Manoa, Hawaii – Sat., June 2, 2029: Protesters at the university’s central Oahu campus administrative offices jumped the fence early this morning and staged what they are calling the first of a 10-day Plant-In to sway university officials’ vote in favor of the new ecology policy (EP 2036) bill. Students of all ages broke immediately into pre-planned groups. One group brought out a jackhammer and began breaking up the cement in the center parking lot while another group lugged buckets of manure over the fence and a third group pulled out seedlings from every pocket they owned.

“If we can show them that living organisms are part of and can contribute positively to our working lives as deeply as to our personal environments, then they will have to think favorably about letting the Oahu system make the ecological sciences one of our CORE curriculum requirements for every incoming student,” said 18-year-old Sonja Ong. Behind the sporty leader of the seedling group stood a rag-tag group of elder’s from the nursery and plant physiology (NPP) program as well as the state’s Neighborhood Agriculture Director, 32-year-old James Nakayama, all wearing smiles and nodding in agreement.

“The university system has been in a growing crisis for the last 10 years,” explains Jamal Pualoa (46), director of the NPP program for the university-wide system. The Oahu campus is no different than the Big Island, Maui, Molokai, Lanai, or Kauai campuses, according to Pualoa. All are battling to bring an increased awareness to legislators that each island’s university system must be free to determine their specific environmental requirements for individual degree programs. Although the statewide system has had considerable success in graduating increased numbers of employed students in the past nine years since overhauling the architecture of the academic degree programs to a student-driven design, the state legislature has continued the original debate over who holds the degree development authority.

The current EP 2036 bill claims that the mission of the UH system to, integrate ecology, employment, and environment into every student’s educational experience, must be met at the island-level. “The EP bill would grant authority to the Oahu system,” says Pualoa, “to set ecological science as one of the CORE curriculum requirements of the first 2-year block that incoming students must take.” Pualoa explains that all of the island UH systems have pressed the state system to include this block of courses as foundational to the educational framework of Hawaii’s university programs. Since the state trustees have resisted ruling on the issue, a group of faculty, students, and citizens petitioned for bill 2036 which would establish the requirement for the Oahu system and place the bill on the upcoming university ballot for statewide voting. If passed, the state ballot would grant degree-development authority to the island university systems, removing the issue permanently from the UH state administration.

Nalina snapped off the digital news column with a disgusted push of the NetWall power switch. “We haven’t learned a thing in 60 years,” she thought to herself, “we’re still trying to power-push the authority figure to do what we want by demonstrating in their faces. How ironic! Especially, when we’re pushing integration and ecology.” The 75-year-old Makiki campus Kapuna and professor of rare indigenous species turned to her desk and her newest book tracking the historical contribution of Native Hawaiian concepts of the Aina to island education. She had two hours before she would need to go online for her global course, Historical Migrations of Native Pacific Island Birds.

Nalina was one of the early voluntary lifetime contracts under the new university, established 10 years earlier by the 2018 Hawaiian Education for a Healthy Future Act. In that act, the statewide university system was completely overhauled, or more accurately, broken up and rewritten with a new philosophical approach. Five years earlier in 2013, recognizing that the State was bogged down to the point of paralysis by a remote bureaucracy trying to run a single K-12 system and a single 6-island-wide university system, the newly elected state legislature funded a 3-year proposal by a group of university faculty to conduct an extensive futures study that would identify a new direction for the state’s crippled educational empire. Acknowledging the economic and cultural status of the university system across the islands, the legislature proffered the study group two simple challenges: 1) be inclusive of all members of Hawaiian society, and 2) to recognize and strengthen education’s role in developing a self-sustaining island economy and environment.

The newly created university eliminated rankism within the system by offering lifetime contracts to professors who demonstrate expertise in their field. Contracts are lifetime only as long as professors contribute to the academic and/or research life of the university. Five-year reviews of all professors establish the nature of their contributions. Some professors work entirely in research in their field; others maintain knowledge expertise and are primarily instructors – either at campus-based local facilities, or over the university system’s online network, or a blended version of the two. Most professors in the new university contribute both to research and instruction. Faculty design their academic workload and receive benefits accordingly. As a result of this change, Jacobson’s 2025 study confirms that faculty have shown greater risk-taking and creative behavior in their research and instructional content that has elevated the achievement and global status of several programs, especially oceanography, global technologies, languages, and astronomy.

Nalina is a perfect example of the success of the new system. A kapuna from the Hookena area of the Big Island who advised and taught across K-12 schools in the Southern half of the island, she applied for and received a Native Expertise grant. The state grant provided her with a 2-year sabbatical plus advanced mobile technology so that she could continue her research while taking the necessary coursework to complete her doctorate in Integrated Life Sciences.

