UH Manoa College of Education Professor Named Dai Ho Chun Chair

HONOLULU — Dr. Ronald H. Heck has been appointed to the Dai Ho Chun Endowed Chair in the College of Education at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Heck is a professor and department chair in the College of Education, whose excellence in research, teaching and leadership exemplifies the qualities sought of the Dai Ho Chun Chair. He is a nationally renowned scholar who has written and conducted research extensively in the areas of educational policy, performance assessment and research methods.

Heck‘s special project as Dai Ho Chun Chair will be to build a pilot data warehouse for Hawaiʻi‘s P-20 initiative, focusing on the transition from high school to postsecondary education. This data warehouse will provide the basic infrastructure necessary to examine how public school students transition into the University of Hawaiʻi system and how they fare during their college years.

The pilot study links data from 1997 graduating seniors‘ high school years contained in the Department of Education database with information about these students from the University of Hawaiʻi student database. It explores the relationships between students‘ high schools, their course-taking patterns and background information as it affects their postsecondary course-taking, academic majors, grade point averages, mobility and persistence.

Heck‘s project extends research in the areas of educational leadership, school effects and student course-taking patterns. In addition, it serves statewide needs by creating an expanded database from which insights can be generated to understanding how education meets larger economic, social and political goals such as equity, social justice, choice and democracy over an extended period of time. The pilot could demonstrate to policymakers and educators the support needed to pursue the full effort of creating, implementing and maintaining a statewide database system.

The position of the Dai Ho Chun Endowed Chair was established in 2001 when the College of Education received a gift of $1 million from the Dai Ho Chun Estate to establish an endowed chair position in education. Chun was a former public school teacher, faculty member in the UH Mānoa College of Education and director of the International Cooperative Center, the forerunner of the East-West Center.

Dr. Kathryn Au, a professor in the College of Education at UH Mānoa noted for her research and professional contributions in the areas of literacy and teacher education, completes her term having served as the first Dai Ho Chun Endowed Chair.