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MM: After you left being acting chancellor of UH, you went on in 1990, along with Mildred, to write a master plan for the University of Hawaii, a statewide system and beyond. What was that all about?

RK: That was, it was totally unexpected. In some ways, the board of regents initiated that. And I don't think the president himself was keen on the idea. Especially as they didn't consult him and went around (him). They thought the university needed a fresh look, and lo and behold, they approached me and asked if I would do this study, do a plan, a statewide plan for the regents. So we took it on, it was a one-year assignment. They give us adequate funds and so Mildred and I took it on, and it was very interesting. We knew enough about the university, we knew, so we visited every campus, we visited the business community, the leaders and the mayors and other political leaders and talked about what they expected of the university, and so we did this report. But the interesting thing, meeting with the faculty, each department, school, whatever, each fiefdom very nervous about protecting its turf. They didn't want us to come up and saying, worst of all is to say we don't need that department. Or cut it down in size or anything of that sort. So a lot of 'em gave us oodles of materials and kept after us. And then we came out a report.

And the sad thing about, about these plans... of course, oftentimes maybe we are not realistic. But in our plan we stressed, well, of course, our biases would show. We stressed undergraduate education, saying that the university should do a better job, that we were the only state university, the only large university within miles and we should take care of our undergraduate students. Many of them would never go on to graduate work. We should do a better job. And the University of Hawaii is unfortunately a commuter campus with a vengeance. And a lot of going to the university is getting away from home, meeting new people, getting new perspectives. But if a high school student goes to university, doesn't stay around, still goes to the beach and the shopping center with his old high school buddies, he's not gonna have that experience. So I was a keen, I really liked (...) more dormitories, attracting more out-of-state students, study abroad programs. We put emphasis on undergraduate education but also on being more international. Hawaii had the East-West Center, but we weren't taking full advantage. Because I, as a professor, remember students coming to me and they want to study abroad, and then I had to say, "Oh, go to Cal State and they have a program in Kyoto or..." I think the Cal State system had a, had something with Keio University because one of my, my professors, one of my professor friends was there for a year. And we had to assign 'em to Indiana, or other places where we had them enroll in their programs. And we're in the University of Hawaii, the closest to the Far East, and we have no programs. So I thought the university would be stronger in that, which they try to do. But anyway, and it was a place for, of course, the research people were anxious that we emphasize tropical agriculture, and the oceans, astronomy, which was going great guns, and I, we thought we should, but we couldn't go all over the map.

Building a medical school, the law school was problematical in some ways. That is an interesting history. But it doesn't cost as much as a medical school, and some of us are afraid that medical school would drain our resources. And we first said, I still remember saying to, the university legislature, "I'm only gonna have a two-year medical school and we're gonna make arrangements so we can send 'em to full-fledged medical school on the mainland." I don't know who thought it was realistic, because that never happened. But I think both the law school and medical school, as expensive as they are, have made their contributions in Hawaii and will continue to do so. But all of these are very expensive, especially for a small state.

MM: Right.

<End Segment 40> - Copyright © 2004 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.