Diversity and Inclusion

Alumna’s Endowed Scholarship Creates Opportunities and a Better Future for Chaminade Students

October 6, 2022 by University Communications & Marketing

Jan Seymour ‘76 is proud of the endowed scholarship she helped establish at Chaminade University.

Yet she is quick to deflect any suggestion that she is worthy of praise or high esteem.

“I’m not noble,” Seymour said, while chatting with Chaminade Magazine. “Don’t make me sound like a saint.” The scholarship, she said, is about putting her dollars to work for a better future—and that’s in everyone’s interest. “I wanted my money to go to something that was beneficial,” Seymour said.

“I want my money to create the greatest impact.”

She also wanted to help students who don’t always qualify for aid.

That’s why the Fumiko Kanazawa Endowed Scholarship, named after Seymour’s aunt, is open to students with a grade-point-average of 2.5 and above. “It’s for the B- or C-average students who probably need a little more help,” she said, adding that’s the category she fell into as an undergraduate.

Preference for the scholarship is also given to those who are of mixed Japanese descent.

“That’s because of me, too. I’m hapa,” she said.

Several of Seymour’s relatives have also contributed to the endowment fund. In addition to the scholarship, which was established in 2011, both Seymour and her mother have made estate planned giving pledges to Chaminade. For Seymour, it was an easy decision to make.

“The scholarship is essentially me. It’s about establishing an identity of oneself,” she said.

Seymour grew up in Southern California, and said she always wanted to come to the islands. She remembers pestering her mother relentlessly about it. And so after Seymour finished two years at a small Catholic university in Los Angeles, her mother suggested she go to Hawaii to attend Chaminade University.

“She said go to Hawaii and get it out of your system,” Seymour said.

She did but Hawaii always remains in her heart.

One of the first things Seymour noticed in Hawaii was the diversity. “Being in Hawaii and being at Chaminade, that was the first time it felt like I was really home,” she said. “Being half-Japanese, even in California, I still dealt with prejudice. But in Hawaii, I didn’t see that.

Nobody gave you a second look.”

She added, “It was nothing but people who looked like me.”

That’s another reason the scholarship gives preference to those of mixed Japanese descent. Seymour said she wanted to celebrate what she saw in Hawaii—a melting pot of people, from different ethnicities, cultures and backgrounds, who collectively embrace inclusivity and acceptance.

At Chaminade, Seymour lived in the residence halls and majored in International Studies.

Almost immediately, she struck up lasting friendships.

“There was a group of four of us. We were all the same age, but because of our different paths, we were all in different years. I still have precious memories of our time together,” she said, adding that one member of the group sadly passed away in the 1990s. “These were lifelong friendships.”

After graduating from Chaminade, Seymour went to graduate school in Arizona and pursued a successful career in banking. Eventually, her work included installing operating systems at credit unions around the country. Seymour said that she established the endowed scholarship at a time when she was incredibly busy with her career. “I was traveling so much I was visiting my house,” she quipped.

While now retired, Seymour said her calendar is still very full.

She makes time to visit Chaminade regularly to support the mission—and meet some of the students her family’s endowed scholarship has helped. Because of the pandemic, she hasn’t been able to make it to campus since 2019, but she’s looking forward to returning soon.

“I know this scholarship helps, especially those students who may not get help from elsewhere,” Seymour said. The minimum GPA requirement, she added, acknowledges that some students are juggling multiple obligations. “Holding down two jobs and trying to study, tell me when you’re going to have time to be an A-student,” she said. “This is about supporting education and opportunities.”

That is something Seymour thinks her aunt Fumiko Kanazawa, the scholarship’s namesake, would appreciate. Kanazawa was a high school history teacher in Los Angeles for many years. “This scholarship is just me. Not selfless, but just me,” she said. “It’s a commitment to help the future. That’s all.”

Using AI and Machine Learning in Healthcare

September 26, 2022 by University Communications & Marketing

Algorithms are increasingly being used to make big decisions in healthcare, and there’s a common misconception that they’re unbiased. The truth is: they’re as biased as the humans that create them and a group of researchers—including several at Chaminade University—are trying to spotlight what that means.

In partnership with a federal consortium looking at the issue—dubbed AIM-AHEAD—Chaminade hosted a special virtual symposium in August aimed at better understanding the uses of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in health and what changes are needed to improve health equity in the Pacific.

