Who the heck am I?

Aloha my EDEA 604 classmates,
I suppose that I should at least introduce myself. I'm Lisa ... born and raised here in Hawaii. I graduated from UH Manoa with my BA in English and History. After graduation, I moved to Arizona to find out what life had in store for me. I unintentionally fell into the student affairs field and within a year, I realized that I had found my professional passion. I have had experience in admissions, recruitment, advising, student support services, and student affairs in higher ed institutions.

In 2007, I relocated to Hilo with my son to work with the UH Hilo College of Pharmacy. In 2009, I returned to Oahu and started to work towards my Master's degree in Educational Administration. It's been an interesting journey; I spent a year interning with UH Athletics - a very educational experience since my professional experience has been mainly with graduate professional (i.e. pharmacy, medical) students, I spent my first year in the M.Ed. program immersing myself in the program, exploring what I was professionally interested and passionate about, discovering my interest in research and reflecting on my desire to meld my role as student affairs practitioner with my interest in research. At the end of 2010, I returned to the working world; I accepted a position at HPU as an academic advisor.

I am in my last (hopefully) semester of my Master's program. In addition to this course, I am finishing up my Plan B. I do intend to eventually move on to pursue my Ph.D. in Educational Administration, but I am looking forward to a well-deserved break and some more down time with my family. I am a passionate advocate for student affairs administrators of all fields to pursue research and scholarly work, and I strongly believe that we all need to actively work to bridge the gap between academic and student affairs hemispheres within our campus communities.

I'm looking forward to getting to know and learn from all of you this semester. Cheers!