When I was in college and my parents were going to come to visit, I always embarked on a frenzy of housecleaning. My friends and I would laugh about how getting the apartment or house “mom and dad clean” was a little more challenging than just tidying up. Not that our parents would go around with a white glove looking for dust above the door frames or anything like that, thank goodness, but we always envisioned our parents’ homes being much cleaner than our own. We would do the dishes, put away the laundry, dust and vacuum. I’ll admit we usually did not go so far as to scrub the floors, but we would tackle the bathroom! Would they have loved us less if the apartment was a mess? No, but we wanted to demonstrate that we were responsible adults; we wanted their approval.
The University of Hawaii at Hilo is in the final stages of preparing for the arrival of the WSCUC (WASC Senior College and University Commission) visiting team in early April. The team will make recommendations to the commission as to whether to reaffirm our accreditation and for how long. These visits are a bit stress-inducing, and the temptation is always to tidy up the institutional house. As with our parents, we are seeking approval from the team. We want them to see us as responsible purveyors of higher education who care about our students and our community. And of course, we are those things, but there is always room to improve.
In my experience with such visits, it does not pay to try to hide our challenges, to sweep them under the rug, so to speak. These teams are made up of university professionals who know their business and they have been studying us for a number of months. In April, they get to engage us in conversation about a wide range of topics: How do we assess the effectiveness of our academic programs? How do we plan for the future and make budget decisions? How do we balance perceived tensions between science and culture (the Maunakea question)? The team will meet with staff, with faculty, with students, and with the administrators. They will be looking to see how we understand our mission and how we follow that vision in all our operations.
Like all public institutions, UH Hilo has economic challenges, and our fortunes rise and fall as the state does and as enrollments fluctuate. The team members, many of whom are from public universities, will understand those challenges, but they will want to know how we handle them here. They will praise our strengths, and they will express concerns about our shortcomings. The important thing about the former is that we know how we got there. How have we worked intentionally to create those strengths, and how do we build on them? Regarding the latter, they will want to know how we plan to address any shortcomings, especially those issues that lie within our control rather than from outside forces such as the state economy or the pandemic.
What they will see is a campus that cares for students and that is heavily invested in their success. They will see many faculty and staff who work tirelessly to help students along their journey, creating rigorous programs and engaging activities. The team will ask students if they see and feel that support and ask what students think can be improved. They will offer advice as to how we might improve, and we will take that advice to heart so that the next time a team comes, they will see how much we have improved. Our community and state deserve the best UH Hilo can be, and the WSCUC team will give us suggestions as to how we can better fulfil our mission to our students and their families.
When the team comes to visit our home, they may find some dust on the windowsills or a stain on the floor, but they will also find a house on a solid foundation, filled with learning and hope. They will also see evidence of the many contributions our neighbors have made to our success.
Bonnie D. Irwin is chancellor of the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Her column appears monthly in the Tribune-Herald.