Kapi‘olani Selected for APIASF Data Voyage Project

Kapi‘olani Community College was selected to participate in a national cohort of community colleges to participate in the Data Voyage Project, led by the Asian & Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund and the University of California at Los Angeles. Kapi‘olani will receive $45,000 in grant funding to implement its Data Voyage Project with activities planned through Une 30, 2025.

Dr. Michaelyn Nākoa Hall will lead Kapi‘olani’s activities as its principal investigator, who will work closely with Principal Investigator Dr. Robert Teranishi at UCLA. The team members are:

• Michaelyn Nākoa Hall, Ph.D., Project Lead
• Shaun Kiyabu, Institutional Analyst, Office for Institutional Effectiveness
• Kealalokahi Losch, Ed.D., Pacific Island Studies Faculty
• Miki Crutchfield, Ph.D., FYE and Pasefika Counselor
• Sheldon Tawata, Kuilei Outreach Counselor
• LaVache Scanlan, Lunalilo Scholars Coordinator

Dr. Hall will address institutional practices of collecting students’ self-reported ethnicity information at the time of application, which leads to underreporting of the number of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students. This practice may potentially result in students being miscategorized and ultimately unaware of scholarships and services they are eligible for. Dr. Hall’s team will explore the following research questions:

1. How does self-selection at the point of application reflect a student’s true identity
2. How does the current institutional practice of “trumping” for ethnicity collection skew institutional reporting of campus demographics? What impacts has this practice had on NH & PI students accessing financial aid and other resources? How does this reporting impact institutional access to ANNH and AANAPISI funding?

Currently, Kapi‘olani Community College follows the University of Hawai‘i’s definitions of Underrepresented Populations (URP), which extends to ethnicity and race selection during the application process. The current options for Pacific Island populations are Guamanian, Marshallese, Micronesian (not otherwise listed), Mixed Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian or Part- Hawaiian, Other Pacific Islander, Pacific Islander, Samoan, and Tongan. Self-selection by students at the point of application allows for disaggregation of other data.

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