Chancellor's Update
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Aloha!
 This new year promises to be both exciting and challenging — and also full of opportunities! I hope everyone is refreshed from the holiday season and recharged for 2009. As we prepare for this year, there is much news to report on how we're adapting to a difficult financial climate and on changes here at UH Mānoa. I believe higher education must be an agent of change and help society deal with change — and this is a critical time for us to play an active role in helping society face some dramatic changes.
This update looks back at some of the exciting progress we've made since the start of the fall semester and gives you an idea of what’s in store for UH Mānoa in the coming year.
In this Update:
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Our Approach to Budget Planning
Our University is not exempt from the economic crisis facing our state, nation, and world. Many of you may have been touched by recent layoffs or have loved ones hurt by our economic downturn. During these times, more than any other, we need to pull together as the UH Mānoa community and support our ʻohana.
UH Mānoa’s budget situation is somewhat uncertain as we head into the 2009 state legislative session, but we must be prepared to operate with less. It’s my belief that we cannot be expected to do more with less, but we can do better with less — that requires examining all that we are currently doing and developing new approaches to accomplish our priorities. This is a time for UH Mānoa to reassess our goals as a campus and to ensure that our limited resources are wisely invested in priorities that reinforce our mission as an educational and research institution.
We have two committees comprised of representatives from across our campus working on our strategic plan/academic priorities and decisions regarding budget allocations:
- The Process Committee will recommend a process for updating our Strategic Plan so our academic priorities are clear and recommend a process to advise me on the investments/reallocations needed to accomplish those priorities. This committee is chaired by Professor Alan Teramura, interim dean of Natural Sciences.
- The Budget Workgroup will advise me on decisions that will be required for UH Mānoa to accommodate budget reductions within the near future. Vice Chancellor Kathy Cutshaw (Administration, Finance and Operations) serves as convenor of the group, which includes representatives of our faculty and staff.
I encourage you to learn about these committees. I believe we need to start planning now because waiting until it happens is not advisable and learning what we might need and want to do beforehand enables the campus to be more strategic in our decisions.
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Celebrating Our Campus Community
We continue to make progress in polishing the jewel that is our UH Mānoa campus through an active program of repairs and modernization. You will see Mânoa Makeover signs on campus containing information on a dozen major construction projects that are contributing to our campus renewal. Our Facilities Management website contains a wealth of information about these projects and our efforts to improve the energy-efficiency of our buildings.
Campus groups have undertaken new Mânoa Makeover projects that continue to make a positive difference:
- The Honors Program planted and is helping maintain a native Hawaiian garden at the Biomedical Sciences Building.
- The Music Department, under the leadership of chair Laurence Paxton, renovated and refreshed its offices. When major improvements to the Orvis Auditorium and painting of the music complex are completed later this year, our music program will be a beautiful — and heavily utilized — part of our campus.
- On January 19, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, campus volunteers installed new landscaping at the Varsity Gate entrance at our makai campus.
Let us know if your group would like to initiate a Manoa Makeover project of your own.
In addition, this academic year has been highlighted by several campus-wide events.
- Our Homecoming Celebration on October 10 culminated a week of activities and was the first in many years to be staged on the lawn of Bachman Hall, enabling our campus community to enjoy music, food, and fun on UH Mânoa’s front porch. Other activities included Shidler College of Business’ Back to Business lectures, College of Engineering Centennial Alumni Event and Sinclair Library’s special commemorative exhibit.
- That was followed on November 15 by our first-ever campus-wide open house, called the Mânoa Experience. This featured activities — open houses, tours, exhibits, presentations — by all of UH Mānoa’s schools and colleges to provide a glimpse to potential students of why we should be their destination of choice.
- We enjoyed a memorable Commencement exercise on December 20 for the nearly 1,800 students who received degrees and certificates in the past fall academic term, highlighted by an inspiring address by Mary Bitterman, president of the Bernard Osher Foundation and presentation of a Regents’ Medal of Distinction in memory of the late educator and composer Winona K. Beamer. We’ve already begun planning for Spring Commencement on May 16, 2009 — and here’s a reminder that, in response to many requests, we’ve changed commencements to Saturdays (instead of Sundays). Learn more
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Conserving Energy
UH Mānoa is taking a leadership role in sustainability — as befitting a flagship campus and leading research institution. Our energy conservation efforts included a voluntary shut-down of air-conditioning in 18 buildings from December 24-January 4. Participants in Mânoa Green Days opted to take leave or find alternate work sites during this period. This experiment was an effort to model sustainable operating practices, conserve energy, and reduce our huge electricity bill — and provide a learning opportunity for future projects. We are currently assessing what we learned and need to do for the future, so stay posted.
