For most, it’s welcome financial help. For one, the offer didn’t settle well.
With a large contribution from the Thirty Meter Telescope’s education fund, Hawaii Community Foundation has divvied out $100,000 in scholarships to 25 students from around the Big Island.
Recipient Samantha Hanabaga, a Keaau High School graduate and fourth year pharmacy student at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, said she feels blessed to receive such support.
“Education is expensive,” she said. “It’s a struggle for all of us local students out there who want to go out and further ourselves.”
Hanabaga is the first in her family to go to college. She said her dream is to become a licensed pharmacist and that the THINK Fund scholarship will help her achieve that goal.
“It does really make a big impact on my life and my future,” she said.
While financial assistance for higher education is not often rejected, one Big Island native did just that. Narrissa Spies, a graduate student in the biology department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, turned down $7,500 after realizing the money came from TMT.
In an email to the Hawaii Tribune-Herald, she said she struggled with her own feelings about the $1.4 billion telescope project atop Mauna Kea — which has made international headlines in recent months — and that her decision came down to a question posed by one of her mentors.
“How would I feel about taking the money if I looked back in a year, in five years? Would I have any regrets?” Spies said. “I would have had regrets because I knew that the source of those funds represented the marginalization of an entire people, my people. The same people in the community that I grew up with, and that I will continue to live with.”
HCF spokeswoman Lynelle Marble said in an email that the foundation does not publicize full lists of scholarship recipients. However, she described the 2015-16 recipients of the THINK Fund as “diverse” — about 60 percent from East Hawaii and 40 percent from West Hawaii, including the communities of Hilo, Waimea, Honokaa, Hawi, Ka‘u, Keaau, Pahoa, Kailua-Kona and Waikoloa.
The TMT Observatory Corp. launched The Hawaii Island New Knowledge (THINK) Fund last November. It provides $250,000 a year to Pauahi Foundation and $750,000 a year to Hawaii Community Foundation to support science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education on Hawaii Island.
Among HCF’s recipients is Waiakea High School graduate Katelyn Haruki, who will be attending the University of San Francisco in the fall to study mathematics.
Haruki said the money came as a total surprise and will help relieve some of the financial stress of attending school on the Mainland.
“I’m very appreciative,” she said.
Marble said anyone interested in receiving a scholarship from any of HCF’s 200 funds completes a single online application. The system then helps to match the applicants with the funds they qualify for. In this case, applicants studying STEM related fields and/or teaching of STEM, were matched with the THINK Fund.
Spies, who made her decision to turn down the money public via an opinion piece in Honolulu-based Civil Beat, said that while she needed the money and felt she had earned it through all her hard work, it felt like a payoff.
“I decided that even though this money would mean that I wouldn’t have to struggle to pay my rent this semester, I had to go with my na‘au and decline the award,” she wrote in Civil Beat. “I respectfully decline the award, and appreciate the selection committee deciding that I was a worthy recipient. This money was meant to get students interested in STEM, but I am working on my third STEM degree, and I will finish it without support from TMT, the same way I started.”
Marble confirmed Spies turned down the money and that HCF will award it to someone else. No other recipients have turned down their scholarship offers.
In addition to the $100,000 for college scholarships, HCF is using TMT’s contribution in a number of ways, including $100,000 for teacher-generated classroom projects; $200,000 for STEM learning grants and $250,000 to THINK Fund at HCF endowment for Hawaii Island STEM education. How the remaining funds will be used is yet to be determined, according to Marble.
The Pauahi Foundation, which suppports Kamehameha Schools, is using its $250,000 to award scholarships to Hawaiian students from the island who are pursuing STEM degrees. A representative of the foundation said it has not concluded its selections for all of its scholarship funds, including the THINK Fund. All notifications, awards and denials, will be mailed June 5.
Email Chris D’Angelo at cdangelo@hawaii tribune-herald.com.
