History of the College
Robert E. Potter, Emeritus Professor of Education
If we consider antecedents, the College of Education is the oldest part of the University of Hawai‘i. In 1888, Principal Marion Scott began offering informal classes in pedagogy at Honolulu High School. In 1895, James Dumas, a graduate of Oswego Normal School, was hired to head the teacher training department of the high school, which became the Honolulu Normal and Training School a year later. With annexation of Hawai‘i, the HNTS became the Territorial Normal School.
In 1929, the TNS, which had outgrown its buildings on the side of Punchbowl, acquired land at the corner of University Avenue and Metcalf Street, and a building plus an annex were erected. A large campus with several buildings was planned for the site. However, in 1931, the legislature merged the TNS with the University, creating the Teachers College, with TNS president Benjamin Wist as the dean.
The entire TNS faculty were made members of the University faculty and the students became University students. During his years as principal of the TNS, Wist had expanded the program from two to four years, and during the Depression when there were few jobs for teachers, he persuaded his graduates to return for a fifth year. That fifth year included a semester of full-time, paid internship in addition to the student teaching done in the fourth year.
By 1935, virtually all TC students were in a five-year program leading to a B.Ed plus a “Fifth Year Diploma.” The first M.Ed's were offered in 1936. In the fall of 1941, Teachers College enrolled 396 students, but when the University opened again in February after the Pearl Harbor attack only 185 registered. That gave the Republican-dominated legislature an opportunity to attack the TC and its five-year program, on the grounds that it took longer to prepare a teacher at the University than it did on the mainland. Wist fought off the attack by having the interns teach the full year and take their semester of course work in a twelve-week summer session. In addition, fourth-year student teachers were assigned to public schools instead of the laboratory school classrooms. The net result was that the TC continued to supply nearly as many teachers through the War as it had prior to December 1941.
During the War, the military government of Hawai‘i took over Punahou School, and Punahou rented the newly-built Castle Memorial Hall for its classes. They also erected a new building on the TC campus to house the preschool. Wist retired in 1948 because of poor health and was made a member of the Board of Regents. While serving as Vice-Chairman of the Hawai‘i Statehood Commission in Washington, he died on October 26, 1951. A month later the Regents named the TC Building Wist Hall.
Bruce White served as dean until 1956, when he became Dean of Faculties of the University. He was succeeded by Hubert Everly, who had been the first principal of the University High School.
During Everly’s tenure, the name was changed from Teachers College to College of Education recognizing that it prepared school administrators, librarians and counselors. Frequently challenged by both political opponents and the College of Arts and Science faculty, Everly had little support from the University and often turned directly to friends in the legislature to secure funds and to have buildings erected. The 1964 legislature mandated a review of teacher training in Hawai‘i, and Lindley Stiles, Dean of Education at the University of Wisconsin was named to head the study. While he favored a five-year teacher preparation program, he recommended against the internship in the fifth year, replacing it with more courses in the teaching field. But since teachers could be employed with only four years of college and a bachelor’s degree, the effect was to eliminate the long-standing five-year program which had won national recognition for its excellence.
In response to the loss of the internship, Everly began, in cooperation with the DOE, the Beginning Teacher Development Program, which provided mentoring of all new teachers by those DOE teachers and College faculty who had been supervising interns. After a couple of years, a shortage of teachers forced the DOE to put its BTDP mentors into regular classrooms and the College pulled its supervisors back to the campus to meet increased enrollment. The legislature funded a major increase in the College budget to add positions for teacher education.
Unfortunately, the same year that the College was ordered to increase its staff, the DOE no longer sent recruiters to the mainland to hire teachers. The teacher shortage suddenly and unexpectedly ceased. During the 1970s, the College faced a problem somewhat reminiscent of the 1930s. It was graduating more students than the Department of Education needed. It would have been a chance to revitalize the fifth year, but nothing was done.
When Everly reached mandatory retirement age in 1979, Andrew In was named dean. He resigned and retired in 1984 in protest of periodic review of the College programs which he felt was grossly unfair and to which he had not been given a chance to respond before it was made public. After brief periods of acting deans Peter Dunn-Rankin and Dan Blaine, John Dolly was selected as the new dean in 1986. Belatedly, the College began emphasizing fifth-year programs enrolling students with baccalaureate degrees and providing on-site programs.
Dolly resigned September 8th, 1995, and Charles Araki served as Interim Dean until the selection of Dr. Randy Hitz, effective May 4th, 1998.