Nurturing Faculty Excellence
Endowed chairs and professorships greatly enhance the prestige of academic institutions. They are powerful vehicles used to celebrate distinction and are given to scholars or teachers who are widely recognized as leaders in their field. These endowments help our university attract and retain the best faculty and students.
An endowed chair or professorship is more than an honorific for the academic chosen to hold it. It offers a private source of funding that enables the chair holder to take advantage of opportunities, finance important research, fund necessary instrumentation, attract post-doctoral fellows and graduate students, and support collaborations with other colleagues.
Creating endowed chairs and professorships is a priority at the University of Hawaiʻi Foundation because of the powerful and direct impact these academics have on our students, our faculty and our future.
Faculty awards recognize outstanding contributions in education and nurture faculty excellence. Awards are a meaningful way to thank and acknowledge the stellar work faculty do, in their important role as mentors to the next generation and forward-thinking researchers.
Distinguished lecture series enhance our campuses’ ability to stimulate intellectual vitality in our community. Through public lectures given by distinguished leaders and renowned scholars, our community is introduced to new ideas and engages in the exchange of knowledge.
A new curriculum developed at the University of Hawaiʻi through a partnership with Hawaiʻi’s banking industry will train the “universal bankers” of tomorrow. It’s one of the outcomes of innovative industry sector partnerships across the state. The sector partnership activities are part of UH’s broader Building Hawaiʻi’s Innovation Economy and Workforce initiative, which was launched in 2016 with the support of Strada Education Network.
Hōkūleʻa’s return to Magic Island marked the end of one long trek and the beginning of an epic celebration highlighted by the premiere of “Raise Hawaiki,” a composition by Dr. Michael-Thomas Foumai, a University of Hawai‘i music lecturer.
Dr. Ricardo Trimillos didn't plan to focus his research on the music of a Muslim community in the southern Philippines. He played the koto, a stringed instrument from Japan, and that's where his interests resided. When a group of friends planned a research trip to the Philippines, he agreed to go along, and spent the rest of his career sharing his expertise in Filipino culture and music.
