By Nichole Villegas – Reporter, Pacific Business News

As the University of Hawaii works to advance how it uses and teaches technology and artificial intelligence, UH President Wendy Hensel said the focus is on integrating the 10 UH campuses and changing the culture within the system.

When Hensel joined UH as president at the beginning of this year, 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 Tuesday morning as the keynote speaker at the Chamber of Commerce Hawaii’s Tech Career Pathways Summit.

“Ten campuses means 10 different approaches to technology,” she said. “That means programs that don’t talk to each other, in many respects, pilots that can be very disconnected, and personnel who do similar work that are scattered and not integrated across those 10 campuses.”

As technology and AI continue to be at the forefront of workplace development and education, Hensel explained UH is striving to lead the process of innovation rather than letting technology lead the university.

UH acquired AI technology platforms in June called EAB Navigate260 and EAB Edify which identify students at risk of going off the path of success, notifying advisors to intervene and help the student stay or get back on track. The systems will be fully in place next year and are just one way UH is working with AI and technology. 

However, Hensel said the response to the changing education and workforce model cannot be to just adopt the new tools.

“It has to be building a culture of trust and governance and collaborative environment for all of us to figure out where we want to go and how we get there together,” she said. “So, it really is about a holistic system of responsiveness – that shared architecture of values, governance and community that lets us lead with integrity and scale.”

In an effort to integrate the campuses and lead with technology, 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.

“Her job is to bring that holistic move, to create the infrastructure, manage pilots and turn individual pockets of excellence in the space across the 10 [campuses] into an integrated and systemic approach that lets us reach a scale that is not possible individually,” Hensel said at the summit.

UH is also discussing with the Board of Regents the creation of two new positions at the system level: vice president for innovation and associate vice president for workforce development.

Read the story here.