In 1973, Michael Levin arrived on Eauripik, an isolated outer atoll in Yap State within the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). There was no running water. There was no electricity. The population of the 26-acre islet was just 150 people, including 12 families who took him in as their own.

• Photo gallery: Ocean Futures: Hawai'i Leading the Way

“The TEAM program changed the way I see the island,” says Justin Barrios. “It taught me how to care for the place that raised me — and I want students coming up behind me to have the same opportunity.”

Hokulani Garcia’s long journey to earning her bachelor’s degree from the University of Hawaiʻi West Oʻahu began when she became a police dispatcher at 24, but it was her experience, years later, during the Covid-19 pandemic that gave her the drive to finish her bachelor’s degree and set her sights on graduate school.

The newly renovated and renamed Tom W.S. Hee Undergraduate Computer Room at UH Mānoa’s Shidler College of Business is built for collaboration. New furniture, upgraded computer systems, and flexible working spaces reflect updated thinking about education for tomorrow’s entrepreneurs, financiers, and managers.

Emma DeBenedictis, a senior from Saint Charles, Illinois, is majoring in Environmental Earth Science at UH Mānoa and the recipient of the Ocean Conservation Award from the Global High Seas Marine Preserve.