Connecting Learning, Life and Aloha
‘O ka ‘imi na‘auao, ke ola a me ke aloha kā kākou e huliāmahi ai

UH Hilo Strategic Planning

Meeting Notes - July 22, 2020

Relationships Committee Meeting: Wednesday, July 22 at 1:00pm

Present: Makamae (Jaslinn) Kamaka-Mauhili, Keali'i Beck, Julie Mowrer, Justina Mattos, Jennifer Stotter, Kathleen Baumgardner

Meeting purpose: advance our discussion with the work that committee members have done since our first meeting. We identified a number of topics in response to the question: What might the University look like if UH Hilo’s relationships were healthy and productive? During this July 22 meeting, committee members were asked to share what they learned from the people in their networks regarding these topics. The questions formulated in the first meeting notes served as a starting point to assist in this inquiry.

At the close of June’s meeting, committee members were tasked to connect with their networks to bring more voices to our efforts in order to explore how we might build healthy and productive relationships. Members added documents to a shared Google drive or by email in order to supplement the continued conversation. These requests for engagement are ongoing and have been received warmly.

At this meeting, members reported having reached out to hundreds of people in their networks - educators, students in our local school district, current UH Hilo students, recent UH Hilo graduates, community members from service organizations, booster club members, nonprofit and foundation partners who work in our community, business people in industries from realtors to documentary producers, former faculty and staff members, and more.

These are ideas shared and discussed during the meeting (the order is primarily presented as the discussion unfolded, although comments/ideas have sometimes been combined with like ideas from the conversation and uploaded notes):