Dr. Claire Wright, an associate professor at Biology at Chaminade, said the symposium was about beginning a conversation—and ensuring Pacific voices are part of it. “We wanted to engage the community and understand some of the things that are really important to them,” she said.

“We think it’s kind of science fiction but there are many elements of health sciences that machine learning is already used, like diagnostics, surgery, prognosis, and driving health plans. But the data used to run those algorithms is not representative of our population in Hawaii.”

So is that a problem? And if so, how much of a problem?

That was the question tackled during the event—and the topics covered could help guide the development of best practices and ethical guidelines nationally. AIM-AHEAD, which organized the symposium with Chaminade, is funded by the National Institutes of Health and focused on increasing diversity among AI and machine learning researchers to ultimately improve the technologies in health applications, starting with electronic health records. The initiative’s acronym stands for the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity.

Chaminade Data Science Director Dr. Rylan Chong delivered the opening keynote at the symposium, urging attendees to consider how bias makes its way into algorithms and machine learning programs at various points in the process—from the bias that researchers bring to biases baked into “norm studies.”

Dr. Melissa McCradden, who is a bioethicist at the Hospital for Sick Children (affiliated with the University of Toronto), built on those themes in her keynote. She said the conversation happening around algorithmic bias, including in healthcare, is ultimately about “doing better science.”

“One of the major misperceptions is because AI uses so much data … that it’s ultimately leading us toward a place where we’re modeling objective truths about the world,” she said. “But we need to be really, really cautious about assuming that more data can get us closer to objectivity.”

Instead, she said, communities need to work together to make “values-based choices.”

And then, McCradden added, those choices need to be evaluated for their impacts.

Importantly, the symposium also included listening sessions so participants could weigh in on where inequities are now—and how technology might help to address them—rather than make them worse.

“These tools are already being used, but we don’t know the power of them for our communities,” Wright said. “Before we go too far down the line, we want to make sure that some of the folks who are underrepresented have the opportunity to be involved in the conversation.”

She added, “Let’s direct the quality of our own healthcare. Let’s tailor it to fit our needs.”

Alumna Continues Her Dream to Medical School Through Articulation Agreement

September 23, 2022 by University Communications & Marketing

Growing up in Waianae, Donna Cottrell ‘22 says she felt the sting of healthcare inequality firsthand.

It wasn’t just that care was difficult to access.

“It was that a lot of times, our voices weren’t heard,” she said.

The experience (and her drive to change it) is what drew her to the field of osteopathic medicine and a career where she could consider the whole patient—mind, body, and spirit. And this summer, she moved to Arizona to pursue her dream at A.T. Still University’s Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine.

The Biology major said she took advantage of Chaminade’s articula t ion agreement with A.T. Still University to secure early admission to the prestigious program. She was also awarded a merit-based Native Hawaiian Health Scholarship for her studies, which will cover all four years of her medicine program’s tuition.

Needless to say, she’s a little excited.

“The day they called me to say I’d gotten in, I was over the moon,” Cottrell said. “I just ran to my grandma’s room and was just screaming, ‘I got in! I got in!’ This was my biggest dream and I got it.”

Finding community

Cottrell and her siblings were raised by their father, a fish diver.

“He didn’t graduate from high school,” said Cottrell, but instilled a strong love for education in his children. Cottrell said she felt inspired to succeed so she could strike out on her own and attend college.

She also knew what she wanted in a university: small class sizes, a strong sense of community, and opportunities to connect with professors and mentors. She found all that at Chaminade, she said, and enrolled after graduating from Wai ‘anae High School. After a search of Chaminade’s website, she also applied for—and received—the Ho’oulu STEM Scholarship to cover four years of tuition and other costs.

“It’s not just a scholarship, it’s a community,” said Cottrell, of the Ho’oulu program, which offers participants career development, paid internships and culturally informed service-learning projects.

“The Hooulu program has been a huge help.”

Donna Cottrell '22 at UCLA — *^{Donna Cottrell ’22 at UCLA summer health professions program}*

As she participated in Ho’oulu offerings, Cottrell also made progress on her academic goals and embraced her newfound independence. She moved into the dorms. She started making friends. And she juggled a busy schedule. “It made me stand on my own two feet,” she said.

