Susan Kazama, interim Chancellor at Hawai'i Community College and a Hilo native, shared some of her personal story of growing up in Hilo. Hawaiʻi Community College was founded in 1941 and is one of 10 campuses in the University of Hawaiʻi system comprising of three locations: East Hawaiʻi in Hilo; Pālamanui in West Hawaiʻi, and the Kō Cultural Center in Honokaʻa. We offer 26 academic programs and a current enrollment of 2260 students. Roughly 700 students are career and technical education students, or CTE, and the remaining students are in general or preprofessional majors. 920 of the students this semester are of Hawaiian or Pacific Islander ethnicity.
We are educating our future of Hawaiʻi island and have affordable pathways to bachelorʻs degrees or getting our students job-ready with our hands-on learning opportunities. The vast majority of our students are from here (88%) and over 78% stay on island after graduation.
Our focus going forward is on workforce training through our Good Jobs Hawaii workforce development grant; providing basic needs support and connection to services for our students; an agroforestry project in Pepeʻekeo with 90% or our crops going to the Food Basket and the remaining 10% to our Culinary Arts program, and our pride in our Model Home Project, with our students intent on building our 56th home on DHHL land.
Hawai'i Community College takes pride in getting our students job-ready and keeping our Big Island community vibrant, healthy and strong.
Here are additional links to the college website ( https://www.hawaii.hawaii.edu/hilo-location ).
More than 2200 students are currently enrolled at the HCC Hilo campus. There are altogether 27 Programs of Study ( https://www.hawaii.hawaii.edu/programs-of-study ). In addition there are MANY available services for students ( https://www.hawaii.hawaii.edu/services ). For those interested in a catalogue, follow this link to a downloadable PDF file: https://www.hawaii.hawaii.edu/sites/default/files/assets/catalog/docs/catalog23-24.pdf ). There are also many new programs in the offing.