If you are like me, your notion of what it means to be successful in work or life changes over time. I’ve been participating in many conversations about success of late: What does success mean for our students at UH Hilo? What does success mean for our University? Our University System? Success for institutions certainly includes flourishing for all the individuals that make up our workforce and for the population we serve. But we have a lot of different notions about what success looks like and how to get there.
Success for our students generally means graduation with the degree of their choice. As an institution, we consider ourselves more successful if students finish within six years, four if possible. Yet we know that some students need to take longer. Maybe they have a job or family obligations and they need to attend part-time. That is okay, and we will work with that student. However, we never want the university to be the reason that a student must extend their time to graduation. Scheduling the classes that students need at the times that best serve them, reducing paperwork at every stage in the students’ journeys, and making sure we have appropriate academic and personal support services for students all help us ensure that we are not inadvertently in the way of students achieving the success they envision.
Some students leave before they acquire that long sought-after degree from UH Hilo. Sometimes life just gets in the way. If a student needs to suspend their enrollment for a time, we will work with them to welcome them back at the appropriate time. Others decide that they wish to take an entirely different path: military, culinary school, architecture (which we do not have at UH Hilo). That is also okay. In the end, what success means for a UH Hilo student is them fulfilling their goals, being able to help their community and family thrive, and doing that in a reasonable time at a reasonable cost.
Just finishing college is an accomplishment in and of itself, especially for those who are the first in their families to do so. Universities are also rated, however, not just in how many people graduate, but also in how much graduates’ economic status changes as a result of that degree. Do they get jobs, and are those well-paying? UH Hilo does well on those social mobility lists, and I am proud of that fact. However, those measures are also not covering the whole story. Those students who want to make a difference in their communities might choose a profession that does not pay as much as say an engineer or a doctor makes. Teachers and social workers make profound impacts on the keiki and adults they serve, but our society has determined that those professions are not “worth” as much when it comes to income. Still, we are just as proud of those graduates as we are of those who pursue more lucrative careers.
Success for the university also includes making sure our employees feel fulfilled in their jobs and can see every day that they are making a difference. When I look around the campus and see the many employees we have that are also alumni, I feel that we have succeeded in both providing a future for these grads and inspiring them to pay it forward. Their work and accomplishments inspire me to continue to improve both myself and our institution.
So how does a university become more successful? A common question when embarking on institutional strategic planning is exactly that: what does success look like? How will we know when we have achieved it? Size is one component of that. The more students we serve, the bigger impact we make on our island and the world. More important, however, is the quality of the experiences we have as employees and the quality of experiences we provide our students. We will know we have truly succeeded when all students feel that they fit in, that they all look forward to coming to class, and that they have every chance to succeed. If we are successful, our students will have a good life.
Bonnie D. Irwin is chancellor of the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Her column appears monthly in the Tribune-Herald.