New chancellor
dreams big plans
for UH-Hilo

By Rod Thompson
Star-Bulletin

HILO -- When newly appointed University of Hawaii at Hilo Chancellor Rose Tseng was 19 years old in Ethiopia, she noticed a poor, young girl walking by her house every day carefully carrying an egg in each hand.

Finally she found someone to explain it to her. By selling the eggs to foreigners, the girl was able to earn enough money to feed her family every day.

The experience caused Tseng to change her studies from chemistry and engineering to nutrition.

"I went from a technical person to a people person," she says.

Tseng brings that concern for people and confidence in them as she begins her five-year contract as UH-Hilo's new chancellor.

She starts with the quality of students at the school. "We're just as good as others," she said during an interview yesterday.

"I think the public schools here are just as good as on the mainland."

To illustrate that, she tells how she checked out UH-Hilo's Web site before coming here. It was high-quality, better than many, she said.

She learned later that it was produced by a UH-Hilo student.

Tseng is just as impressed by the UH-Hilo computer science program that produced the student.

And coming here from California's "Silicon Valley" -- she was chancellor of a system of two community colleges, Mission College in Santa Clara and West Valley College in Saratoga -- she foresees the day when computer-oriented companies could be attracted to Hilo.

What is missing now is a "critical mass" -- not enough students, not enough programs, not enough financial aid.

The university has already made the decision to increase enrollment in Hilo from the present 2,600 to 5,000 by 2007.

That will take money. "Enrollment drives -- money drives enrollment," she said.

Waiting for the government to provide it could take 25 years, she said.

As she did in California, where she took a system operating in the red, trimmed its budget by $5.7 million and increased enrollment by 15 percent, Tseng will depend on partnerships with private enterprise.

One such partnership is already in preparation: the plans for a "Vulcan Village" on 37 acres at UH-Hilo, costing perhaps $50 million, and to be funded in large measure by Taiwanese investors.

The village would include a Chinese cultural center, but other details remain to be explored, Tseng said.

One advantage she has is an ability to read proposals in Chinese, having been born in mainland China and raised from the age of 5 in Taiwan.

That multicultural perspective is also something UH-Hilo can offer students that mainland universities cannot, she said. As business becomes increasingly global, it's a perspective in very high demand, she said.