Growth marks Wright's 25 years at helm of HPU

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

He was 31 years old and having a kind of young-life crisis, unable to decide whether to remain in Hawai'i or what sort of turn he wanted his career to take.

Hawaii Pacific University president Chatt Wright began as dean of business at HPU with just 57 students 25 years ago. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

He joined a humble, unaccredited college that occupied 5,000 square feet of downtown office space. It had 57 students. As its founding business dean, Wright had no budget and no full-time faculty members; he had to beat down the doors of Honolulu business executives salesman-style to convince them to teach courses.

"At that age you don't think about it too much," Wright said. "I took it as a challenge."

Today, Hawai'i Pacific University is the state's second-largest university behind the University of Hawai'i-Manoa, with more than 9,000 students from 102 countries and 1,200 full- and part-time staff members. Its enrollment chart over the past three decades looks like a mountain, with an ever-climbing student body. The annual budget has grown from $220,000 in 1972 to $73 million today.

After 25 years as the president of the institution — a stint is typically about five years in such positions — Wright looks at the university he has shaped and sees the progress of HPU as inevitable, almost preordained.

"I think that this university has a natural place, a natural role. I don't think it's amazing. I think this state was waiting for us," he said.

A dinner today will commemorate Wright's anniversary and thank donors of the school's President's Fund. To date, HPU has built up an endowment worth more than $65 million that Wright hopes will grow to more than $100 million in the next five years.

With his trademark smile and a self-deprecating sense of humor, though, Wright, 60, makes little of his role in overseeing HPU's aggressive marketing and in developing its niche in international education. "This year is the silver anniversary of me," he says with a laugh. "I'm just old. That's all."

But Wright's tenure at HPU has been one of remarkable growth and constant salesmanship.

An avid tennis player and fly fisherman, Wright was born in the San Francisco Bay area and raised in Bakersfield, Calif. His father, a rancher and CEO of an agribusiness firm, gave Wright his first exposure to globalism when Japanese businessmen interested in buying cotton for textiles visited his family's home.

The memory stuck. When Wright became the school's president in 1976 and the HPU board of regents wanted to attract foreign students to Hawai'i, Wright became the state's biggest cheerleader for international education. He believed that developing a global economy was the future of the country.

At the time, no one wanted to hear about education as a cultural and financial export for the state.

"We had to sell the desirability of international students," Wright said. "I was constantly asked, 'Will they go home or are they trying to sneak into the country?'"

Wright turned to television advertising — then an unconventional and surprising way to publicize a college — to build support for international education. He also used the ads as a way to skip over the local high school guidance counselors, who at the time rarely recommended HPU to their students. Wright wanted to go straight to the parents and teenagers with his message.

That first marketing effort worked and continues today. HPU's campaign reaches around the world, costs several million dollars a year and has resulted in an influx of foreign and Mainland students.

The enrollment is one-third each of international, Mainland and local students. HPU has full-time recruiters in several European countries and runs ads on every United Airlines flight in the world that has video.

"At a very critical time he realized the importance of international education," said Sue Wesselkamper, president of Chaminade University of Honolulu. "He's been the trendsetter. His international recruitment of students is remarkable."

But Wright said his biggest battle has been in convincing people that the state needs to have a strong system of private education.

"People would say, why do you need a new university? We already have a university," Wright said. "My biggest challenge has been getting people to believe in our mission and ethos: that we need a private sector university."

In most other states, private universities were founded before the large state college systems. Hawai'i, however, had always had a strong private school system for K-12, but virtually nothing in the way of private education beyond high school.

Chaminade University of Honolulu and Brigham Young University-Hawai'i were founded in the 1950s, while HPU was chartered in the 1960s. UH was founded in 1907.

"Hawai'i, being a very small and isolated state, was unique in a lot of ways," Wright said. "We had one political party. The public sector dominated. We had the Big Five companies. Selling the idea of plurality was new to people in Hawai'i. A lot of people were clinging to what was already here."

The concept has caught on slowly. But Wright, who travels the globe promoting his school and energetically shuttles between HPU's downtown and Windward campuses each day, insists that longstanding attitudes haven't slowed him down.

"We overcame that," he said. "We don't believe in failure. But we have to make these arguments and tell our story all the time."

Larry Rodriguez, managing partner of Ernst & Young, credits Wright's success to his careful strategy, marketing and branding efforts. "He runs the organization like it's a business. He looks at the profitability of where they're going," Rodriguez said. "He's a high-energy guy."

Indeed, Wright was named the Sales and Marketing Executives' Marketer of the Year in 1999.

Without any tenured professors, HPU administrators also have great control over the cost-effectiveness of their payroll and course schedules. They can offer high-demand courses and cut out the classes that don't attract as many students.

Bob Clarke, HEI chairman, president and CEO, has been an HPU trustee since 1988. He attributes Wright's success to his marketing skills and to his treatment of students as customers.

"He's very proactive in promoting the university," Clarke said. "It's very customer focused. They try very hard to deliver good services in the classroom. If they find out there's a need for more economics classes he will hire more professors and offer them. He adjusts the curriculum to what is needed. They've been very responsive and flexible."

Wright is also a convincing salesman who energizes the staff and students, Clarke said. "He's always up. He's got a sense of personal enthusiasm that's infectious. I've never really seen him down in the dumps."

For his part, Wright says landing in a career in education has been serendipitous.

"We created this vision and then I bought the vision," he said. "I ended up believing it."

Reach Jennifer Hiller at jhiller@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.