From Lived Experience to Systemic Change: Advancing Equity in a Minority Serving Institution

• In Event: MSI's in the Social Context of Education

Abstract

The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, an Minority Serving Institution (MSI) serving 17.6% Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students, has been both my educational home and professional stage. As a Native Hawaiian who earned my BS, MS, and PhD here, worked as staff, and now serve as an Assistant Professor, I bring an insider’s view of how MSIs can advance equity through culturally grounded practice and policy reform. My scholarship and service focus on challenging dominant, deficit-based measures of success by centering Native Hawaiian values and knowledge systems. Working with fellow Native Hawaiian scholars, we are reshaping institutional policies, reframing success metrics to include humanistic values such as kindness, reciprocity, and community well-being, and aligning evaluation systems with Indigenous ways of being. This work resists systemic inequities by embedding place-based curriculum, community engagement, and applied research into the university’s core functions. By linking culturally sustaining pedagogy to institutional policy, I demonstrate how MSIs can both preserve community identity and lead innovation in equitable education. My journey illustrates the transformative potential of MSIs when equity is not only taught, but structurally embedded.

Author

• K. Kanoho Hosoda, University of Hawaii - Manoa