Tara Sutton’s path to the commencement stage hasn’t been easy. The 46-year-old University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa College of Social Sciences senior didn’t get the support to attend college early on. It was through her second marriage that she gained the encouragement to pursue her dreams of higher education.
“My first husband of 13 years didn’t let me go to college. It was always ‘his turn’ to attend school, never mine,” Sutton shared. “I was never seen as equal with respect to education or career… I met my second husband in Alaska—we’ve been married for four years—and when we moved to Oʻahu in 2019 with my daughter and son, I started classes at UH Mānoa two weeks later.”
Passion awakened
Sutton originally declared communicology as her major, which taught her theories of intergroup and intercultural communication, as well as persuasion, specifically, persuasive message construction for social justice contexts. It was pursuing her passion that eventually led to her adding not just one, but two more majors.
“My general education electives, like Linguistics 102 and Religion 150, awakened a passion to learn about peoples, cultures and languages of the world,” Sutton said. “It prompted me to add anthropology as a second major, which led to training in ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative research. I also sought out courses in ethnic studies, my third major, which offered transformational learning experiences with a solid background in social justice and community engagement.”
After her four years at UH Mānoa, Sutton will graduate with a 3.9 GPA and a long list of accomplishments.
After her four years at UH Mānoa, Sutton will graduate with a 3.9 GPA and a long list of accomplishments. Among them, she was awarded the College of Social Sciences’ 2023 Outstanding Graduating Senior; she is vice president of Pi Gamma Mu, the College of Social Sciences honor society; a College of Social Sciences student ambassador; service chair for the Speech Communication Society; and volunteer coordinator and former president of the Anthropology Undergraduate Student Association. In April, she won the Joseph Fielding Smith Memorial Award for outstanding communicology undergraduate; in October 2022, she was the only student panelist at the UH Innovation Conference on Water Resilience in Hawaiʻi.
Sutton credited many people at the College of Social Sciences with helping and encouraging her throughout her academic journey, including Department of Ethnic Studies Professor Davianna McGregor, Department of Geography and Environment Assistant Professor Aurora Kagawa-Viviani and Leah Bremer, director of the UHERO Environmental Policy and Planning Group and Water Resources Research Center associate specialist. Sutton also said through experiences at the North Shore Field School and Nā Koʻokoʻo: Hawaiian Leadership Program, she helped create a short public service documentary video on the Red Hill water crisis.
UH spring 2023 commencement schedule
“Going to school in Hawaiʻi allowed me to evaluate my positionality as a settler in an Indigenous space,” Sutton said. “This was not easy, as I challenged myself to reevaluate much of what I had learned through my childhood education in mainstream public schools on the continental U.S., with social norms that I grew to accept in the predominantly white cities where I lived.”
Pursuing a graduate degree
Now with her three degrees in hand, Sutton will continue her dream and embark on her quest for a master’s degree at UH Mānoa in geography and environment. Her research thesis will focus on: instances when the U.S. Department of Defense polluted the environment, identification of patterns in their response tactics and the resulting relational impacts on host communities.
I waited a long time for ‘my turn’ to go to college. My husband and kids have shown me the kind of love that says, ‘We are all in this together.
—Tara Sutton
“These past four years have been an incredible journey,” Sutton said. “I hit the books in my forties after living a full life that included single parenthood in Alaska, and decades of rich work experiences at places ranging from a bakery to mortgage processing company to medium security prison.”
Sutton concluded, “Having to wait to go to college was a bummer, but the silver lining is two of my kids are college students, too. Dinner conversations can get very interesting at our house! This has been so exciting, especially for me. I waited a long time for ‘my turn’ to go to college. My husband and kids have shown me the kind of love that says, ‘We are all in this together.’ Because of their support, I’m earning my bachelor’s degree, receiving this award and transitioning to graduate school, which is incredibly humbling. I’m looking forward to my mom, husband and kids saying they’re proud of me.”
