Dobelle mum on overall UH plan

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

When professors from the Center for Hawaiian Studies blessed the newly remodeled office of University of Hawai'i President Evan Dobelle, he made an extra request as they were on the way out the door.

"Don't forget the telephone," he told them.

Dobelle, barely a week into his presidency, has worked the just-blessed phones, circled the television and radio talk show circuit and made major administrative changes — at least with personnel in Bachman Hall, the traditional home of the UH president on the Manoa campus.

And while reaction to the picks for his senior management team have been well received on campus and are widely regarded as politically astute moves, most are waiting for a bigger revelation about what his plans will be for the UH system.

So far, Dobelle seems to have embraced the cheerleader-in-chief position — something drastically needed in a system that has suffered budget, morale and psychological blows for the better part of a decade. His comments and public appearances have focused on bolstering UH's self-image. But he is apparently saving his large-scale plans for a speech next week before the Chamber of Commerce.

It's the first group that invited Dobelle to speak, he said, and he's offering few hints about what he will say.

"It's a sense of direction, a sense of hope," he said. "I've written it and rewritten it, and I'm not going to look at it again for a few days. It addresses what the university could mean to the state of Hawai'i."

Within hours of his official arrival at Bachman Hall, Dobelle began upending the university bureaucracy with new appointments. None of the members of his senior staff could have been considered Bachman Hall insiders.

Deane Neubauer, a Manoa political science professor for 31 years and the director of the Globalization Research Center, became the interim chancellor of the Manoa campus. In the 1980s he served as dean of the School of Social Sciences, but is the first Manoa chancellor to move directly from the faculty to the top administrative position.

"I think his choice of people is remarkably good," said Jim Dator, director of the Center for Future Studies. "The faculty is overwhelmingly backing Neubauer. If there's any concern it's that he's going to be asked to do a lot of things that may make him very unpopular quickly."

The structure of the new administration should shake itself out by the last week in July, Neubauer said. He is interested in starting a "visioning process" for Manoa and pinpointing the reasons why morale is so low. "It would be hard to see a campus go through seven years of budget purgatory and not have a loss in morale," he said. "There may be other reasons."

Walter Kirimitsu, university general counsel and a former state appeals court judge, will serve as Dobelle's chief of staff and become acting UH president when Dobelle travels. Kirimitsu has been invited to attend any meetings on Dobelle's schedule.

Dobelle has called the well-connected Kirimitsu his consigliere, but Kirimitsu downplays his influence. "He's been in aloha wear ever since he started," Kirimitsu said. "I advised him the opposite. I thought the president should be in a coat and tie. That's how much he's listened to me."

Nainoa Thompson, the master navigator of the voyaging canoe Hokule'a who resigned as a UH regent in June, is an unpaid special adviser on Native Hawaiian affairs.

"That's a good person to start with," said Sen. Norman Sakamoto, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, of Thompson and Dobelle's senior staff picks.

Sakamoto spoke with Dobelle on one of his earlier visits to UH, and then met with Peter Goldstein, one of the consultants Dobelle sent in June. "I guess it was unusual to send a consultant, but it was good to not have to dance around the man himself and be able to speak openly," Sakamoto said. "With autonomy still in its infancy, it's good to catch him up on where the university is. We're still working out the issues of statewide concern and how we deal with the issues that are important."

Dobelle himself has begun pointing out problems in the UH system. Some are minor, such as the "uninspiring" food in the student union.

But he has also started to talk autonomy — which he does not think the university really has — and fund-raising efforts, which he says were overstated by the UH Foundation in June at the end of its $116 million campaign. Many of the larger gifts are in estates that may only come to UH years down the road, Dobelle said.

"It's being puffed and being spun in such a way that gives expectations of resources that don't exist," he said. "I'm trying to say, look, stop defending the University of Hawai'i. Don't worry about U.S. News and World Report rankings. For God's sakes, don't make up numbers and tell them to the press."

Hawai'i needs to stop comparing itself to California and look at other Pacific islands and the Pacific Rim, Dobelle said.

Joyce Tsunoda, chancellor of the community colleges, will serve as his special adviser on international affairs. Rose Tseng, chancellor of UH-Hilo, will spearhead the development of a systemwide distance learning strategy. Both chancellors have managed to break through the glass ceiling in terms of gender and race, and are considered entrepreneurs.

Barry Raleigh, dean of the School of Ocean and Earth Science Technology, will head a special task force on research infrastructure.

"I'm positive and say, let's give somebody a chance," said Kent Bridges, associate professor of botany and a member of the Faculty Senate. "We owe Dean Raleigh a memo with our suggestions as to the things that can be done. Before there was no place to write. In a way he's given us lots of doors to knock on."

Whatever his specific plans are, Dobelle expects an 18-month turnaround. That takes the university through this budget cycle. And Dobelle said he doesn't intend to ask the Legislature for extra money when it reconvenes in January.

Jennifer Hiller can be reached at jhiller@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.