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Diversity and Inclusion

Hokulea Navigator and Environmental Lawyer in Training

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Lucy Lee '23, environmental studies major on Hokulea smiling at camera

Over the summer, Lucy Lee ’23 was one of five student navigators invited on a training expedition of Hokulea and sister voyaging canoe Hikianalia to the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.

One of their big challenges: use traditional Polynesian navigation techniques to find Nihoa island.

How tough is that? Lee said Polynesian Voyaging Society President and Master Navigator Nainoa Thompson has compared the task of navigating to Nihoa—with an area of just over a third of a mile—to departing from Hawaii Island’s south shore and finding something about half the size of Diamond Head.

So … pretty tough.

On the day they were set to arrive at Nihoa, Lee had the midnight to 6 a.m. navigation run.

“I was really nervous because we wanted to be at a certain place at sunrise,” the Chaminade Environmental Studies major said. Once Lee conducted some calculations as day broke, she and the other student navigators concluded they were close to where they wanted to be.

They woke Thompson up to share the news and he didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to.

Lucy Lee '23, environmental studies major navigating on Hokulea

“He smiled. We were about a degree and a half off (course)—about as close as you can get without using modern tools,” said Lee, adding that her first deep sea navigation on Hokulea was an awe-inspiring experience. “Papahanaumokuakea is not a place people typically get access to. It’s super special. I think going anywhere by canoe is awesome, and pulling Nihoa out of the water was definitely the highlight.”

While the Papahanaumokuakea voyage was a major milestone for Lee, it’s also only a start. She is training to navigate during Hokulea’s next major voyage: a 41,000-mile trek to circumnavigate the Pacific Ocean, stopping at 46 countries, 345 ports and 100 indigenous territories.

The launch date is tentatively set for summer 2022.

The Pacific Voyaging Society has called the massive expedition, coming on the heels of Hokulea’s worldwide Malama Honua voyage, an opportunity to focus on the vital importance of oceans while developing young crew members, navigators and leaders. Lee said she’s honored to be training as a student navigator, “learning and watching and being taught what it takes to be on the crew.”

“It’s learning how to change lines, how to change knots. But it’s also learning what it means to be a helpful and active crew member,” added Lee, who had only navigated on inter-island and coastal sails before the 10-day voyage to the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. “I feel very fortunate to be … learning the skill and the art of traditional Polynesian navigation.”

And she’s balancing all that learning on the water with her studies at Chaminade.

Lucy Lee '23, environmental studies paddling on Hikianalia

“School is really important for me,” said Lee, who graduated from Kamehameha Schools and is interested in going into environmental law. She said she chose Chaminade because she wanted to stay in Hawaii and was interested in a university with an individualized approach to instruction.

Lee said she applied and got into several colleges on the mainland but knew they weren’t a right fit. “You know in all those cliché college movies where they walk into the lecture room and there’s like 200 people?” Lee asked, laughing. “I was like, that’s not for me. I like how Chaminade is small.”

Lee was also interested in an option that wouldn’t break the bank.

At Chaminade, she is receiving the Regents Scholarship (a merit scholarship), which covers about half of her tuition.

And, Lee said, she was looking for an environment-focused program that incorporated policy and advocacy. The Environmental Studies program at Chaminade was perfect. Lee said her ultimate goal is to offer legal expertise and representation to sustenance fishing and farming communities in Hawaii.

“They are ingenious, but they struggle in literacy when it comes to law and defending themselves in justice systems,” she said, pointing to decades-long legal challenges over water rights for small farmers on Maui. Lee added, “I started hearing about that case when I was in elementary school.”

But before heading to law school (and after graduating from Chaminade), she’ll be taking a break.

Because around that time, she plans to be sailing on Hokulea—on its pan-Pacific voyage.

Chaminade University No. 21 in Annual ‘U.S. News’ College Rankings

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Chaminade University was again recognized as a top regional west university in the annual U.S. News and World Report’s 2022 Best College rankings. U.S. News and World Report produces the longest-running assessment of U.S. colleges and universities. The most recent rankings assessed 1,466 universities on 17 measures of academic quality.

The latest U.S. News and World Report rankings, released September 13, placed Chaminade University No. 25 in Regional Universities West, moving up four spots from 2021. Chaminade shares the No. 25 spot with California State University, Monterey Bay.

Chaminade University was also ranked No. 21 as a Best Value School. The ranking is based on four indicators:

  • academic quality;
  • percentage of all full-time undergraduates receiving need-based scholarships or grants;
  • average discount from the school’s total sticker price for full-time undergraduates; and
  • among 2020–2021 full-time undergraduates who received need-based aid, the percentage of that group that who also received a grant or scholarship—aid that students don’t have to pay back. 

