Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Third State Legislature

Regular Session of 2005

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Higher Education, to which was referred S.B. No. 1164 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to appropriate funds for faculty positions for Ilokano, Filipino, and Philippine studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the University of Hawaii (UH), UH Department of Hawaiian and Indio-Pacific Languages and Literature, GUMIL Oahu, and seventy-nine individuals.

Your Committee finds that funding and positions are urgently needed to stabilize the Philippine studies program. Your Committee further finds that there is a compelling need to increase the number of classes for the growing number of Filipino and non-Filipino students interested in Philippine studies and Philippine languages.

The UH has the largest number of students on any United States campus taking a Philippine language and is the only institution that offers a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philippine language and literature. Filipino students and other faculty expressed concern in recent semesters because some courses in Filipino and Ilokano were not regularly offered by lecturers or instructors. The UH Philippine Studies Center, part of the School for Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies is well known locally, nationally, and internationally for scholarship and research of faculty who teach in various Manoa academic departments, such as ethnic studies, American studies, education, history, sociology, and political science.

Your Committee has amended this bill by inserting $250,000 to fund three faculty positions for Ilokano, Filipino, and Philippine studies and one vacant Filipino language position at UH and curriculum development and instruction for other campuses.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Higher Education that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1164, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1164, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.