What We Do
The Director of Workforce Development is the Strategic Plan’s Workforce Imperative lead for the UH System. The UH System’s Strategic Plan for 2023-2029 has four imperatives, one of which is to “meet Hawaiʻi’s workforce needs of today and tomorrow.” An inaugural Director was hired in 2024 to oversee implementation of this imperative using a series of metrics (currently under development), and to organize workforce development initiatives across the ten campuses. This work is overseen through the UH System’s Workforce Development Committee, whose membership is listed here.
By its nature, workforce development is also inherently outward facing, including close collaboration and communication with private and public sector partners such as the Chamber of Commerce Hawaiʻi and the State of Hawaiʻi’s Workforce Development Council. In addition to coordinating efforts to address our state’s workforce shortages, the Director of Workforce Development partners with faculty, staff and administrators across the system, as well as employers and philanthropic partners, to work on initiatives aimed at preparing our graduates for the changing workforce of the future.
Sample of our Initiatives
- Internships: including a series of disciplinary meet-and-greet events for students, faculty, employers and internship hosts in the community
- A pilot of the nationwide Work+ program to build durable skills into on-campus student employment
- Durable skills (or career readiness competencies): Two 2024-2025 work groups from the President’s Emerging Leaders Program are designing projects to develop durable career readiness skills into internships, as well as curricula.
- Helping faculty develop new micro-credentials to meet workforce needs
- Development of a framework and process (coming soon) to certify and recognize Industry-Recognized Credentials and Industry-Valued Credentials
- Sector partnerships: UH participates in all Chamber of Commerce Hawaiʻi sector partnerships, and seeks to extend and strengthen pathways from K-12 into college and career.
- Disciplinary convenings: These bring together academic programs with employers to identify challenges and opportunities for closer coordination so that UH graduates are prepared to meet current and future workforce needs. Disciplinary convenings are also sometimes facilitated to help programs work across campuses on structural or transfer and articulation issues.
Leadership
Christine Beaule, PhD, Director of Workforce Development
Dr. Christine D. Beaule is the inaugural Director of Workforce Development for the University of Hawaiʻi System. In this capacity, Dr. Beaule partners with the ten UH campuses and various UH System offices to provide leadership in system-wide as well as program- and campus-specific workforce development initiatives focused on existing or anticipated workforce needs in our state. She is the primary point of contact for external partners and stakeholders in the private and public sectors on workforce focused initiatives, working to ensure that our graduates have the skills needed to successfully enter and thrive in the workforce, and the programming available to upskill and re-skill as needed. Dr. Beaule was trained as an Andean archaeologist, and spent sixteen years at UH Mānoa, where she earned tenure and promotion to Professor of Latin American and Iberian Studies. She served the last six and a half of those years as Director of UH Mānoa’s General Education Office. Dr. Beaule earned a BA with Honors in Anthropology (dual major in Philosophy) at Northwestern University, followed by an MA and PhD in Archaeology at the University of Pittsburgh.
