Ka Pe‘ahi Lono: Monthly Message for December 2025

Date/Time sent: 12/01/2025 10:00 am

UH West Oʻahu Value Proposition

We prepare 21st Century leaders, career creators through integrated, transdisciplinary programs where learners and teachers, together, discover and innovate and engage diverse communities to create a vibrant and socially just world.

Section divider made up of two canoe paddles.

Hoʻokāhi ka ilau like ana (Wield the paddles together)

Chancellor’s Message: A Mahalo Reflection

E ʻeleu mai ʻoukou!
Step lively, let’s move together!

ʻAʻohe pau ka ʻike i ka hālau hoʻokahi.
Not all knowledge is found in one school.

Aloha mai e UH West Oʻahu ʻOhana!

As I write this final message to you as Chancellor, my heart overflows with aloha and deep gratitude. These nine years have been a journey of shared growth, courageous innovation, and unwavering pilina — a testament to the collective strength of our campus and our beloved community.

Together, we lived into our pahuhopu, not as a distant aspiration, but as a daily practice rooted in kuleana, mālama, and ʻike. We weathered powerful storms — literal and metaphorical — and still we held fast to our values. We built new programs and partnerships, lifted up Indigenous knowledge systems, deepened pathways for our nā haumana, and transformed classrooms into spaces of healing and imagination.

Through it all, you inspired me. The quiet brilliance of a janitor who noticed a student in need and offered a kind word. The security guard who remembered everyone’s name. The faculty member who turned their course into a lifeline. The advisor who saw a student not as a number, but as a future ancestor. The student who rose, and kept rising, for their family, their lāhui, their future.

You showed me what lōkahi looks like when it is not just spoken but lived.

As I prepare for what comes next, I carry each of you with me — your hopes, your laughter, your commitment to place. My kuleana was never to “lead” alone, but to walk with you, to listen deeply, and to lift when I could.

Let us continue to keep our eyes on our North Star: a thriving university that serves this place with integrity, imagination, and aloha.

May the light of UH West Oʻahu shine ever brighter!

E mālama pono! Kūlia i ka nuʻu – always and together!
Maenette Kapeʻahiokalani Padeken Ah Nee-Benham
Chancellor, UH West Oʻahu (2017-2025)

Important Information

Mid-Year Commencement Information

Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, 9 a.m.
University of Hawaiʻi–West Oʻahu Courtyard
Morning Volunteers Check-in: 6:30 a.m.
Candidates Check-in: 7:30 a.m.
See Commencement page, Volunteer to assist, and view FAQs.

Campus Operations Presentation

See the FY 2026 Presentation, covering the Budget, By-the-Numbers, Enrollment, Land Planning.
Access the PPT, transcript, and video.

Kulana o Kapolei Fall Newsletter

Enjoy this newsletter highlighting events, ideas, recaps, and more!