U.S. News and World Report also recognized Chaminade University this year as a Top Performer on Social Mobility at No. 38. The Social Mobility ranking is measured by the percentage of students who received federal Pell Grants graduated. Chaminade shares the No. 25 spot with Sul Ross State University.

In individual program rankings, Chaminade’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree program ranked in the top 42% at No. 288 out of 690 schools. Chaminade’s Nursing program launched in 2010 with its first cohort graduating in 2014.

U.S. News and World Report is now in its 37th year of ranking colleges and universities. The rankings evaluate more than 1,400 colleges and universities on up to 17 measures of academic quality, including graduation and retention rates, undergraduate academic reputation, social mobility, graduation rate performance, faculty resources and alumni giving.

In August, Niche released its 2022 Best College Rankings. Chaminade University was ranked:

  • No. 1 Best Value Colleges in Hawaii
  • No. 1 Best College Locations in Hawaii
  • No. 1 Colleges with the Best Student Life in Hawaii
  • No. 51 Best Colleges for Criminal Justice in America (top 8%)
  • No. 123 Best College Locations in America (top 8%)
  • No. 138 Safest College Campuses in America (top 10%)
  • No. 176 Most Diverse Colleges in America (top 11%)

Alumna Motivated to Reframe Literacy

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Only 9% of students at Waianae High School can demonstrate competency in English Language Arts.

It’s an alarming statistic.

Shay Zykova, MEd '00

But for Shay Kaleo’oluho’iloliokawaipahe Zykova, MEd ’20, it’s also a motivator.

The ninth-grade English teacher says she’s on a mission to not only bolster her students’ reading comprehension and literacy skills, but help them develop a passion for words. That’s why she joined forces with her colleagues in 2020 to form a literacy team at her school with the intention of reshaping the Language Arts curriculum at Waianae High. She hopes to eventually take the model statewide.

“There’s a big need for literacy intervention and development,” said Zykova, who has designed her curriculum to put students at the center of their learning. They get to choose—as a class—what novels and other texts they want to read and what topics they want to write about. And along the way, they get intensive literacy instruction aimed at dramatically improving their reading and writing skills.

“We couldn’t stick with the status quo,” she said. “How can we read Shakespeare if I’ve got kids struggling to read words like ‘cat’? I want to give my students complete control over the novels they’re reading in class. It’s really exciting, a little bit stressful and 100% student-directed.”

Zykova’s work hasn’t gone unnoticed.

The National Council of Teachers of English recently named her a recipient of its 2021 Early Career Educator of Color Leadership Award. The recognition includes mentorship support, career development opportunities and an invitation to attend and present at upcoming NCTE conferences.

Zykova is delighted at the chance to build her skills—and build out her program.

“The real goal is to reframe what literacy is. I want my students to read things for fun,” she said.

Zykova started teaching in Hawaii in 2018, after a stint as an ESL instructor in St. Petersburg, Russia. (Her husband is Russian.) “It really was the starting point for everything,” Zykova said, of teaching English overseas. “I got that job and realized, ‘I don’t really know English as well as I thought I did.’

“That was my introduction to teaching.”

At the same time, Zykova was in contact with friends back in Hawaii who were teaching in public and charter schools. She said she realized that she needed to return to the islands—and pursue a degree in teaching. During her first year in Hawaii schools, she served as a long-term substitute at Kuuelawela Elementary in Kalihi. The following year, she was selected for the Teach for America (TFA) program and assigned to Waianae High. At the same time, as part of a partnership with TFA, she enrolled in Chaminade’s Master of Education in Instructional Leadership cohort program.

She said that first year of teaching was anything but easy. “I had high school students reading at the kindergarten and preschool level. I thought, ‘What is going?’ I was completely lost,” she said. But she got through it, thanks to the relationships she was building at her school and at Chaminade.

She quickly realized that the “prescribed curriculum” would need some tweaking.

And she started to look for ways to make reading and writing relevant to students. For her students’ argumentative essays, for example, she encouraged them to choose topics that were of consequence to them. Some considered the debate over the Thirty Meter Telescope at Mauna Kea. Others wrote about being multi-ethnic in Hawaii. One student wrote about the benefits of slippers over shoes.

