners with Up-to-Date and Relevant Knowledge to Contribute to Healthy, Vibrant, Sustainable, Flourishing Communities on Hawaiʻi Island and Around the World

This goal aims to integrate education with community engagement, workforce development, and interdisciplinary collaboration, preparing learners to make meaningful contributions locally and globally.

Actions

1. Community Engagement
   1. Engage with the community on issues important to the community, including student participation in this engagement as part of the curriculum, multidisciplinary collaborations to obtain extramural funding to support community partnerships in these areas, more community events on campus, and more visible service off-campus in the community.
   2. Map community efforts and interests to identify potential partnerships.
   3. Establish new traditions that further distinguish and celebrate UH Hilo and that support alumni and community engagement.
2. Workforce Development
   1. Engage more effectively with employers on workforce needs, including establishing channels for local employers to communicate needs, disseminating local job opportunities to UH Hilo students and alumni to help recruit candidates to fill the workforce needs, and developing “certificate and micro-certificate” educational offerings that address specific competencies needed to enhance skills of the current workforce and offer these courses in flexible formats to accommodate employer workforce schedules and learner preferences.
   2. Create and support new initiatives across the colleges that innovate in ways that build and expand new areas for workforce development and entrepreneurship.
   3. Develop an internship office and infrastructure, including campus policies/processes that increase coordination and workforce experiences, enhancing marketability for Hawaiʻi-based workforce markets.
   4. Create more opportunities that link students to local employment opportunities and community leaders.
3. Curriculum Development and Outreach
   1. Expand place and community-based learning experiences throughout the curricula, including fieldwork, service, internships, and research opportunities that immerse students in Hawaiʻi Island’s diverse ecosystems and communities.
   2. Investigate a more cost-efficient model for double degrees that blends other degree disciplines with Hawaiian language and culture.
   3. Strengthen existing professional and graduate degree courses through synergistic cross-fertilization and offer these to advanced undergraduates to get an early start on a graduate degree.
   4. Formally incorporate community experts into the curriculum in alignment with advanced models of rural development that recognize and value expertise in the application of knowledge in community settings, providing role models for career success outside of academia.
   5. Consider possible redesign, interdisciplinary innovation, and improvement of current degrees that align with Native Hawaiian interests and aspirations and build upon our campus’ strengths.
   6. Support the initiatives and provide incubator space for KHʻUOK to advance its academic and outreach pathways and programs and fulfill its legislatively established responsibilities for providing the state with an educational pathway through the medium of the Hawaiian language, a related Hawaiian medium teacher training program incorporating laboratory schools, a Hawaiian language support center with educational specialists, and language-focused outreach to other Indigenous peoples.
   7. Build on the current foundation of degree programs in the arts and sciences, which feature broadly relevant critical thinking and creative expression skills, to offer concentrations in existing programs and cross-cutting concentrations that target current workforce needs, including offering these certificates and other professional development programs at a discount to UH Hilo graduates.
4. Interdisciplinary Collaboration
   1. Develop and support a formal structure for co-teaching and teaching across departments and disciplines.
   2. Support emerging interdisciplinary programs, including developing mechanisms to ensure the success and autonomy of interdisciplinary programs across campus and encouraging cross-college teaching and collaboration by allowing the SSH structure and credit to be flexible and shared.
5. Student and Alumni Engagement
   1. Develop a student leadership program that prepares learners across academic programs to effectively and ethically influence positive change, including redesigning UNIV 101 to reflect leadership development skills and building a pipeline for teaching UNIV 101.
   2. Support lifelong learning journeys for alumni and increase alumni engagement.
   3. Establish a tracking system for capturing each student’s journey qualitatively and quantitatively during and after completion of the certificate or degree program.
6. Faculty and Staff Support
   1. Recruit and retain high-quality faculty, staff, and administrators who embrace UH Hilo’s mission, vision, values, and goals and have the expertise to support learners in their development of critical thinking, creative expression, ethical decision-making, respect for differences, and effective communication skills, regardless of area of study or vocation.
   2. Provide workload credit for faculty who engage in local, statewide, national, or international community partnerships that build student enrollment pipelines.
7. Native Hawaiian and International Partnerships
   1. Establish a position for Native Hawaiian Community Engagement to identify and advance UH Hilo Native Hawaiian community partnerships and ensure the existence of current and future community relationships.
8. Facilities and Events
   1. Increase community use of campus facilities for events and services.
   2. Offer shared professional development, affinity groups, cultural events, and other intentional events and celebrations that foster relationship building, campus engagement, and student learning.

Measures

1. Track the percentage of students participating in internships and community-based learning experiences.
2. Measure student employment rates within one year of graduation.
3. Monitor student progress toward individual academic and career goals.
4. Count students in feeder programs targeting specific communities and sustainability goals.
5. Conduct an annual survey assessing Hawaiʻi Island community perceptions of:
   1. UH Hilo’s mission and vision achievement;
   2. Value of educational offerings;
   3. Service to the community; and
   4. Importance of research and scholarly work.