The new system is as profitable for students and island business. There is evidence (Kohl, 2028) that pollution impacts on several islands are showing signs of improvement as well as upticks in the state’s economic index. Under the new system, any adult 14 years of age or older may apply to take courses in the open university. Those wishing to enroll in a degree program must demonstrate passage of secondary graduation requirements and apply to the review team of the primary program of study. Coursework is offered both over Hawaii’s global online network (H-GON) and in neighborhood facilities throughout the islands. As part of their enrollment in a degree program, all students are provided with the necessary technology and connectivity to access online courses and resources, including the newly established worldwide NetLibrary. Students design their personal course of study through consultation with university experts and faculty and submit their program to the primary department for review and acceptance. All courses have been rewritten to integrate World of Work requirements into course content. This means that students either request or are assigned to specific enterprises (or work sites) for apprentice hours to complement their coursework. Likewise, island commercial and government enterprises in need of research and/or employees may approach the commercial outreach office of the university system to develop a research program or necessary courses for meeting these needs. Every degree program requires, as part of completion, that students pass an applied practicum that provides them with significant experience in the field and a review of achievement by working supervisors.

As part of the university’s contribution to the growth and enrichment of the Hawaiian Islands, and through a last-minute compromise between the RCUH and the original UH system, the 2018 Education Futures Act placed the research foundation under the system umbrella but gave decision authority to a convergence council of Hawaii business and research experts under the direction of the university’s Futures Institute. The council conducts an annual review of new research trends across the university’s programs and matches those to the economic demands of the state to determine the next research goals. As part of the Act, the 2018 legislature established a Hi-Tech trust of $5 million in seed money that was quickly matched by Hawaii’s state and international business community to create a state-of-the-art, world-leader educational technology infrastructure. Within the Hi-Tech program, access to education (through one avenue or another) has been enabled for every citizen. Neighborhood digital libraries, Internet centers, preK-12 schools, senior centers, elder housing centers, and non-profit organizations all provide windows to access. The integration of education, technology, and business in the life of neighborhood communities ensure the continued health of the community and dissuade the influence of outside market forces who must meet stringent local controls.

The mission of the university system requires that every course and degree program integrate into students’ knowledge (and thereby into community life as described above), an appreciation and understanding of the power of integrating island life with economics, governance, and the ecological balance of a healthy community.

Six a.m., Tuesday morning, June 5, 2029: Kyle Wilson is awoken gently by the room notification system. He waves his hand to turn off the alarm and tells the system to reset for 30 minutes later. He still has time to get his daughter Geo up and off to school. He considers briefly before drifting back to sleep whether he needs to get formally dressed for the day and decides that it is only combination work and study so no need to wear other than his sweats for the day and his digital vest. At 6:30, he turns off the alarm, and turns on the digital assistant to his daughter’s room to play her favorite wake-up song, and then heads to the shower. On the way to school, Kyle checks that Geo remembered to put on her digiTutor, an act she constantly forgets. She has, but he makes a mental note to stop by Compustore to get her the stylish upgrade she has been asking for. Kids today, he thinks, they only relate to what their peers are wearing, and it has to be the latest style. Geo’s tutor is a five-year old ocean blue armband that bit the popularity dust about two years ago. Today, it HAS to be the color reflecting headband with invisible RF antenna and a personalized eye glass that transmits your data through your own individual view of the world. Geo’s idea is to see the world through a koi pond with selectable databits as different fish. She is 13. He reminds himself she will be an adult in 3 years.

Kyle drops off his daughter, telling her to pay attention to the tutor's pickup alarm he has set for 2:30 pm when he will be at the school gate to take her to hula lesson. He then swings by Ono Technology Systems administrative offices to pick up his work assignment for the day. He plugs in the assignment stick, waits for a decent 30 seconds, and removes it. At home, he puts the stick in the dataport on his desk and activates the main computer system. He sighs when he sees his assignment is to compare the company’s forecast for the prior year against the end-of-year report and analyze the direction the company should take this year. The company seems to like his financial analyses since he got lucky on a couple of projections that increased corporate profits by ¼ percent. He selects his June 5 course folder and highlights “digital lecture.” As the professor begins his lecture on financial analysis, Kyle climbs on the stairmaster for a quality workout. When he has absorbed the content of the instruction, he’ll review the company data, research the past records and forecasts, and dictate his report. Maybe he’ll burn an incense stick for luck just in case!