And after wrapping up her freshman year, she got a summer experience that would solidify her dream of going into healthcare. Through Chaminade, she applied for and got a spot in a summer health professions program at UCLA for students from underrepresented communities.

During the program, she shadowed doctors and learned from her peers.

She also gained something else: Confidence.

‘I want to be able to help’

Cottrell realized she really did have an opportunity to make a difference—and to help her own community and places like it. She was also inspired by a more personal experience: her younger brother was born with a serious heart condition and required treatment on the mainland. She remembers watching the doctors and nurses and arriving at this thought: “They could do something.”

“That kind of drew me in. I want to be able to help,” she said, adding her brother is now doing great.

In her sophomore and junior years, Cottrell started working with her advisors and mentors at Chaminade. She said the university’s articulation agreement was a perfect way to prepare for a big challenge—and a big opportunity. It meant a guaranteed interview with the graduate program of her dreams. “It took the stress off so I was able to focus on my grades and on succeeding,” she said.

Cottrell said one of the reasons she chose A.T. Still University’s School of Osteopathic Medicine is because the program puts a special emphasis on health disparities. During her junior year, she was also given the chance to shadow a pediatrician for six months at Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center to get a taste for what it’s actually like to serve the community where she grew up.

It got her excited about the future. But right now, she’s a little more focused on the present—and thriving in medical school. In May, after receiving her Chaminade diploma, she became a first generation college graduate. The next box she’s going to tick in life: “I’m going to be the first doctor in my family.”

Bringing Filipino Language and Culture Back to Hawaii

September 21, 2022 by University Communications & Marketing

It was a trip of a lifetime for a group of Hawaii educators and teachers-in-training.

And Communication Professor Eva Washburn-Repollo, Ph.D. was overjoyed to be their guide.

Over the summer, Washburn-Repollo led participants of her Cebuano Language and Culture Program on a six-week adventure to the Philippines, offering them an immersive experience designed to broaden their perspectives and understanding of the country’s diverse languages and rich cultures.

The teachers visited indigenous herbal gardens, mangroves and coral reefs, attended language workshops, and participated in educational sessions at local universities and other institutions. But they weren’t just there to learn. Along the way, they developed cultural-based resource materials and curricula for their own classrooms—lessons aimed at weaving in their students’ perspectives.

Roughly a quarter of Hawaii public school students identify as Filipino.

“We all need to lift each other up,” said Washburn-Repollo, whose academic scholarship includes a focus on the positive impacts for students of cultural appreciation in classrooms. “When a student has a teacher who values their culture, they feel as if they can be anything they want to be.”

The trip was made possible thanks to a $100,000 grant from the Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad (GPA) Program. Washburn-Repollo took the group of eight participants to the islands of Negros Oriental and Cebu in the central Visayas region of the Philippines. That’s where the Cebuano language is primarily spoken—Washburn-Repollo’s first language and one of more than 120 found in the Philippines.

Those on the trip included current educators with years of experience and those just starting out.

Brittni Friedlander began her third year of teaching this fall and jumped at the chance to make the journey to the Philippines. She said she’s passionate about weaving science and technology education into her classroom and recently wrote a children’s book called Puff Saves Paradise.

“About 70% percent of my classroom last year were students of Filipino descent and I’m also half-Filipino,” Friedlander said. “It was an amazing opportunity to not only truly connect with my students, but learn a bit about my cultural heritage as well and incorporate that into my classroom genuinely.”

She said the most memorable part of the trip was the closing ceremony, during which all the participants got the chance to share their final lesson plans. Friedlander also enjoyed learning about the customs of the region, from the delicious cuisine to the herbal remedies communities use.

“As a teacher, I think it’s so very important to connect with one’s students on a relational level,” Friedlander said. “From here, I would like to use the knowledge garnered during this journey and share it in my classroom with cultural units or ‘around the world’ day with my students.”

Participant Clarissa Torres just finished her Master of Arts in Teaching degree at Chaminade and was quickly hired to teach eighth-grade science at Mililani Middle School. She wanted to make the trek to the Philippines so she could make more (and stronger) connections with her students. “I also wanted to learn more about my own Filipino culture and wanted to gain new perspectives as an educator,” Torres said.

She added that the program wasn’t easy—by any stretch.

Torres struggled with getting out of her comfort zone and developing a lesson plan.

“I created an original Cebuano song about the collectivism of the community in Apo Island as well as how they conserve water,” Torres said. “This experience expanded my ideas on how to incorporate all of my students’ cultures in my classroom and music is one thing I would like to weave in.”

She said by learning just a few simple phrases in Cebuano, she was already making relationships with people she met. “They appreciated our efforts to learn the language,” Torres said. “My biggest takeaway was I have a greater understanding of the beauty of learning a new language.”

Washburn-Repollo agreed what moved her the most about the people that the group met on their adventure is just how excited they were to share their time—and wisdom. “Everyone we met wanted to share their language with us,” she said. “Every preserved language is a door to a new solution to diseases, it’s a door to alternatives to happiness and peace. We have so much to learn.”

This wasn’t the first group Washburn-Repollo has taken to the Philippines. It’s actually the fourth, though the previous treks weren’t funded by Fulbright. The professor has also accompanied nursing students for a clinical immersion and organized trips focused on community building and finance.

Her central focus is helping people realize that broadening their own perspective and learning from groups who have no voice on the world stage has the power to unearth rich gifts of knowledge. And in classrooms, she said, it can do a wonderful thing: to ensure students from all backgrounds feel welcome.

“The key is making all students feel valued,” she said.

Participant Kalika Ayin couldn’t agree more. She’s an English Learner teacher at Pearl City High School and applied to the Cebuano Language and Culture Program because she wanted to learn more about her own students. “Many of my students are from the Philippines … so I wanted to learn about Filipino culture so I could improve my teaching and my communication with their families,” Ayin said.

She added that she was particularly interested in the program’s language immersion component “because I knew it would help me understand what my students experience when they move to Hawaii. I also wanted to learn enough of their language to make them feel welcome and seen in my classroom.”

The most memorable part of the trip for Ayin was graciously being invited into her Filipino teacher partner’s home and meeting her family. “She bridged me into her culture and helped me practice the Cebuano language,” Ayin said, reflecting on the trip. “Her hospitality and patience deeply impacted me. Our partnership fostered an international teaching network—and an international friendship.”

She also said that the experience of learning a new language through immersion helped her see the world a little better through her students’ eyes. For example, when she was using the Cebuano language in conversation but couldn’t find the right word right away, her stress levels rose. “It helped me understand how my students likely feel immersed in U.S. classroom settings,” she said.

And Ayin is looking forward to one lesson, in particular, this coming school year.

She plans to show her students a video she co-wrote and produced with her Filipino teacher partner detailing how to make the Cebuano dessert binignit, a fruit stew made with coconut milk, sweet potato, bananas and other fruits and vegetables at hand. “The video includes a narrative about the rich symbolism between the ingredients in binignit and the Cebuano culture,” she said.

Ayin said she’ll use the video to launch into a unit of study exploring food staples across the Pacific.

And then her students will get to work in the kitchen (and classroom), producing a cookbook to share broadly with families in Pearl City that incorporates Pacific dishes. “My goal is to foster pride in multilingualism,” she said, “and help students own their languages with confidence.”

LeAndre Browne, a doctoral student in education at Chaminade who teaches first grade in Georgia, wishes every teacher could go on a trip like the one Washburn-Repollo organized. “I’m a lifelong learner and was extremely interested in learning another language and experiencing another culture,” she said.

“Despite being from different places, people can share similar interests bringing them closer, like a love of plants,” she said, adding that she is particularly grateful for all of the relationships she was able to forge with people the group learned from over the course of six weeks.

Jessica Watkins doesn’t have a classroom of her own yet but said she can’t wait to bring what she learned in the Philippines to her future lesson plans. Watkins is majoring in Elementary Education at Chaminade and said there were so many memorable moments on the trip, that it’s hard to pick a favorite.

Learning Cebuano songs and then singing them at their final presentation. Staying on Apo Island, which has no cars and limited hours of electricity service. Getting to enjoy the region’s stunning coastlines. “I now know enough of the language to have basic communication with someone,” Watkins added.

“And that could help my students feel more comfortable in my future classroom.”

Chaminade University’s Hawaii Guarantee

September 19, 2022 by University Communications & Marketing

Matching resident tuition and 4-year graduation pathway.

