Educator built program for Hawaiian learners

ROLAND THARP / 1930-2016

A Kamehameha Schools program in the 1970s aimed at finding means to better educate low-income Native Hawaiian youths is today considered to have been groundbreaking and unprecedented.

Roland George Tharp, founding director and principal investigator of the Kamehameha Early Education Program, who also established the clinical psychology doctoral program at the University of Hawaii, died Dec. 25 in Honolulu. He was 85.

Lois Yamauchi, a UH professor of educational psychology, said, “KEEP was the first, and is still considered by many to have been the best, research, development and demonstration site for the the study of the education of culturally and linguistically diverse students.”

KEEP researchers “conducted anthropological research on families in Nanakuli to learn about the skills and knowledge Hawaiian children brought to school and made adaptations to classroom instruction that were culturally compatible with children’s expectations and backgrounds,” Yamauchi said. “The method led to higher student engagement and achievement and was a novel approach at a time when educators tended to view these children and their families as coming to school with deficits rather than strengths.”

Tharp built upon the ideas at KEEP later as director of the Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence, a national research center at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from 1996 to 2003.

The CREDE model continues to be used in many schools in Hawaii and across the nation, Yamauchi said. The model was also used for educational reform measures undertaken in Greenland, where Tharp was a consultant to the education minister.

Among many other accomplishments, Tharp established the UH clinical psychology program and was its founding director from 1968 to 1972.

Tharp and his wife, Stephanie Stoll Dalton, in 1984 founded the Pre-Service Education for Teachers of Minorities Program, a partnership among KEEP, the UH College of Education and the state Department of Education. The program focused on helping diverse and at-risk students succeed in school.

Born in Galveston, Texas, he is survived by wife Stephanie Stoll Dalton; sons Donald, Thomas and Michael; daughter Julie; stepdaughter Jessica Davis; and three grandchildren.

A service takes place 2 p.m. Sunday at Bishop Memorial Chapel, Kamehameha Schools Kapalama Campus. Visitation begins at 1 p.m. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the UH Foundation, the CREDE Hawaii account.