We will be launching a new campus initiative in the next few months to conserve energy by delamping or removing unnecessary electrical lights and upgrading inefficient fixtures. You’ll be hearing more about this soon.
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Improvements in Student Services
Academic Affairs and Students Affairs moved to more efficient and paperless transactions by automating our student scholarship and housing applications. Student Affairs hired five new staff in the Financial Aid Office to help students access their grants, loans, and scholarships.
Preparations are under way for the second phase of major improvements at the Campus Center to begin this spring — plans include a recreational facility for students. Read more
Housing Services is preparing for the first phase of renovations to the Hale Aloha Towers. They will modernize and provide safety improvements in the housing areas for freshmen students.
We launched a new website for prospective students to help them navigate the steps necessary to complete the admission process. Visit Undergraduate Admissions to learn more.
Started in the fall semester, we initiated an academic advising program that involves all freshman students — a major step in adding to our supportive environment for students. Next year this advising program will be extended to all sophomores as well.
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Strengthening Our College of Arts and Sciences
A wide spectrum of our campus was involved in helping us move forward with the reorganization of the College of Arts and Sciences — this campus-wide collaboration is a model for the way we are approaching our budget planning.
The goal of our Arts and Sciences reorganization is to enhance the quality of undergraduate education by ensuring that our productive faculty are supported by an organizational structure that promotes coordination, visibility and support for them, along with students and staff.
I am moving ahead based on the input of two committees (Chancellor’s Working Group and the Arts and Sciences Transitional Committee) which have worked for many months on examining and considering structures and leadership that might work best for UH Mānoa. The summary of the committees’ recommendation can be read at online.
The recommendation, which I’ve adopted, is to pursue the hybrid model of an Arts and Science dean supported by academic leaders of key units of Arts and Sciences — this model provides flexibility and is a proven model at many research campuses. We are engaging a search firm to begin the process of finding the best person available to strengthen this very important segment of UH Mānoa. We hope to conduct interviews of top candidates in February and March, and welcome a new dean of Arts and Sciences sometime this summer.
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Accreditation Update
We are preparing for the Capacity and Preparatory Review (CPR) phase of reaccreditation for UH Mānoa, scheduled for December 2009, less than one year from now. The three-part reaccreditation process began in 2006 with the development of an Institutional Proposal (IP) that established UH Mânoa’s goal for the re-accreditation process. The IP, which was accepted by WASC in November 2006, was developed through a series of focus groups meetings with wide engagement of campus members. It sets forth three major initiatives: Building a Mānoa Community in Support of Student Success, Campus Renewal to Support the Manoa Experience, and Reform Campus Governance to Promote Communication, and Student Success.
This past summer, six teams of faculty, staff, and students prepared draft essays that will form the core of the narrative for the CPR report. The essays document our progress in meeting the initiatives and goals established in the IP. A campus-wide forum was held on November 18 to discuss the draft essays and gather campus input prior to finalizing the essays. Evidence is being gathered to document UH Mānoa's compliance with the four WASC standards and 42 Criteria for Review. Assessment and institutional research are major requirements under the revised WASC standards. To strengthen UH Mānoa's support in these areas, the Mānoa Academic Assessment Office was established this summer with the hiring of two assessment specialists. Recruitment for a faculty director is underway as is recruitment of an institutional research analyst.
The Educational Effectiveness Review (EER) is the final part of the re-accreditation process. UH Mānoa's EER review is scheduled for March 2011. I encourage you to learn more about what’s being done to improve student success, renew our campus, and other projects. Read more
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Research Activity
Research activity as measured by the awarding of competitive grants and contracts to our faculty at UH Mānoa continues to grow. Research grants in particular have seen a significant jump with $134.2 million awarded between July and December 2008. This compares with $103.9 million awarded to UH Mānoa faculty between July and December 2007 and the current activity represents an increase of nearly 30 percent over last year. Total grant volume for the same period (to include training grants and other contracts) has grown from $166.2 million to $195.7 million. This is truly significant given these difficult fiscal times and is a testament to the quality of our faculty and the importance of their scholarship.
