Church College of Hawaii

by Brian Kelly

Managing Editor

If you are from Hawaii, Polynesia, Australia, or one of the many Asian countries, you have the exciting possibility of attending university at the Church College of Hawaii (CCH). The programs and courses of study are designed specifically to help you be successful in your home culture.

CCH offers much more than the standard liberal arts education. You can’t duplicate this training program in California or Iowa, because CCH is not training people to serve in the mainland United States.

Even before its beginning, CCH had a special destiny outlined for it. President David O. McKay gave prophecies about the school when he dedicated this beautiful site at Laie on the windward side of Oahu, Hawaii.

He said that the Lord had his hand in setting up the school. He also said, “… from this school … will go men and women whose influence will be felt for good towards the establishment of peace internationally. Four hundred and fifty million people waiting to hear the message over in China, a noble race. I’ve met them.” And he went on to mention Japan, India, the Philippines, Polynesia and Hawaii.

During the same speech President McKay also set forth the overall direction of CCH. He said that it was to produce “trained minds,” “noble characters,” “leaders of men with unwavering faith in God,” who had a knowledge of his existence, and “men and women whose influence will be felt for good toward the establishment of peace internationally.”

Later, President Harold B. Lee said, “The Church College of Hawaii will be a beacon light to Asia.”

Brother Stephen L. Brower, President of CCH for the last two years, defines his stewardship as helping fulfill these earlier prophecies about the school: “We knew that if we were going to help establish peace internationally we had to produce leaders, and it was obvious that this was clearly a priesthood function. We set up our programs so we could prepare young people to be effective leaders in the Church, their communities, and their professions,” he said.

Enrollment

All applicants to CCH go through a rigorous screening process. Since there are individual quotas for Polynesia, Hawaii, mainland USA, and other countries in the Pacific and along the rim of Asia, you must be interviewed by your home bishop who will write a letter stating that you are worthy to be admitted. Certain qualifications you will need include:

• Your willingness to adhere to LDS standards,

• Your leadership potential, and

• Your potential for serving in the Pacific Basin after you finish school.

You also need to meet a certain level of scholastic capacity, including at least minimum English skills.

Counseling

Counseling help at CCH works through the priesthood. Your branch president will also be your school counselor.

President Brower describes his approach to counseling at CCH as the most radical change he has introduced to the school.

“We need the secular skills, but their use has to be consistent with the truth we have in the gospel,” he said. “For instance, my experience as a mission president taught me to better use my professional training—and I had helped train psychiatrists before I went to the mission field. Yet I know that a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist who doesn’t understand our gospel concepts can counsel a person out of the Church, it is often a part of their basic frame of reference that you can’t accept religion, you can’t accept Deity, you can’t accept the notion that a person can be inspired and motivated from inside and by the Spirit to act. The world says that you are controlled from the outside, and often science is dedicated to control. Learning how to control the environment in which you live and the social sciences is learning how to control behavior. The most eloquent example is Skinner’s approach of stimulus response. That concept is basically in opposition to Church principles that require self-discipline and control of your own behavior. If you fail at first you can repent and overcome. Many social scientists basically reject this idea of repentance.

“This is the reason we approach counseling at CCH the way we do. We trust the bishops’ counsel. Our professional school counselors are dedicated to managing and facilitating the counseling process by supporting and strengthening the bishops,” President Brower said.

Student Leadership

Since CCH was to be a total laboratory for training leaders, one of the obvious considerations was to call a studentbody presidency. Then informal leadership experience, such as student leadership, becomes leadership experience that further reinforces skills with correlated priesthood government.

President Brower reported that after a great deal of soul-searching, consultation with the General Authorities, and prayerful consideration, such a system of student government was instituted at CCH.

A new studentbody president was recently called by the stake presidency and sustained by the studentbody in a devotional assembly.

Academic Curriculum

Traditional college departmental structures, though teaching a discipline, do not often fulfill a Polynesian or Asian student’s needs when he returns home to his own culture. The focus of all education at CCH is on the learner’s needs. To better bring this about, education is handled in an interdisciplinary manner. Teachers are still sociologists, mathematicians, or political scientists, but now they work with instructors from other areas to help serve your ultimate needs.