Chaminade University is proud to announce a new undergraduate tuition match and four-year graduation pathway program starting with next year’s incoming Hawaii freshmen that will ensure a world-class, private education is within reach for even more families in the Islands.

The Hawaii Guarantee program will launch in Fall 2023 and provide all graduates of Hawaii high schools entering as first-time freshmen with the exact same tuition rate as the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s annual resident undergraduate tuition and an achievable path to graduate in four years.

The tuition match will mean students eligible for the program won’t pay a penny more to attend Chaminade University than the annual published tuition rate at UH-Manoa—a groundbreaking affordability pledge that underscores Chaminade’s strong commitment to expanding access to educational opportunities.

If students follow all the steps in their Four-Year Graduation Guarantee and are unable to graduate in four years, Chaminade will cover the rest to get program participants to graduation day.

“Our new Hawaii Guarantee program shows our serious commitment to help inspire and develop the next generation of Hawaii leaders by providing Hawaii high school graduates with a world-class education right here at home,” said Chaminade University President Dr. Lynn Babington.

“We are on a mission at Chaminade to put education in action for the public good—and the Hawaii Guarantee helps us meet that goal. Hawaii families have been grappling with no shortage of uncertainty in the last several years, but our Hawaii Guarantee is something they can count on and will ensure more Hawaii students are able to pursue higher education so they can make a positive impact in our community.”

Chaminade already has the highest four-year graduation rate among Hawaii universities.

The University’s support network for all incoming freshmen ensures each student has a dedicated academic advisor who will help them craft an achievable plan for graduating within four years. Those wraparound supports will continue throughout a student’s four-year journey at Chaminade so they have the guidance and help they need every step of the way.

“Our Hawaii Guarantee is a game-changer for incoming Hawaii students and their families and underscores our commitment to affordability in education,” Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management Abigail Hurgo said. “Chaminade’s small class sizes, dedicated academic advisors and faculty, leadership opportunities, and career development program, allow our students to turn their passions into the skills and knowledge they need to become the next generation of Hawaii leaders.”

The program will apply to full-time, day undergraduates and can be used in conjunction with a comprehensive financial aid package, including grants and scholarships.

Students must apply to Chaminade University and submit their FAFSA by January 15, 2023.

For more details on the program, click here.

Harnessing the Data Revolution Through a $10 Million Grant

September 2, 2022 by University Communications & Marketing

Dr. Rylan Chong, director of Chaminade’s Data Science program, calls it nothing less than historic.

In early August, the National Science Foundation (NSF) INCLUDES Alliance selected Chaminade University to lead a groundbreaking $10 million grant project aimed at creating new opportunities in STEM and data science careers for historically underrepresented populations across Hawai‘i and the Pacific Region.

The grant announcement, Chong said, is one of those moments that educators will look back on in a decade or so and recognize as a turning point—the beginning of new initiatives that opened doors for students, the institutions that serve them, and nonprofit and business communities in the region.

“This is about leveling up, addressing capacity in the workforce and making sure our low-income and underrepresented students have an opportunity to bring their perspectives to data science,” Chong said, adding that welcoming diverse populations into data science will ensure their voices are heard.

“You can apply data science to every field—education, healthcare and mental health, environment science and climate change, and criminal justice,” he said. “It’s not just about crunching numbers but ensuring the numbers reflect different viewpoints and getting those numbers into the right hands.”

That’s why the Data Science program at Chaminade doesn’t just want to prepare students for competitive careers at the Googles and Amazons of the world. “We also want to find opportunities for students working in grassroots and community organizations, being able to contribute to projects they’re interested in while making a difference to the places where they live,” Chong said.

The competitive NSF grant is one of the largest Chaminade has ever received and reflects the strong data science work and foundational programs already in place at the University.

With the transformative funding, Chaminade’s United Nations-affiliated CIFAL Honolulu Center will spearhead the launch of the university’s new Alliance Supporting Pacific Impact through Computational Excellence (ALL-SPICE) with a consortium of partners, putting a strong emphasis on leadership for sustainable development and efforts aimed at tackling the growing impacts of climate change.

“Chaminade University is really quite honored to lead this important initiative charged with empowering STEM leaders for tomorrow from across Hawai‘i and the Pacific, equipping them with the cutting-edge tools they need to drive sustainable development projects,” said President Lynn Babington, PhD.