We recently announced an internal competition for a $1 million research grant in the broad area of sustainability. Funding will be provided over two years for an interdisciplinary research effort of significant relevance to Hawai`i that would build and expand on research strengths presently at UH Mānoa. Deadline to apply is March 1, 2009. The faculty recipient(s) of the $1 million research grant will be announced on Earth Day, April 22, 2009. Read more
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Alumni and Development Update
During the past year, UH Mānoa has been re-connecting with our alumni here in our state and around the world — I can assure you that their passion for UH Mānoa is strong. Since the start of the Centennial Campaign in July of 2002, gifts to Mānoa totaled $190.4 million.
In fact, in spite of the economy, through December of this fiscal year alone, gifts to our campus have totaled $17.4 or 75 percent of the amount raised so far this year system-wide. Thirty thousand of our 153,000 UH Mānoa alumni have made a gift to the campaign, and we are certainly grateful to them for their strong support.
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Changes at UH Mānoa
The search committee for the position of vice chancellor of academic affairs resumed its activities, as vice chancellor Gary Ostrander requested that his name be removed from consideration due to his current responsibilities in the research arena, which would delay his ability to assume this role. The goal of the committee, under the leadership of dean of Nursing Mary Boland, is to recruit and conduct candidate interviews early this year. Dr. Reed W. Dasenbrock, a candidate for this position, will visit the campus Monday and Tuesday, January 26-27, for interviews and meetings. Dr. Dasenbrock currently serves as cabinet secretary for the State of New Mexico’s Department of Higher Education. Read more
Dean of Travel Industry Management (TIM) Walter Jamieson has stepped down after serving for five years to pursue other activities. TIM professor Juanita Liu currently serves as interim dean. Read more
Dr. Carl-Wilhelm Vogel resigned as director of the Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i and is returning to research. Dr. Michele Carbone, director of the Center’s Thoracic Oncology program and chair of the Department of Pathology at the John A. Burns School of Medicine, is serving as interim director. Read more
Mahalo nui loa to Walter and Carl for their service to UH Mānoa and our community.
New members of Mānoa's Advancement Team are director of communications Diane Chang and manager of government relations Elmer Kaʻai Jr. Read more
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Congratulations to…
Students Krystle Salazar, Grace Kwan, and Margaret Ruzicka won the Best Rookie Team and a Bronze Medal at the 2008 International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM), despite being the smallest of 83 other teams at this prestigious event. Read more
An anthurium named "
Mauna Loa" developed by the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources has won a Red Ribbon in the Society of American Florists' 2008 Outstanding Varieties Competition. Read more
Naleen Andrade, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the John A. Burns School of Medicine, received the 2008 Robert Cancro Academic Leadership Award from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Read more
Satoru Izutsu, senior associate dean of the John A. Burns School of Medicine, was honored with the Forever Young Award from the city of Honolulu for demonstrating — at the age of 80 — that senior citizens do lead active and full lives.
Victoria Niederhauser, associate professor at the School of Nursing and Dental Hygiene, was selected as a 2008 Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellow, a national fellowship program focused on leading the country's health care system into the 21st century. Read more
Daniel Rubinoff, associate professor of plant and environmental protection sciences in the College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resources, helped identify a butterfly found in Waikiki as a species previously unknown in the islands or in the United States. Read more
A research team led by astronomer Karen Meech is one of 10 selected nationally for a NASA Astrobiology Institute grant to expand investigations and education on the origin, history, and distribution of water and its relationship to life in the universe.
Study Abroad’s Allison Yap was one of 17 international education and enrollment management officers selected to attend the Baden-Württemberg Seminar in Germany, to study the German educational system and student exchange between Germany and the U.S.
Natural Resources & Environmental Management researcher Chennat Gopalakrishnan was elected a fellow member by the International Water Resources Association in recognition of his expertise in sustainable water resource management.
Our UH Mānoa Cheerleaders won the “Rah! Paula Abdul's Cheerleading Bowl” which was featured on MTV.
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