As Zykova continuously tweaked the trajectory of her class, she says she was thankful to have Chaminade peers and mentors who could offer additional insight and guidance. She said Chaminade instructor Ralph Keahi Renaud inspired her to reflect on her Native Hawaiian identity and how it informs her teaching. After his course, she enrolled in Hawaiian language classes (and is still taking them).

Zykova also found mentors in Chaminade instructor Jessica Martinez, who taught language development, and Associate Professor and Director of Teacher Preparation Programs Katarina Roseler, who oversaw her capstone experience.

The preparation helped Zykova through 2020, a tough year for everyone—especially students and teachers. She said remote learning allowed her to throw her old plan out the window entirely and try a new direction aimed at getting students engaged (and keeping them engaged).

It worked.

“My attendance was 85 to 95%. The majority of students were in class every single day,” she said, adding one of her many future goals is to help her students not only expand what they’re reading but start telling their own stories. “I’m hoping my students will publish,” Zykova said.

Data Science SPICE Summer Institute

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For a third year, budding data scientists from across Hawaii and the mainland came together for Chaminade’s Supporting Pacific Indigenous Computing Excellence (SPICE) Data Science Summer Institute.

2021 Data Science SPICE Summer Institute virtual class meeting

The 2021 program, held virtually, included 21 participants and four student mentors. In addition to Chaminade, students hailed from Stanford University, Borough of Manhattan Community College, the University of Hawaii Maui College, College of the Marshall Islands and Northern Marianas College. They also came from a diversity of academic backgrounds, from Nursing to Environmental Studies to English.

The month-long seminar is focused on helping students use data as they seek to make a positive difference in their communities and includes immersive experiences, collaboration and a final project. Institute organizers say students walk away not only with new skills, but with a new appreciation of how data science can be used across disciplines to help spotlight problems and highlight potential solutions.

SPICE is held in partnership with the Texas Advanced Computing Center. Program leader Dr. Kelly Gaither is associate director at the center. Other faculty who helped make the institute possible include Chaminade Assistant Professor Dr. Rylan Chong, director of the University’s Data Science program, and Chaminade Vice President of Innovation Dr. Helen Turner, who is also a professor of Biology.

Students took up all sorts of questions and issues in their final projects for the SPICE institute, from socioeconomic factors linked to heart disease in Hawaii to the potentially positive relationship between video games and social anxiety to the impacts of wildfires in California on chronic diseases.

2021 Data Science SPICE Summer Institute Sarah Carroll's presentation

The overall project and poster winner was Chaminade student Sarah Carroll, who looked into whether the long-term impacts of food security in the United States include higher rates of chronic disease. Using publicly available data sets, she mapped out food insecurity in the US and found a slightly positive correlation between food insecure individuals and rates of arthritis, asthma and cancer.

She noted further study is needed to determine what’s driving chronic diseases in food insecure populations, along with which US ethnic groups have the highest rates of inadequate food access.

There were also three track winners named.

In the healthcare track, Chaminade student Caili Cain took the top prize. She sought to investigate implicit bias in the medical field, including how medical school pedagogy might be endorsing false beliefs about biological differences between Black and white patients. Specifically, she was interested in how official and informal medical school curricula contribute to bias about how patients manage pain.

Chaminade student Rhea Jose was the track winner for Environment, with a presentation that explored whether food availability and consumption in the US can show food loss or waste. She said the next step in her research might include investigating food waste per capita in order to make local level changes. And Chaminade’s Amber Sablan was recognized for her social justice-focused presentation. In her project, she sought to determine whether gentrification on Oahu could be contributing to homelessness by driving up home prices and bringing in new higher-income tenants. She said the lack of available data from 2020 limited her research, but she is interested in furthering her study into the issue. More specifically, Sablan wants to look at the number of unoccupied homes on Oahu along with outmigration rates.

Paying for College: That’s Where Financial Aid Comes In

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Jeff Scofield, Dean of Financial Aid

Jeff Scofield, dean of financial aid at Chaminade, knows that looking for help to pay for college can oftentimes seem daunting for students—and their parents. There’s the paperwork. The requirements.

And, of course, there are the questions. Do I qualify? Will I have enough? And where do I begin?

That’s why Scofield, who started at Chaminade in March, is on a mission to simplify the financial aid process at the university. In addition to getting students the financial aid information they need as early as possible, he and his team are working to streamline the process so families can have peace of mind.

He’s also working to let prospective students know financial need shouldn’t be a barrier to attendance.

“The importance of financial aid can’t be understated. It gives students and their families the opportunity to pursue higher education,” Scofield said. “We know if students can’t get their financial hurdles resolved, either they can’t get here to begin with or they can’t stay. The financial piece becomes more of a burden. We’re trying to remove barriers so students can concentrate on their studies.”

