University of Hawai’i Community Colleges Welcomes Susan Wyche as New Grants Director 

University of Hawaiʻi
Contact:
Natalie K Schack, (808) 956-3990
Mrktg Spec, Vice President for Community Colleges
Posted: Feb 27, 2017

Susan Wyche
Susan Wyche

To invigorate the system’s grant-funded activities, and broaden the scope of inter-campus collaborative projects, the University of Hawai’i Community Colleges welcomes aboard Susan Wyche as the new UHCC Grants Director. 

At the helm of the new UHCC Grants Office, Wyche will spearhead efforts to unite the community colleges with an influx of external funding for projects key to the system’s strategic priorities. Drawing from her decades of experience in higher education, grant funding and “academic start-ups,” she will structure the new office’s approach with a dynamic, communications-based framework aimed to increase collaboration, both internally — between campuses — and externally, with agencies relating to projects that have state- or system-wide appeal.

“Susan brings with her a deep understanding of, and expertise in, the ins and outs of private and public funding agencies,” says Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs Peter Quigley. “This new grants initiative has real potential to dramatically accelerate the system’s big picture, long-term, strategic goals. Susan recently worked successfully and tirelessly on some system-wide grant opportunities, proving that we are stronger together and that she is very attentive to the voices and missions of specific campuses and departments. We couldn’t be more excited to add someone with her innovative, versatile track record of getting serious results to our roster.” 

Wyche received her Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of Washington, Seattle and has held faculty appointments at several West Coast universities, including San Diego State University (SDSU), Washington State University (WSU-Pullman) and California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB). As the WSU Director of Writing, she helped establish university-wide programs in accelerated learning, portfolio assessment and critical thinking. She was a founding director at CSUMB, where she initiated some of the first outcomes-based degree programs in the CSU system, and received recognition for her work as an outstanding faculty member at both SDSU and WSU. 

Wyche’s varied experiences have also taken her into the worlds of entrepreneurship, and sustainable landscape design and green building, having run her own design firm in Santa Cruz, California for ten years before becoming Special Projects Coordinator for University of Hawaii Maui College. At Maui College, she developed grant-funded projects for food manufacturing, electric vehicle infrastructure planning, and workforce programs. In 2012, she established the UHMC Grants Office, assisting other faculty on National Science Foundation, Department of Education, and U.S. Department of Labor grants, while serving as a project lead on several consortium grants for the UHCC System. 

In addition to pursuing external funding sources and projects that further the UHCC strategic goals, Wyche also aims to assist faculty and administrators interested in pursuing grant-funded professional development opportunities, and to develop an identity as the go-to, single-point-of-contact center for UHCC grants.