Maenette Benham has had two chances that come along rarely in education, capping a career of teaching and administration, at the K-12 and college levels. First it was becoming the inaugural dean of a new college established at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus, the Hawai‘inuiakea School of Hawaiian Knowledge.
And now, since the start of the year, she’s become chancellor of UH-West Oahu, a baccalaureate campus that, if compared to the scale of a person’s life, is in early childhood. There’s a lot to do, she said, if, as university officials hope, the Kapolei campus is to mature alongside the communities it largely serves.
Educational administration studies brought Benham back to her Oahu birthplace from classrooms in California, Texas and Washington; here she worked teaching in public and private schools while earning her doctorate. Then she joined the College of Education faculty at Michigan State University for 16 years.
Benham and her husband had adopted her niece’s son and daughter, ages 13 and 11 respectively, so the desire to raise them here was a reason for their return in 2008.
It’s a critical time for UH-West Oahu, with a new administration and allied- health building underway, plans moving ahead for mixed-use development on 160 acres to support the campus growth, and efforts to grow student enrollment and programs to ensure its continued accreditation. This will test everything she’s learned in her career, she said.
“My area was educational leadership,” Benham said. “One could say I’m walking the talk now. I did all the research before, and now I’m trying to figure out if I was teaching the right things.”
QUESTION: Was there something about this job, the challenge of a relatively new, developing campus that appealed to you?
ANSWER: Well, you know I had the significant honor to start a new college (Hawai‘inuiakea), at a research institution — that is rarely ever done, in any established university across the country — because I felt it was an important college, and that it had so much to offer to all the colleges and disciplines at Manoa: Hawaiian language and Hawaiian knowledge. …
The opportunity had opened up for West Oahu before, but I never felt I was prepared to do that. I had a strong commitment to really see Hawai‘inuiakea through its development stages and establishing it as a central college on the Manoa campus.
In 2012, when UH-West Oahu opened, I just kind of followed it along. And when the opportunity came to apply, after talking it over with my family, I mean, an academic doesn’t get an opportunity like this very often. …
Looking at the very diverse population out there, plus the large Native Hawaiian community there, the opportunities to link with Manoa, to link with Maui, with Kauai and the CCs (community colleges), just the engagement of it all, and the service, I felt that I had been preparing for that move.
Q: What is your evaluation of UH-West Oahu at this stage?
A: There’s a projection that perhaps within 30 years the campus will be up to about 20,000 students, because of the growth that’s happening out in Leeward and Central Oahu.
But also because that campus is one of the leaders in this system on distance education. So there would be both the brick-and-mortar students as well as the digital natives, all online, taking their degrees from UH-West Oahu.
So, where we’re at right now is probably in, if you take a look at the life of an infant, we’re kind of past the toddler stage. We’re walking now, we’re a little uneasy. …
They went from a 2-year university to a 4-year university. They went from portables to actually having buildings. The buildings can only hold 1,500 students, but we’re pushing 3,000. …
We need to figure out how to get more classrooms online, quickly, so that we can service the students we have now, and we anticipate another couple hundred students coming in, in the next academic year. …
What I do know from the faculty I’ve met so far is we have a tremendous amount of brilliant energy around all the traditional discipline areas, but also around some really forward looking “hubs.”
For example: allied health …
Q: Can you define that a bit?
A: It’s like health administration management, pieces of technology, education pieces around health, billing, accounting, respiratory health, elder care, hospice — those kinds of things that you would not necessarily go to the School of Nursing for, or JABSOM, the med school.
Q: Or credentials for CNAs, certified nursing assistants? There’s a need for that.
A: Yes, yes. Huge need for them. Our health professionals in the schools, as well. Oral health is part of that area as well. It’s a growing need in Hawaii. So we need a place for kids to come to get prosperous jobs. And allied health is really important.
Q: By oral health, you mean … ?
A: Dentistry.
Q: There’s a dental school at Manoa, right?
A: Right. So, there have been conversations of moving the dental school over to West Oahu. And that would be a great place for it to flourish.
Q: There are other fields, artier ones?
A: The Academy for Creative Media; it’s one of the fastest-growing programs. When you think about the Academy for Creative Media, you think of film, right? The film production, and whatnot. And that certainly is a hallmark of the program.
But creative media is all forms of texts that tell stories … from graphic novels, to oral storytelling, to music, to all kinds of art, creative endeavors to tell stories.
Q: Do you count digital gaming?
A: Digital gaming, things that we haven’t even thought of. …
We’re going to be doing more in the area of hospitality, as well. As you know, it’s a growing industry up there. I think as a University of Hawaii system, we do need to do a better job of preparing people to go into management, into a variety of different hospitality fields.
There’s a newly built Hampton Inn over there, down the road. They’ve got a bunch of investors at Ko Olina. It could really become a hub for producing strong leadership in that field.
Q: Would it be part of TIM (School of Travel Industry Management) at Manoa?
A: I think we would partner. TIM, they do a lot of the critical research work around the travel industry. They do some work on preparing people to go into the field.
I think our focus would be much more applied, putting out a variety of people who could run large or small elements of the industry. Because it’s not just hotels, right? It’s transportation, it’s arts, it’s concerts, land development, all those kinds of things.
Q: You’re looking for niches that serve those communities on the west side? Is that the aim to try and serve that particular area?
A: It is a regional campus, similar to the University of Hawaii at Hilo, a regional campus. So, we do need to service our region.
But at the same time, I’m looking at partnerships with our community colleges, which are all over the islands, and finding ways to articulate their 2-year graduates into 4-year degrees. Including Maui, and all of Maui’s complex, which is Lanai, Molokai and Hana; and Kauai Community College.
The University of Hawaii at West Oahu has had a history of partnering with the CCs in that way, as their four-year, go-to campus. So yes, regional; but yes, also, supporting the other members of our system. …
You know, another one of those hubs that does serve that area but has broader impact, is that we initiated a bachelor of applied science in sustainable community food systems.
Q: Farming?
A: Yes, but it’s more than just farming. It’s agriculture policy, it goes from the land to the ocean … it’s all about changing the way people eat.
Because it’s such a food desert out there. There are great spans of areas where fresh, healthy produce is just nonexistent. And it creates all these health problems and disparities … for Native Hawaiians, Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, underserved communities.
But it’s also about building a next generation of leaders that come through this program, that really take in the health of the land and the health of the people.
