Pacific Business News: University of Hawaii to launch fully online degree programs as part of AI integration push
January 9, 2026
By Nichole Villegas
Last year, the University of Hawaii System gained ground in its effort to make higher education a leader in and partner with artificial intelligence — from acquiring AI technology platforms to keep students on a path of success to incentivizing professors to integrate AI in their curriculums and teach AI literacy in their classrooms.
In 2026, UH is focusing even more on AI through the introduction of an online AI literacy course and on using technology to increase online programs and courses to make higher education in Hawaii more accessible to Isle residents.
From UH President Wendy Hensel’s perspective, higher education is vital to developing the next generation of workers to be critical thinkers and innovators who will not just follow but lead the rapid development of AI in the workforce and in the world — and the plan to do so is now in place.
By fall semester 2026 and spring semester 2027, which start in August and January, respectively, the University of Hawaii expects to complete phase one of its new plan to fill the online course gaps within its current higher education programs. Through this ongoing initiative, UH will offer many students the opportunity to continue and complete their UH education solely online.
A small number of programs with small gaps will be selected in the coming months for phase one of developing completely online curriculums. For example, some programs are almost fully offered online, save for a few in-person classes, which, under this new plan, will be offered online to fill that program’s gap within the next year and a half — creating a fully online program from start to finish.
“We want to target those first because some others may require curriculum revision, it may require some different level of resource or commitment of time. So, trying to deal with the lowest hanging fruit first and then move to the more and more challenging developments as we go,” Kim Siegenthaler, senior advisor to UH President Wendy Hensel, told Pacific Business News in an interview. “This is not something that’s going to be over within a year. It’s a multiyear project to continue assessing market need, market demand, adjusting the programs, looking at what the opportunities are, and also, as we’ve seen more and more, the way learners consume higher education is changing.”
The difference is that many students today are “part-time learners,” Siegenthaler said. “They’re in and out. They need a short-form credential that gets them into the workspace, but then they may need to come back in a few years in order to get that promotion or to make a lateral move.” The plan to provide high-demand programs completely online is part of UH’s larger strategy to integrate the 10 campuses across the Islands and offer students the opportunity to continue their progress toward a degree as they ebb and flow through the workplace and learning in a university. As programs begin to offer a fully online option, the in-person or hybrid options for those programs will remain available, Siegenthaler said.
General education classes are already offered completely online at UH, which is helpful for students who may be working full time, have families to take care of or live far away from a physical UH campus. However, with UH’s current programs, which are often hybrid online and in-person, once students finish their general education, they cannot continue on their path without attending a UH campus in person – often causing these students to transfer to an online school on the Mainland or drop out of college.
The integration of the campuses combined with the opportunity to finish degrees completely online is meant to keep students in Hawaii, learning from a Hawaii university.
“What it does is create flexibility to let people pursue the amount of education that they want in the place and time that they want, and that’s really important,” Hensel told PBN in an interview. “Hawaii has lost – continues to lose – students to online providers that are out of state, even though they’re located in Hawaii, and to me, that signals that we need to be more responsive to the needs of our constituents here because we can offer them education that’s a higher value, more grounded in culture and more economically viable at in-state tuition.”
The first step in closing the gaps in UH’s system was to identify them, which was done last year through an in-depth analysis that layered UH’s curriculum with Hawaii’s workforce demands to find holes in the curriculum’s content and in the way students progress from no college credit, to a certificate, to an associate degree and finally to a bachelor’s degree.
“What we found is that there are holes in the curriculum,” Hensel said. “Sometimes we’ll have two years of an online degree, but not the corollary third and fourth years to allow you to complete the degree.” Now that the areas within the UH curriculum that need to be developed have been identified, Hensel said, “We’re in consultation with faculty in different places across the Islands to see who would like to develop that program, and then we will provide money for them to develop it, with the goal, again, of getting it to our students as quickly as possible to meet the workforce demands of Hawaii.”
Since Hensel became president of UH in January 2025, she has been focused on integrating the 10 campuses, because when she started she realized there were so many systems that did not talk to each other – leading to a university-wide system that was “very rich in data and very poor in information and lessons that we can take out of that data,” Hensel said during her presentation as the keynote speaker at the Chamber of Commerce Hawaii’s Tech Career Pathways Summit in late October. Now, the curriculum data is being used to strengthen the pathway to higher education for UH’s students, and in turn, connecting the 10 campuses.
Filling the online program gaps allows UH to offer a larger variety of courses to more people across the Islands.
“If you’re sitting in Hawaii, the odds of you being able to take a philosophy class are pretty small because the demand isn’t there to justify hosting that course,” Hensel said. “But if we connect people across the Islands, there is sufficient demand to bring those courses to you, and so it really allows a much more robust portfolio of coursework on every campus that we have, which is really exciting.”
To lead this technological change within the UH education system and integrate the campuses, UH created an Office of Academic Technology and Innovation with new systemic leadership, led by the university’s first chief academic technology innovation officer, Ina Wanca, who started at the end of August.
In addition to working on integrating the campuses through online courses, Wanca is focused on providing AI literacy to all students, faculty and staff through the development of an online AI course.
“This is our kind of front door to AI for the entire university. It’s designed so faculty, students and staff members can all learn the AI essentials, the responsible use of AI and really gain understanding of what the local partners are doing in terms of healthcare, energy, tourism, so we are designing this course with the help of industry partners,” Wanca said. Working with the local employers helps UH to understand their challenges and create a course to prepare students accordingly.
Although teachers are not mandated at UH to teach about AI or use AI in their classes, they are encouraged and incentivized because if students do not learn how to work with AI, and if curriculums do not adjust to prepare students for above entry-level jobs that AI can already do, “then we prepare students for unemployment rather than for employment,” Siegenthaler said.
The course is currently being developed and Wanca said UH hopes to pilot the course in English and in Hawaiian in the spring semester, which begins in January 2027. It will be offered first to UH students, faculty and staff, and then expand to be available for all of Hawaii and then beyond.
Although the workplace is changing and AI is becoming increasingly integrated, Hensel said higher education is critical to leading the development of AI in the workplace.
“It is not just a tool, it’s a partner, which almost feels bizarre to say, but once you really start to use it in a way that’s beyond just asking a question, it’s extraordinary the power that sits in the palm of your hand.
“But it is not sufficient without the critical thinking and problem solving that comes from education.”
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