  • Educators in our local schools are overwhelmed with the idea of reopening schools and a lack of direction on the process, along with providing distance learning across all content areas. Collaborative efforts could help our schools while building relationships between the schools and the University.
  • Local school students are confused about their futures and what college learning holds for them. They are also saddened to miss out on traditional high school events (prom, homecoming, variety shows) and extracurricular activities. Building mentoring relationships between University faculty, staff, alumni, and UH Hilo students with young students could lead to mutually beneficial outcomes. Beyond this, there is also a great need with the most vulnerable young adults, especially those aging out of foster care.
  • There is a need for structured recognition and reward for faculty outreach in the community, formally through promotion and tenure as well as in the stories we tell. We should have infrastructure (support, professional development opportunities) and reward systems in place for interdisciplinary and community-engaged work. We should also highlight University efforts that impact the Island, better showing how UH Hilo makes a difference.
  • The Chancellor’s Engaged Scholars program should be developed and expanded. The program goal is to build capacity at UH Hilo for community-engaged teaching and create professional learning communities that build bridges between departments. It is designed to be a 3-semester program for faculty to come together 1x/month to learn about community-engaged teaching as a pedagogical approach and build a relationship with a community partner to co-create a project that is integrated into one of their classes with support from UH Hilo’s Center for Community Engagement. Two semesters are to be spent learning and building a partnership, and the 3rd semester is to be a time for implementation with support from colleagues in the program.
  • UH Hilo should host internal networking events and/or find ways to connect our own faculty and encourage interdisciplinary collaborations with their colleagues (supported by a website with information, open house to share research or interests, etc.).
  • UH Hilo students should be encouraged to reach out to their communities and find ways to be involved through service, the arts, etc.
  • Long-term partnerships should be established with nonprofit organizations and other organizations rather than one-off efforts. (Example: The Lyman Museum would like to connect with Anthropology, History, Performing Arts, and other disciplines to devise and perform dramatic pieces on historic characters; At other Universities, professors started a book club at a senior citizen home and participated in high school history day programs; We have some success now in Ag outreach and our playreading group, but most efforts are sporadic and not systemic.) CCE is looking for community-driven projects to bring more community engagement to the academic experience.
  • There is a need for a cultural shift, where UH Hilo’s people work together to address the various needs of the student population and the surrounding community, instead of being pitted against one another for funding, knowledge, access, and opportunities. Colleagues would be treated as teammates and viewed as resources who might be readily tapped into. This shift will ensure that the culture of the university consistently focuses on the best for all. (Note: this comes from a Foundation perspective, an external person working with multiple units across campus.)
  • A community garden at Hale ʻŌlelo serving as “the piko of the university,” a place for camaraderie and community outreach and building bridges with ʻImiloa, HawCC, Auxiliary Services, external funders, and the community. Multiple pikos or “safe spaces” were discussed - the performing arts center, the library lanai, Campus Center, Kīpuka Center. Should we promote more than one piko, where each hosts different events, serves varied internal and external populations, etc.? Will this promote a more vibrant campus? If so, should we clearly identify and celebrate these spaces?
  • Students report that they appreciate safe spaces and good faculty/student relationships where they are identified as people first (teachers show students that they care about their students’ physical/mental/spiritual/emotional health, putting these needs above the stressful demands of learning and education). They also value an easy transition to College life and they desire to make friendships with others from outside Hawai‘i.
  • Mentorship on campus is key for UH Hilo students, from help with basic questions to helping students stay on track. Kīpuka Native Hawaiian Student Center’s mentoring program and the First-Year Experience program have an impact. There are more students who could benefit from mentoring with peers, faculty/staff, alumni, or those from industry. (And, UH Hilo students might serve as mentors for students in the local schools, as mentioned earlier in this list.)
  • Enhance onboarding for new employees, including more cultural programming.
  • We could use the work already developed: WASC Rubric for Cultural Diversity and the Hawaiʻi Papa O Ke Ao plan. In 2012 University of Hawaiʻi adopted the HPOKA plan that identified characteristics of a model indigenous-serving institution in Hawaiʻi and three thematic goals - leadership development, community engagement, and Hawaiian culture and language parity. (Please follow the link for more information.)
  • UH Hilo needs a more proactive presence in the community, so that the community knows we are approachable and we demonstrate that we’re here and we care. We should better define UH Hilo’s role in the community. These efforts would lead to these results:
    • Community members would know who to contact if they have a question or need a resource.
    • Community members are aware of the contributions of UH Hilo (through tabling at events, articles in the newspaper, website for community. Who would be responsible for this?)
    • There are good reasons for community members to come to campus that resonate with the values and strengths of UH Hilo (diversity, environment, culture, understanding of place, etc.), events like music, plays, sports, speakers (Note: UH Hilo does not have an event planner so everyone recreates the wheel who wants to do these events and using funding for these is insanely hard.)
    • We establish an annual community/university event that leads to collaborative projects, even collaborative grants.
    • UH Hilo hosts spaces that build collaborative and reciprocal relationships, like the Community Garden.
    • There are strong working and reciprocal relationships and we all work to solve critical issues important to people on- and off-campus, like domestic violence.
    • We demonstrate that we are approachable by being visible at marches, AAUW events (American Association of University Women), Rotary, etc.
    • We invite and welcome community groups to meet on our campus. We offer safe spaces for groups like those in the LGBTQIA+ community.
    • We offer family-friendly activities after 4pm that are not offered elsewhere. (Note: 73% of our students are from Hawaii and may be available to do fun things with their family on campus.)
    • Work in our classrooms and research labs is highlighted, especially if it has impact on the Island. We demonstrate how we make a difference.
    • We host professional development opportunities that aren’t offered elsewhere. (Note: Hawaii CC’s EdVance focuses on this area so we don’t want to compete)
    • Students take charge of some projects that are good experiences for them and make a difference, and could become part of their academic program.
  • Students could take a required UNIV 101/102 that teaches about place, collaboration, teamwork, sense of self, resilience, and then students engage in a community project. The goal is to ground students in the values of UH Hilo at the very beginning and prepare them for more community-engaged, collaborative work throughout their 4 years.
  • Campus signage makes students feel proud to be at UH Hilo.
  • We might examine UH Hilo programs or units that have an established record of internal interdisciplinary collaboration or collaborative efforts with other institutions, like TCBES or the Administration of Justice 2+2 program. These programs could serve as models. UH Hilo’s Tropical Conservation Biology and Environmental Science Graduate Program pulls together faculty from many disciplines to provide educational opportunities that foster knowledge of theory and techniques in conservation biology and environmental sciences, including basic, applied, and socio-ecological research, and promotes scholarly activities in marine and terrestrial environments that enable students to pursue careers in research and natural resource management. The Administration of Justice 2+2 program empowers students to plan out a seamless path from another institution, like HCC, to UH Hilo while participating in interdisciplinary coursework in areas like anthropology, administration of justice (offered at community colleges), communications, health and physical education, management, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology.
  • We should also look to individuals who are community builders, like Larry Kimura, who we may talk with about relationship building. If we look to people like Larry and others who are currently immersed in campus and the community, we may find that people might be the best bridges. Larry has not only made significant contributions to the revitalization of the Hawaiian language, but co-founded of Hawai‘i’s first ‘Aha Pūnana Leo Hawaiian language immersion preschools, he is credited across 47 albums, tapes, and CDs for his songs and chants, and he is co-principal investigator for a National Science Foundation and a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to digitize and archive spoken native Hawaiian speech.

Our team recognizes that there is a tension between the immediate need to work on campus relationships and the need to build external relationships and offer help, especially during this unprecedented time of COVID-19.

Action Plan:

  • Committee members will continue to add/update notes in the group’s Google drive folder as conversations continue or are revisited.
  • Based on our discussion and continued discussions with contacts, committee members will come back to our next discussion with their idea regarding the one relationship they feel is the most important to focus on right now and has potential for impactful positive transformation. Each team member will share their thoughts on the following: Which relationship is most critical now?
    What is your ideal vision for this relationship?