Students in the M.A. program can work as Graduate Research Assistants for Hawaiian Studies faculty creating new Native Vision curriculum and video on Hawaiian cultural topics through the medium of English.
Creation of this new curriculum is designed to reach and educate the 48,000 Hawaiian children currently in Hawai'i public schools not enrolled in Hawaiian Language Immersion Program Schools or Kamehameha Schools, where they benefit from enriched Hawaiian cultural curricula. This work will give students experience in developing curricula for Indigenous learners, an opportunity offered by few research universities in the United States.
And one of the following:
Key to courses status:
(P) = Proposed
(IP) = Going through approval process
(L) = To be proposed later.
This M.A. will accommodate students with Bachelor's degrees in Hawaiian Studies and related disciplines, including Hawaiian Language, Pacific and/or Hawaiian History, Art, Music and Literature, Theatre and Dance, Language, Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, Political Science, Education, Cultural Studies, Environmental Studies, Botany, Astronomy, Business, and Travel Industry Management.
The criteria for acceptance are:
In order to meet this demand and maintain the progress of our Baccalaureate major, we anticipate having to hire three additional assistant professors to teach courses now being taught by our current, full-time faculty, and to design the new areas of concentration in Phase II. We have recently filled a FTE assistant professor position in Hawaiian visual culture with a professor from the Art Department. The Center for Hawaiian Studies has been developing teaching assistants and instructors who are capable of qualifying for permanent faculty positions. There are now a core of six such individuals pursuing degrees at UH Manoa. In 2004 SHAPS included a request for 2.5 FTE for the Center for Hawaiian Studies to strengthen the proposed Graduate Degree Program.
The Center for Hawaiian Studies plans to offer 10 teaching assistantships and two graduate assistantships each year. The Center anticipates, though it cannot guarantee, securing funding for those positions through such agencies as the Native Hawaiian Leadership Program, Kamehameha Schools and Office of Hawaiian Affairs and can point to successful pursuit of funding over the past five years. However we have also been in discussions with the Chancellor over all of these positions and have every reason to believe that we will be adequately funded.
This fall, the Chancellor's Hawaiian Studies initiative provided 8 Teaching Assistants.
In the field of education, for example, it is expected that the presence of Hawaiian Studies M.A.s in the public school system will dramatically improve the quality and standing of Hawaiian arts and sciences. While this may not be an easily measurable outcome, one result will be a steady increase of applicants into our own program and into related disciplines at this university.
As a smaller unit, CHS is accustomed to continual review of our its curriculum and grading standards, and believes its students are held to the highest possible standards of academic achievement.
At the same time CHS recognizes the need to set in place means of evaluating its graduate curriculum over time. As the fields of study are diverse and multi-disciplinary, preparing an exhaustive list of student competencies is not simple. Nevertheless, some of the clear competencies that every graduate should be able to demonstrate would include the following:
The School of Law believes that a Hawaiian Studies Graduate Program would be very beneficial. We currently do not have a direct academic relationship with Hawaiian Studies because we are a post-baccalaureate program.
An M.A. degree in Hawaiian Studies would allow a number of our students who are interested in Hawaiian Studies to pursue a dual degree (JD/M.A.) in that area. We would also hope that students upon completion of the M.A. might spark the interest of some students to then go on and pursue a JD.
A number of our courses touch upon Native Hawaiian legal issues and some of the MA. students might wish to enroll in those courses.
The Department of History offers graduate-level courses and seminars in Hawaiian, Pacific, World, American, Asian, European and other relevant fields of history. We have the resources and personnel to provide students in the Hawaiian Studies graduate program with a broad historical perspective on their individual course of study as well as a sensitivity to the varieties and politics of historical practice in the larger Oceanic region and beyond.
We welcome the opportunity to contribute in meaningful and significant ways to this exciting new graduate program. We think too that our own Department, and indeed the broader study of history at this university, will be enriched by interaction with the students and faculty of the Center for Hawaiian Studies' M.A. program.
These are exciting, vital and extremely important times for the study of Hawaiian history, culture and language. Interest is high and there exists a large potential constituency for the proposed graduate program in Hawaiian Studies.
We here in the Department of History feel quite strongly that the approval and implementation of this proposed program will have immediate intellectual as well as practical benefits for the University of Hawai'i, its students and the larger community beyond. We are happy to give it our enthusiastic endorsement.
I am excited about the development of an M.A. program within the Center for Hawaiian Studies. As the flagship of the University of Hawai'i system, the Manoa campus should have the leading graduate training programs in Hawai'i. This should particularly be true of graduate programs that are unique to Hawai'i such as Hawaiian Studies.
Throughout the formation and existence of the Hawaiian Studies undergraduate program, students pursuing degrees in Hawaiian Studies have taken courses offered by the Department of Botany. These courses have primarily included: BOT 101 Introductory Botany, BOT 105 Introductory Ethnobotany, BOT 350 Resource Management and Conservation in Hawai'i, BOT 351 Flowering Plant Families, BOT 410/410L Plant Anatomy, BOT 446 Hawaiian Ethnobotany, and BOT 450 Natural History of Hawaiian Islands. Individual students have also received training in individual research projects through BOT 399.
The students from Hawaiian Studies with whom we have worked have usually ranked among the highest in these courses. The Hawaiian Studies Program is perceived by us as selecting and retaining quality students who are trained in intellectual rigor. By the end of their studies they are not only savvy about Hawaiian culture, values and life, but have also received a solid foundation in diverse studies that rank their skills with those provided through most other degree programs.
Because of this solid background and the ongoing participation in our courses, we have regularly accepted students into our Botany MS and PhD program with bachelors degrees in Hawaiian Studies. Currently we have four (of 51) graduate students pursuing MS and PhD degrees in Botany who earned their BA in Hawaiian Studies. Each of these students works hard and reflects well on our program and their individual backgrounds in Hawaiian Studies.
How a Hawaiian Studies graduate program will affect the Botany program
The Ethnobotany Graduate Program in the Department of Botany is growing in number of students and faculty. As this is occurring we are actively seeking to develop strong ties with collaborating disciplines in other units of the University and community at large.
Key among these relationships is development of long-term collaboration with the Center for Hawaiian Studies particularly in areas where we can augment each other's strengths. This relationship is currently lop-sided with Botany having all of the graduate students and each having a mixture of undergraduate students. This situation hinders the collateral development of higher intellectual discussions and collaborations that so often develop among graduate students whose faculty advisors are working together.
Development of the M.A. program will allow both of our departments to move to higher levels in discussion and understanding of overlapping areas of interest in Hawaiian culture, botanical environments, and conservation. Although, Botany is currently able to recommend that our undergraduate students enroll in Hawaiian Studies courses, we are not able to enroll our graduate students in advanced Hawaiian Studies courses because they are not being offered at a graduate level.
The Ethnobotany Program in particular suffers from a shortage of courses taught from Hawaiian perspectives about Hawaiian culture and knowledge. We hope that new courses taught for the Center for Hawaiian Studies M.A. program will offer new opportunities for Botany graduate students. At the same time, it seems likely that Hawaiian Studies graduate students will be able to take advantage of graduate level courses being taught through the Department of Botany.
Botany currently enjoys a large number of well-qualified graduate school applicants each semester. It seems unlikely that the development of a graduate program in Hawaiian Studies would detract from our application pool. In fact, there is every reason to believe that the infusion of new courses at the graduate level in Hawaiian Studies would enhance the number of applicants to Botany making each program stronger.