The graduating class is so small that the University of Hawaii holds commencement exercises on Molokai just once every four years, but what the graduates lack in numbers they make up in determination.

Take Shyla Kamakaleihiwa Purdy-Avelino. The youngest graduate ever at the Molokai Education Center, she earned two associate degrees from UH Maui College at once — at the tender age of 17. Along the way, she helped work the land at her family’s Hoolehua homestead and look after her three little sisters.

“I skipped high school,” she explained in an interview. “I was home-schooled since 10th grade, and my mom put me in college full time. It’s kind of weird — from 10th grade all my peers, all my friends, were much older than me, but they all helped me.”

The Molokai center, like a similar one on Lanai, supports all UH students on the island in various courses and degree programs. Over the last four years, it awarded 87 associate degrees, 17 bachelor’s degrees and 12 master’s degrees — with some graduates earning more than one.

Purdy-Avelino joined 40 other graduates, ranging in age up to 59, who chose to take part in the 2016 commencement at the center in Kaunakakai on May 13. Three-quarters were Native Hawaiian. Some had completed their degrees in two years; others had doggedly pursued them for more than a decade.

“While we are here at the Molokai Education Center, which is a UH-Maui College facility, we’re giving out bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UH Manoa as well as UH West Oahu and UH Hilo,” university President David Lassner said. “It’s an example of how the entire UH system works together to serve students throughout the state, including via technology and all the distance-learning programs we are able to offer.”

The Molokai center offers traditional face-to-face classrooms with instructors on-site, fully online classes, and courses through Skybridge, an interactive television system linking UH campuses and outreach centers. The roughly 10,000-square-foot facility has seven instructional classrooms, a library, and farm and lab space.

Purdy-Avelino earned her associate degrees in liberal arts and Hawaiian studies. She found much of her coursework “pretty easy.”

“The only obstacle would be financial,” she said. “I didn’t have a diploma or GED, so I didn’t qualify for scholarships.”

The teenager will be attending UH Hilo in the fall, planning to major in Hawaiian studies and minor in marine science for her bachelor’s degree.

“She is an exceptional student,” said Kelley Dudoit, instructor and coordinator at the center. “Academically she did fine. … We never had a student like this before. She and her mom were pioneers of this.”

In the long run Purdy-Avelino hopes to get her master’s degree and return to Molokai as a teacher.

“I would like to teach in the marine science field and be able to teach through the Hawaiian language,” she said. “I would like to open up more fishponds on Molokai.”

The University of Hawaii began offering courses on Molokai in 1970, starting with a group of veterans who came back from the Vietnam War with VA benefits, Dudoit said.

“It started in elementary school classrooms,” Dudoit said. “The students sat around the telephone, and the instructor would be on Maui. … Can you imagine adults sitting in the little chairs? We’ve come a long way!”