Implementing place-based pedagogies to transform STEM graduate education at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa
Across the country and beyond, scientists are awakening to the fact that Indigenous knowledge is essential to addressing the greatest social and environmental challenges. Yet traditional Western approaches to scientific research still fail to adequately engage Indigenous communities. Scientists have received little to no training in how to connect with and learn from people in the very communities where they are working, until now.
At the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, a powerful Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) project introduces a new generation of marine biologists to place-based research models grounded in ethical and reciprocal community engagement. Through an intensively reflective curriculum and building connections with local Indigenous stewardship organizations, students are transforming their fundamental understanding of how marine biology can and should be practiced — in recognition of the deep interconnections between marine life and human communities.
We spoke with principal investigators Megan Donahue and Rosie Alegado about the vision and impact of this innovative IGE.
Q: Talk about the origins of this IGE. What inspired you to create this project?
Megan: I think there are really two origin stories: one for the graduate program and one for kūlana noiʻi, a process that Rosie spearheaded that provides guidance for researchers in building and sustaining equitable partnerships with community and has provided a foundation for our IGE.
Back in 2020, the marine biology graduate program was undergoing a curriculum revision aimed at achieving two things: to create an intensive cohort experience that would build stronger connections among our students and to connect to broader efforts to center Native Hawaiian values in our work across the institution.
When it comes to the curricular needs of our students, the majority come from outside Hawaii. At that time, less than 25% had prior experience in Hawaii, let alone grown up here or were Native Hawaiian. Given that reality, we wanted to create something that would prepare students for working and engaging in Hawaii communities while shifting the program's culture toward a culture that honors multiple ways of knowing and is more welcoming to local students. That thinking ultimately led us to create the course and program, building on the guidance provided by kūlana noiʻi.
Rosie: One of the reasons we wanted to develop a process for how academics could have reciprocal, equitable relationships with community partners is because there has been a lot of helicopter science in Hawaii. Western conventional science is rooted in reductionist models of thinking that are generally supportive of and supported by colonialism. Colonial desires and needs funded a lot of the expeditions that brought scientists to places like Hawaii.
That's the lens through which we developed kūlana noiʻi over seven years ago, exploring how to bring ethics into science more explicitly. Hawaiian local communities that do a lot of resource management work desired more agency in deciding how those projects were conducted and having access to the data collected. We developed the kūlana noiʻi as a process to ensure community voices were represented fully in work at the university. It's not a checklist. It's very much a way that folks can learn to forge better collaborations and equitable partnerships.
Connecting kūlana noiʻi and bringing it into graduate education is allowing us to provide really foundational ethical training. Alongside our students, we're examining the role of marine science and how it plays out in these Pacific Islander state nations to protect the agency of communities. Because if the University of Hawaii is the public institution of higher education for the people of Hawaii, then it needs to serve the people of Hawaii.
We see this training as being absolutely foundational and fundamental to who these students are and becoming marine biologists. It's an opportunity to teach students, as a critical and necessary part of their training, how to move from being at your home institution to being and working in a community. To recognize that it's not just fieldwork; it's someone's home and community. We're teaching our students how to do that in a good way.
Q: Over the last few years, you've had several cohorts of students. How have you seen the experience shape them as scientists?
Rosie: I think that no matter what their baseline life-lived experience is coming in, the experience has been transformative for students. Even students from Hawaii who have heard about some of these ideas have never learned it in a formal way or had it placed within a theoretical context.
I think we are still in the process of understanding the impact of the material on changing their ethical practices. But recently one of our community partners sent me a photo of five of our students from our last cohort who came as a team to participate in an on-site workday. And I was thrilled because our students are still going back and engaging in that reciprocal work of community engagement. So, while we're still evaluating their individual research practices, I think they are absolutely gaining that awareness of the importance of reciprocity with community and learning how to become part of it. They are internalizing that engaging with community is part of their responsibility and obligation. And they are doing that within the supportive environment of a strong cohort of their peers.
Megan: The thing about marine biology is that the work is not done in the lab. We do our work outside, we do our work on shorelines, we do our work where people fish, where people are already in connection with their environment, with the land that they live on. Because of that, nearly all our students have had some experience going to their field site and interacting with people. And what we've found is that many of our incoming students recognize they need guidance in connecting with community. Some express relief that we’re finally raising these issues formally and openly.