For instance, rather than majoring in English at CCH you may take courses in a communications and language arts area that will fill your needs when you return home. You will take courses in modern languages, speech, English as a second language, journalism, and linguistics, as well as the traditional English courses. There are similar interdisciplinary programs in the physical and social sciences.

If you are from Tonga, Samoa, or other places where there is not a great deal of opportunity for people with bachelor’s and master’s degrees, these levels of schooling may not be your ultimate goal. Yet you can go to CCH with the special assurance that you will get specific training that will be usable to you in your home environment. You can have the choice of any one of several different exit points so that you may get the right kind and amount of education for your own particular needs.

This program of multiple exit points also works to your advantage when you come to CCH. If you are from Korea, you will already have the equivalent of a four-year degree when you come. You will know math and the physical sciences very well. Maybe all that you really need are some language skills and human relations training, which you can pick up at CCH before you go on to graduate school or begin working.

If you happen to come to CCH with a weak scholastic background and minimal skills in English, you should realize that it may take you more than four years to get your degree, because some time will need to be spent preparing you to become a university level, English-speaking student.

The important point about academics at CCH is that you can enter and exit the education process at points that will be most valuable to you in your chosen profession and home environment.

Work for Education

The Polynesian Cultural Center provides a way for you to work your way through college. Many students at CCH perform their native arts and crafts for tourists at the center and get paid for doing it. This permits them to completely finance their own education.

“Many of our students came to school with very little money,” said President Brower. “But through student loans and then providing them with work at the Polynesian Cultural Center or on campus we are able to insure that they can pay their own way through school.”

You may even require a loan in order to begin school, but you can be assured that you will be able to get a part-time job so that you can begin to immediately pay your own way.

Your Stay at CCH

At this point you are probably asking, What will happen to me at CCH?

President Brower and the rest of the staff and faculty have the ideal in mind for you. Generally, they expect your faith and testimony in the gospel to increase. You should also plan on gaining increased leadership capacity in the gospel. You will be prepared to be an effective priesthood leader, a leader in your community and in your chosen profession.

“The leadership and management skills related to being an effective priesthood leader are readily translatable to these other areas, where if they are taught the other way around, they are often not translatable. So, in effect, we say to ourselves, ‘We will trust the scriptures and take our guidance from revealed knowledge,’” President Brower said.

Student Goals

To help you become the kind of person the Lord wants you to become, the faculty and administration have outlined some major student goals with accompanying programs to give you the experience you will need to accomplish these goals.

Experience in Righteous Living

Your whole school experience is designed to help you strengthen your testimony and develop your self-assurance with the gospel principles as they apply to secular learning and your daily living.

You will be given optimum opportunities for living, learning, and sharing the gospel.

You will be a member of a student administered and operated LDS branch with opportunities for administrative, teaching, and supervisory leadership experience.

You will be part of a student family home evening group headed by a student priesthood leader.

You will participate in a full range of spiritual, social, cultural, recreational, and aesthetic activities, sponsored and coordinated through the Student Association.

Education for Reality

The second goal you are expected to reach at CCH is called education for reality. This means that your own needs will be considered. For many CCH students no matter what their training has been they have ended up working in international business or the travel industry.

This kind of information was taken into account, and now you can specifically prepare to be a leader in one of these areas. President Brower explained that other students will provide great leadership in education. “That is what the Church is all about, to change people’s lives through education and spirituality, which, hopefully, are closely tied together,” he said.

Your education program will take into account where you are, your home conditions, and your potential. Then your training can be specifically designed to meet your present and future potential for growth and development. Your education will focus on those high priority professional and educational areas so that you can serve effectively and make a good living in the Pacific Basin or Asia.

Stewardship Accountability

The fourth goal, stewardship accountability, is simply part of the gospel. It applies equally to faculty and students at CCH. It means that the “doing your own thing” philosophy of the world is not acceptable. Everyone is accountable for his own stewardship. As you accomplish this goal you will develop respect for property, other people’s rights, and everything in the gospel context that is under the heading of stewardship.

