Board of Regents Medal for Excellence in Teaching
Tammy Haili’ōpua Baker is an associate professor of theatre & dance in the College of Arts, Languages & Letters. A steward of Indigenous knowledge, she fulfilled that kuleana (responsibility) by building the Hawaiian Theatre Program, the only one of its kind focused primarily on performance. A colleague who’s also been her student in Hawaiian language views the experience of acting in her productions as a master class in pedagogy.
“Professor Baker is continually supporting students and others in the production of 40 performers in speaking and singing lines individually and collectively. [She was] clearly the director throughout, nevertheless each actor (students) and production staff (teachers) were all made to feel their work was necessary and appreciated.”
Baker is internationally recognized, the first from Hawaiʻi to receive the Kennedy Center’s Medallion of Excellence. A reviewer of her plays describes them as “guides to restoring language and reclaiming the stories of generations of Indigenous populations; gifts to a culture whose language and history have been suppressed. Her transformative work shines through the passion, voice and aloha spirit of her students.”