“This grant is part of a collective and exciting effort to meet a pivotal moment in our history by expanding opportunities to a new generation of change-makers. Our mission of service is foundational to everything we do at Chaminade and so we are proud to drive a culturally informed initiative ultimately designed to help build healthier, more resilient and socially just communities.”

The first ALL-SPICE programming and opportunities launched in the Fall.

Dr. Helen Turner, research director of the Chaminade United Nations CIFAL Honolulu Center and a professor of Biology, is principal investigator for ALL-SPICE along with Chong. She said the funding will focus on three central efforts: bolstering training and educating, conducting data science research on sustainable development projects, and building capacity (including infrastructure) for data analytics in Hawai‘i and the Pacific.

“This work takes a village,” Turner said, adding the grant was the result of years of collaboration between Chaminade and other institutions to step up programming and underscore the importance of data science to the community. The Chaminade-led consortium includes the University of Hawaii Data Science Institute, East-West Center and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).

“The National Science Foundation identified the power of data analytics for education, research and industry. They use this phrase ‘harnessing the data revolution’ because right now we are all swimming in an ocean of data,” Turner said. “We can either drown as individuals, communities and society or we can swim and surf that wave—take data and turn it into wisdom, knowledge and action-based plans.”

Turner said that’s exactly what the Data Science program at Chaminade is focused on.

And the grant will exponentially increase that work, expanding opportunities to more students, community leaders and institutions so they can use data for the greater good. “Data and social justice go hand and hand. To me, it’s a very obvious and beautiful linkage,” Turner said.

For example, she says that health inequities are fundamentally a data problem—failing to get the right resources to the right people or not fully understanding the root causes for gaps in care. Environmental problems, economic development, educational gaps can be approached similarly.

“Because a big piece of this is meeting the needs of the community,” she added. “No university in the United States can keep up with the pace of demand for data scientists. We want our students to succeed, but we also don’t want our own organizations in Hawai‘i to be left behind.”

That’s why the grant will, in part, fund research or hands-on internships for students. Already, Chaminade students in data science are working on a plethora of important projects—looking at everything from maternal mortality in Pacific populations to recidivism in Hawai‘i.

“If you ask what is a data scientist, the answer is everything,” she said. “With data science, students undoubtedly can follow their personal passions and make a positive impact. This is ultimately a vehicle for students’ passions to change the world. It’s also about democratizing our relationship with data.”

CIFAL Honolulu Executive Director and Dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics Dr. Gail Grabowsky said data visualization and interpretation are a central focus of the grant’s programming. That’s because it’s not enough to analyze the data. Helping the community (especially non-data scientists) understand what the data says is just as important.

“We think data alone will change the world and it won’t,” said Grabowsky, who is also dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Chaminade. “What will change the world is many people working together on shared goals, using data along the way to inform policy and guide next steps.”

She added that CIFAL Honolulu envisions the Pacific Ocean as a “connector,” helping to spur conversations around both modern approaches and traditional knowledge and practices. Indigenous ways of knowing, Grabowsky added, could also bring about new perspectives and questions.

Dr. Lance Askildson, Chaminade provost, called the grant and its potential impact “incredibly significant.” He added, “This is really about creating a network of institutions across the Pacific, of which Chaminade is the lead, to provide education, training and research.”

He said a key part of the funding is working with community stakeholders to help them tell their own community stories with data. “Particularly here in the West, there is a tremendous amount of data being collected on us at all times of the day,” he said. “Being in control of your data is just like being in control of your Facebook profile—it’s a chance to tell a story with greater integrity that prioritizes your needs.”

ALL-SPICE co-Principal Investigator Dr. Kelly Gaither, the director of health analytics at TACC and a professor of Maternal Health at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, first started hearing about Chaminade’s work in data science in 2005 as part of a grant review committee.

What struck her the most, she said, is there was no tension between the pursuit of data science and traditional Hawaiian and Pacific knowledge and ways of knowing. “Chaminade was really trying to chop down any notion that Hawaiian science is not science,” she said. “This is the true definition of capacity building. Chaminade is really leading this, one community stakeholder and one student at a time.”

Gaither added she’s especially excited about the workforce opportunities the grant has to offer.

“We can dream big, peacefully coexist and all move forward,” she said. “That’s what is possible.”