Dean’s Message

Aloha kākou,

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically transformed higher education and those changes will continue well into the future. While we don’t yet know what future changes will bring, we do know that higher education needs to be much more versatile in how it delivers educational programs. There will be less reliance on curriculum requiring fully on-campus courses, with more diversity in program delivery; less emphasis on the traditional student pathways; and more emphasis on educational opportunities for students throughout their lives.

Since 1927, the mission of Outreach College has been to serve nontraditional students through innovative programs that reflect the needs of the various student populations we serve. With the changing higher educational landscape, the mission of Outreach College has become increasingly central to the mission of UH Mānoa. Accordingly, the College has been actively promoting educational innovation at UH Mānoa and the College’s program offerings have been evolving. Throughout this website, you will see the results of this innovation, but two trends stand out: the rapid growth in online and noncredit professional education programs.

Gone are the days when a student graduates and devotes their life to a career with one or two job changes. The rapid pace of change necessitates being agile in one’s career, making career advances and changes over relatively short time frames. Given the time and financial commitment, a master’s degree may not be the best educational option for supporting career moves. Shorter, noncredit educational options have become much more popular. Outreach College has responded with a variety of noncredit certificates and courses across a wide range of study areas: from human resource management to clinical research, from education to building operations, and from business process improvement to forensic anthropology.

I hope you find our website useful in exploring ways to advance toward your personal and professional goals. Outreach College continues to evolve, forming new partnerships with UH Mānoa colleges as well as organizations outside the university to provide new educational opportunities for all types of students. 

Mahalo,

Tim Slaughter
Interim Dean, Outreach College
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa