UH-West Oahu should aim high

The University of Hawaii at West Oahu opened its shiny new campus in Kapolei at the start of the fall semester, and it’s already facing a serious challenge: the looming turnover in its head office.

This week campus Chancellor Gene Awakuni announced his plan to retire from the UH system; he told the Star-Advertiser it would likely be around June 30, at the end of this fiscal year. This, he said, gives him a chance to advocate for campus funding in the 2013 legislative session while the next chancellor is being selected or the transition period is winding down.

Nearly four decades in the making, the permanent campus for the four-year baccalaureate university is at a delicate juncture in its history. The UH administration and Board of Regents must find a credentialed and committed official who can take over the reins of this budding but important institution in Oahu’s growing second city.

The outgoing chancellor himself, who is now 66, insists that there’s nothing more to his decision than fatigue from the burden of getting the campus built and continuing to champion it in an increasingly competitive budgetary landscape.

The suspicion that something else was behind it came from a couple of fronts. One was the decision in June by the accrediting commission of the Western Association of Schools & Colleges to issue a "notice of concern" following its most recent site visit, citing deficiencies in certain facilities and faculty hiring plans, among other issues.

After reports had circulated about that, WASC President Ralph Wolff sent Awakuni a letter to "clarify" the panel’s action, which he said "does not place the institution’s accreditation in jeopardy."

Awakuni said this week that some of the concerns had been answered by the time the new campus opened some months after the site visit, and that he expects WASC will be satisfied with progress at the next visit set for 2014.

Beyond that, there have been concerns that construction change orders drove the $170 million project about $14 million over budget, and reports that Awakuni faced an inquiry from the state Ethics Commission about his financial disclosure records.

Awakuni has acknowledged the overruns. But the ethics angle, he said, was no longer an issue. He said he had been alerted that the commission found his required disclosure forms lacking in key required information but supplied the data and considered the problem resolved.

It’s time now for UH-West Oahu to move forward. The UH system administration has rightly sought to boost the research capacity of its flagship campus at Manoa. But the West Oahu campus is critical to meeting other UH goals, including workforce development and providing higher education opportunities to Native Hawaiians. The West Oahu campus, located near the Native Hawaiian homestead communities along the Waianae Coast, is ideally oriented for this. Of its enrollment topping 2,000, 27 percent are Native Hawaiians, and the campus’ lower tuition puts a bachelor’s degree within reach of more Hawaii residents of all ethnicities.

The campus’ fledgling status should not diminish the realization that it has great possibilities among the state’s higher education institutions. It needs a leader who can turn its aspirations into reality.