That’s critically important at Chaminade, where 97% of undergraduates get some type of financial aid.

During the 2020-21 academic year, nearly $16 million in aid was distributed to Chaminade undergraduates at the university, with an average of $15,000 in grants and scholarships awarded to each student. In addition, students received federal loans, alternative loans and federal work-study.

Scofield also has a message for the community: every donation to the University helps.

“There’s plenty of need. And for some students, it’s not thousands of dollars they need to make the difference, it’s hundreds of dollars,” Scofield said. “We can help make up that difference for students.”

Scofield comes to Chaminade’s Financial Aid office with nearly 40 years of experience in higher education, including most recently as the assistant vice president of student financial services at Seattle University. Prior to that, he served as director of financial aid at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.

It was that time on Hawaii Island that solidified his love for the islands and its people.

When he learned Chaminade was looking for a financial aid dean, he jumped at the chance to return, immediately doing his homework on the university and its mission. What he found, he said, was an institution that “gets it” when it comes to financial aid—and that’s not always easy to find.

Chaminade, he said, understands that financial aid is core to helping students achieve their dreams.

Financial aid counselor helping student with financial aid options and resources

It’s about excellence as much as it is about equity.

“Everybody I’ve talked to here has said, ‘Oh this is so important,’” he said.

Scofield leads a five-member financial aid team at Chaminade. His first order of business at the University, he said, was “listening more than talking.” He wanted to understand what was working when it came to financial aid, what wasn’t working and what needed to be fixed first.

He said he quickly realized that his highest priority needed to be streamlining the financial aid application process, and moving a long list of paper forms online. “If we can get more things automated and processes streamlined, it gives us more time to spend time with that student who’s really in an emergency,” he said. “Or we can have more time for student counseling and outreach.”

He acknowledged that revamping the system won’t happen overnight.

But the Financial Aid team has already made substantive changes that students and parents will notice. And he said the University is also working with a third-party vendor to debut an easy-to-use scholarship administration portal—a one-stop-shop for applying for scholarships and getting updates on awards.

He said he’s also eyeing a host of procedures to simplify and forms to digitize.

“It’s about doing anything we can,” he said, “to improve and speed up our processing.”

Blessing Our New EdD Program

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Doctor of Education inaugural cohort

The gathering celebrated the end of a long journey—and the beginning of so many others.

In a special ceremony on campus recently, some of the members of the inaugural cohort of Chaminade’s Doctorate of Education in Organizational Leadership for Adaptation and Change joined with faculty members, administrators and others to mark the much-anticipated kickoff of the new program. 

Kumu Keahi Renaud delivered a Hawaiian blessing followed by Father Marty Solma, SM, Chaminade’s chaplain, who led attendees in prayer. Several Chaminade administrators then took to the microphone to touch on just how much planning and commitment it took to make the day a reality.

Speaking to incoming cohort members, Chaminade President Dr. Lynn Babington said that the new doctoral degree program is “all about leadership.” She continued, “You come from such different perspectives. The richness of your learning together will be something very, very special.”

Indeed, the 33 members of the program’s first class hail from a diversity of backgrounds and professional interests. Dr. Hans Chun, director of education leadership programs, added there was particularly strong interest in the program in Hawaii. The majority of participants are in the islands.

Doctor of Education commemorative pin

The first term for the doctoral students, who will be learning fully online, begin July 6.

At the ceremony, students were given a commemorative coin with the Chaminade seal to mark the special day along with a kukui nut lei, signifying wisdom and enlightenment. Dr. Dale Fryxell, School of Education and Behavioral Sciences dean, also dedicated a turtle-shaped bench honoring the launch. He said the turtle represents knowledge and he hoped the symbolism inspired the doctoral students.

Dr. Lance Askildson, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, said the journey students are embarking on is an exciting—and important—one. The program’s inaugural cohort will learn, work, and grow together over the course of three years, the expected completion time for the degree.

Askildson said the doctoral program is focused on leadership development across disciplines.

“But it’s also about leadership by some very courageous faculty and administrators—to bring this program forward after a number of years of advocacy,” Askildson said, speaking to the group. “The legacy that underlies … Chaminade University is of a brand of education holistic in nature, dedicated to educating the whole person, but driven by something more than just a transaction of knowledge.”

He said that individualized, whole-of-person experience is integrated into the program’s very curriculum.

And that, he added, is exactly what attracted so many professionals to the program.

To those incoming students, he said, “I applaud you and I congratulate you.”