You will develop practical skills with vocational potential in a wide variety of learning situations. You will manage your own time and finances in order to meet your financial obligations and educational objectives. You will learn to develop a high regard for the dignity and honor of work and an attitude of responsibility toward others.

Admissions

You can be admitted to the college at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters and also the two summer sessions. To be admitted you must file—

An official application form

A confidential report from an LDS bishop or branch president

A copy of high school and college transcripts

The scores of the Scholastic Aptitude Test of the College Entrance Examination Board or the American College Test if entering college for the first time or transferring to CCH with fewer than 24 semester hours of satisfactory transfer credits

The application registration fee of $5.00, which is non-refundable

In many cases, a personal interview

Recommendation from local screening committee, stake president or mission president

International Students

If you are applying from countries outside Hawaii (the United States), you will be required to meet college standards of English proficiency before being accepted. This proficiency is determined from scores of the TOEFL English Test and through other appropriate ways.

Each student must deposit with the treasurer of CCH $200.00 or an amount sufficient to pay return air transportation, whichever is less. With the help of your priesthood leader this requirement can be waived or modified in special circumstances.

Persons planning to attend CCH should submit their applications no later than 90 days prior to registration. Some who apply later will be accepted depending on the circumstances. Returned missionaries from the Pacific Basin missions are generally accepted when their missions are completed, but application should be submitted by the deadline mentioned above.

Academic Calendar 1973–74

The academic calendar at CCH is arranged in three semesters: a fall and winter semester of four months each and a summer semester that is split into two two-month sessions.

Besides permitting you to attend school year round, if you desire, this system makes it possible for you to earn a bachelor’s degree in three years instead of the normal four.

For further information write Admissions Office, Church College of Hawaii, Laie, Oahu, Hawaii, 96762.

Photos by Brian Kelly

The CCH administration building

Ping Pong in the Aloha Center, Hawaiian style

To some of the teachers as well as many of the students at CCH English is a second language

The lovely new student Aloha Center is a place where you can buy a book, mail a letter, study, or just relax and listen to music or watch television

Emily Tin, a business and accounting honors student from Hong Kong, likes CCH because “you get to know the teachers personally. They are like fathers who care about you and give you advice.” Emily’s family was baptized when she was eight. She was a Primary president at at age 14, and she taught the investigators class when she was 16.

Gregory Tata is a music major in voice and piano from Auckland, New Zealand. He attended a convent school in New Zealand and then attended the Royal Academy in London before he came to CCH

Eroni Vola Vola came from Fiji to study biology at CCH. He also performs at the Polynesian Cultural Center

Sharyn Yoshimoto is a third generation Japanese from Honolulu. Presently she is finishing up a term at CCH while she awaits a mission call

Coleman Peters from Honolulu said he learned about CCH from a girl he knew. “She told me how great the spirit of the gospel was, so I just had to come here. She was right”

For the past two years Waihung Poon has been away from his home in Hong Kong while majoring in biology at CCH

Luseane Philip is a recent graduate of CCH from Tonga. She now teaches typing, shorthand, and business mathematics

Konefesi Matagi is a Samoan who has spent most of her life in California. She plans on returning to Samoa and teaching school after she finishes her training in elementary education. “I like the international flavor, the different cultures and the Polynesian Cultural Center. I think I’ll be able to work with children from many different places because of my experience at CCH,” she said

Kady Sum from Hong Kong speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, and English and plans on entering medical school after a few more courses at CCH. “We learn a lot of math and science back home, so it should help me in medical school,” he said

Mataela Utai is a pre-med student from Samoa. He is also a returned missionary and presently serves as first counselor in a branch presidency. He enjoys chemistry and the “security that the spiritual atmosphere” at CCH gives him. For fun he plays rugby and he also performs at the Polynesian Cultural Center

Classrooms at CCH look out on lovely tropical courtyards

President Stephen L. Brower has been at CCH for two and a half years

This Showcase group of student performers presents a delightful, fun, and faith-filled program centered around gospel concepts to high schools and other audiences throughout the Hawaiian Islands

Most students find employment performing at the Polynesian Cultural Center

Bobby and Linda sing a lovely Japanese duet as part of the Showcase program

The grounds at CCH are covered with coconut palms