I think the other thing that's been quite cool is how this experience creates opportunities to promote cultural change across the institution. Through the course, we instill expectations about working with community, and our students are bringing those ethical expectations into their labs and sometimes that can create tension. We're thinking about how we can support students coming into their research with a new ethical framework and interacting with an institution, a lab, or an advisor who hasn't engaged with the community in this way before.
Rosie: Exactly. I think students are adopting these expectations of what an ethical relationship looks like. They feel empowered to raise that in other places, and that's pretty remarkable.
Q: How are community partners reacting to this work?
Rosie: I think our community partners see it as a positive step that the university is bringing its students to the community level to elevate community voices while investing in the projects that are critical to them, often in land and marine restoration. They appreciate our presence, and we want to deepen and expand on that.
The Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) is geographically located within a native Hawaiian social governance unit that spans from ridge to reef. The area where HIMB is located has very, very strong Indigenous community leaders who have been role models across the entire island chain of Hawaii in terms of Indigenous resource management and teaching people what it means to reconnect with the land. In having conversations with those partners, I believe this course has been a vehicle for reconnecting HIMB to the broader community.
Megan: Exactly. Where HIMB is situated geographically has allowed us to be in partnership with some of these community organizations that have been in place for a long time. One thing that can get tricky is preventing our partner organizations from feeling a little overrun with students excited to engage in research. So, we are strategic about expanding opportunities. In the first week of the course, we focus on getting students situated in the place where HIMB sits, but during the second week, we connect them with different organizations and communities around the island. They get a chance to see other place-based work and explore how different community groups could inspire their research questions.
Q: How has the broader institutional community responded to this work? Is there interest and support for expanding it?
Megan: I think we broke some new ground in developing the curriculum the way that we did. The intensive part of the course occurred before the fall semester, and that required navigating a fair amount of academic bureaucracy to allow this non-traditional course structure. We had to garner support from a number of different levels of leadership to allow that to happen, and now I think leaders in our school, including our dean, speak enthusiastically about the course.
Bringing this model into other units on campus can be more challenging if you don't already have faculty interested in developing something like this. We're working to identify the places on campus where that alignment has already occurred at both the faculty and leadership levels. In doing that, it's critical to keep in mind that practicing ethical research will look different for a marine biologist, oceanographer, or life scientist. But above all, it's about determining what your connection to place means and giving students permission to feel and explore that connection. As scientists, we all feel it, but we're not allowed to say so or talk about it in a Western science framework. We need to break down some of those barriers.
Rosie: I think that's right. We have been taught as Western-trained scientists to remain objective and separate. That can be, and has been, harmful. But I think, through both the kūlana noiʻi and this course, the desire to engage in more ethical practices has very much gained footing at the university. We're starting to identify and call out areas of research where science is in conflict with community perspectives and needs.
There is increasing awareness around the need to do this nationally as well. Through the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Biden administration has released comprehensive guidance addressing the need to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into scientific research. Having our work in place puts us ahead of the game in terms of identifying what that means in practice. This course is a formalized educational experience from which our graduate students can begin to do that.
Q: What is your vision for this work going forward?
Rosie: In terms of our impact at the University of Hawaii, I'm going to swing for the fences. I want this to be a hallmark that defines the University — that because we are a native Hawaiian serving institution, our graduate programs are seated in research practices that uplift and support Indigenous research communities.
Beyond that, we want to expand this learning experience and opportunity within the field of marine biology, including at other institutions and field stations, which are basically set up to conduct helicopter science. And we want our students to be able to carry the ethics of community engagement into their research practices for their entire lives — so that no matter where institutions they land for their postdoctoral work and their faculty work, they're able to disseminate these teachings more broadly.
Megan: Absolutely. Right now, the deliberate inclusion of ethical frameworks in the teaching of our graduate students is pretty rare. But it's part of the practice of science to understand that the way you do things reflects values, whether you have thought them through or not. I think that one of the real hallmarks of the curriculum Rosie has developed for the course is that it demands students to explore ways of knowing beyond the standard Western approach, including Indigenous knowledge systems and other perspectives. Then, students are asked to formulate their ethical framework for the valuesthey bring to their science. To ask themselves, what do I want to make sure I keep in mind while I'm doing my work? I think that in and of itself is revolutionary.