Multifaceted Trina Nahm-Mijo, professor and department chair of social sciences, is retiring this spring after 43 years at Hawaiʻi Community College. One of her legacies is the Human Services certificate program, which is celebrating its 33rd year with a virtual conference on April 14–16 that is open to all at the University of Hawaiʻi. Nahm-Mijo started the program, writing the curriculum and tweaking some existing classes to create a new credential.
“A lot of local students are really into service,” she said. “It’s something I picked up early on in Hawaiʻi and especially on neighbor islands. There’s really a helping attitude, and it comes from the culture. It’s kind of a natural attitude and value in the way people are raised locally, and that’s why it was always a popular certificate.”
Inspired by students
Nahm-Mijo’s career has included accolades such as the Board of Regents Excellence in Teaching award and three Hawaiʻi CC Innovation Awards, among other accomplishments. Though she’s ready to close the book on her Hawaiʻi CC career, she said teaching never got tiresome or repetitive, even after more than four decades.
“The students inspire me,” she said. “It was always new every semester even if it was the same classes, because the people are different and my style is to teach to the students’ individual strengths and characteristics, so it was always new for me.”
After growing up on Oʻahu, Nahm-Mijo moved to Hawaiʻi Island at the invitation of the late Earnest Morgan, who established the dance program at UH Hilo. Nahm-Mijo, an award-winning choreographer, is known by many in the community for the dance classes she has taught and her involvement in performances such as the Great Leaps series.
Holistic approach
Nahm-Mijo began lecturing at Hawaiʻi CC in 1978, and was hired a year later as the college’s first full-time psychology professor. She fondly recalls some of the milestones of her teaching career, including the Learning Communities that began in 1986 and involved a team of instructors teaching with a cross-disciplinary approach.
She also cites as major experiences the co-founding of the Women’s Center at UH Hilo (before Hawaiʻi CC and UH Hilo split); creating Middle College, which was a precursor to today’s Early College; and the establishment of the Keaʻau Youth Business Center, a state-of-the-art skill building program in music and sound recording, culinary arts and digital arts integrated with academics in which at-risk high school students earned 12 Hawaiʻi CC college credits in their senior year of high school.
What unites the various strands of her career is the belief in a hands-on, real-world, comprehensive approach that doesn’t compartmentalize learning, teaching or people.
“I like things that are not one dimensional,” she said. “Education is holistic, it’s human. If you reach people, you’re going to be successful.”
—By Thatcher J. P. Moats
