Remarks to the University of Hawai‘i Alumni Association Distinguished Alumni Awards Dinner
by President David McClain
May 18, 2006
Our earliest memory as a university dates from March 25, 1907, when the Territorial Legislature passed an act creating the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. We did not hold a full schedule of classes that year, but did pull together five students in a house on Young Street, so that we could qualify for a matching federal grant to build what we know today is Hawai‘i Hall.
Rushing to provide matching funds in order to get a federal grant… in 100 years, nothing much has changed!
Our alumni have always been the university’s greatest source of strength and today number 190,000, approximately 140,000 of whom reside here in Hawai‘i.
Meanwhile, 80,000 future alumni are pursuing credit or non–credit work at our university. Of every five persons pursuing higher education in our state, four of those do so at the University of Hawai‘i.
The UH footprint in our state is large and growing. Just last weekend on our 10 campuses, some 4,600 students received their diplomas and certificates —2,300 at UH Manoa alone, our largest commencement in many years.
These graduates have mastered of one of several hundred courses of study, ranging from astronomy to zoology.
Our diplomas reflect much more than academic accomplishment, of course. They mark the transformation our students have experienced in their lives. More mature than when they started, more confident in their ability to learn, UH graduates truly are ready to keep learning all their lives and to change and transform the world.
Transforming and changing Hawai‘i, our nation and the world is certainly what our alumni have done.
As we approach the celebration of our centennial, I would venture to say that in the last 100 years the graduates of the University of Hawai‘i have done more to promote social justice and economic opportunity in this state than any group.
Tonight we celebrate this rich tradition of transformation, as we honor the 2006 Distinguished Alumni Awardees Judge Kaulukukui, Dr. Koide, Dr. Lee, Maj. Gen. Lee, Dr. Naya, Mr. Tsukamoto, Dr. Yano and, for her lifetime achievements, the recent recipient of an honorary doctorate from the University of Hawai‘i, Aunty Genoa Keawe.
In the century ahead, we want our students to make as much of a difference for Hawai‘i, the nation and the world as they have in the one hundred years past.
To fulfill this goal, we know UH will have to undergo a transformation as well.
In November 2000, voters dramatically endorsed our self–reliance by approving by a margin of 3–to–1 an amendment to the Hawai‘i State Constitution giving UH a significant degree of autonomy. This autonomy amendment raised hopes in our community about what UH could become.
Now that our financial situation has improved on a number of fronts—and thanks to the governor and the Legislators in this audience for their kokua—we’re beginning to finance those hopes. We’ve stepped up to address an enrollment surge and a booming economy’s workforce needs, and we’ve launched several public-private partnerships to leverage our scarce resources in the construction of new facilities. The accreditors of our campuses, both baccalaureate and community colleges, have complimented us on our progress. But we know that there’s more—much more—to be done.
To fulfill the promise of self-reliance and autonomy, UH will have to become more comfortable with risk and innovation.
To fulfill the promise of self-reliance and autonomy we will have to empower our campuses and their chancellors and support their efforts to contribute to the state’s higher education agenda.
To fulfill the promise of self-reliance and autonomy we will have to redouble our efforts to raise private funds to complement the precious resources entrusted to us by taxpayers and by students and their parents, to provide the margin of excellence that we all want.
This margin of excellence has three dimensions:
- recruiting and retaining our truly superb faculty, like oceanographer David Karl, recently admitted to the National Academy of Sciences.
- complimenting their efforts with dedicated staff, increasingly hard to recruit in this robust economy.
- engaging our students in well-designed and well-maintained facilities, increasingly expensive to build in this robust economy.
The stakes for our society are high. As Hawai‘i’s system of public higher education, we have been remarkably effective at providing access to a community college or baccalaureate education, a necessity in today’s "flat" global economy (thanks to Tom Friedman for that terrific image), where the skills and knowledge one needs for college are the same as those one needs in the workplace—and the same one needs to contribute effectively to our democratic society.
Moreover, as a state, Hawaii ranks 24th in our public-plus-private higher education system’s productivity on a number of common measures and 18th on measures related to our research enterprise.
However, as a state, we’ve been markedly less successful in insuring that our ninth graders finish high school, enter college and complete a course of study in a reasonable time.
We on the University of Hawai‘i’s 10 campuses must continue to reach out to partner with K–12 and early–childhood education providers, supporting their efforts and collaborating with them in developing innovative ways of providing instruction. The result will be better–prepared students matriculating to our campuses.
We also must focus our limited resources more sharply so that the students who pass through our doors taking courses for credit can reach their degree goals in a timely fashion.
It’s of special importance that this "access with success" initiative yields positive results for our Native Hawaiian community, the descendants of the first people to populate these islands.
We will need to devote additional resources, above and beyond those already committed, to achieve this goal for our Native Hawaiian community. One means to this end is the rethinking of the obligation that arises from the location of some of our campuses on ceded lands.
In the next 100 years, we will continue our tradition of holding fast to the values that define us. Of course, as a university in a country founded on the ideals of a democracy, these values include first and foremost our tradition of respect for freedom of inquiry and expression of ideas both popular and unpopular.
As the only public university in America’s only island state, these values also include the values of island societies generally and of the Native Hawaiians who first populated these islands in particular. Those values include an emphasis on community and respect and the importance of sharing our diverse but finite resources for the benefit of all.
Here in Hawai‘i those values are realized in a rich multicultural environment. With all the globalization that’s occurred in the last quarter century, resulting in the development of an "island Earth" sensibility around the globe, that means that Hawai‘i—and the University of Hawai‘i—increasingly have the opportunity to serve as an example to the 6.5 billion people on our planet.
Wendie and I are honored to have the opportunity to lead this great university into its second century.
Last night at dinner with our distinguished alumni, Wendie and I learned that the memories we awaken tonight were once fervently held dreams in the imaginations of these remarkable honorees.
As was the case for them in years past, today for many of our citizens UH represents the best hope that their dreams of a better life really can come true.
My goal as your university’s president is simple: to make those dreams come true.