Mehana Blaich Vaughan graduated from Stanford University with a PhD from E-IPER in 2012. Mehana grew up in the rural Haleleʻa district on the island of Kauaʻi, Hawaiʻi. Prior to pursuing a doctoral degree, she taught middle and high school, developing place-based education programs for Hawaiian immersion and charter schools. She has also been involved in a number of efforts related to community stewardship of natural resources in Waiʻanae on Oʻahu, in Miloliʻi on the island of Hawaiʻi, and in Waipā on Kauaʻi. Mehana holds a secondary school teaching certification and Bachelors of Sociology from Harvard University, and a Masters Degree in Education from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
Her research interests include community based resource governance efforts; contemporary models of land use based on indigenous ecological knowledge; place-based education programs; common property rights; and approaches to enhance collaboration and dialogue in decision making surrounding natural resources. For her dissertation, Mehana focused on collaborative management of a coastal fishery in Hāʻena, Kauaʻi by government agencies and community members. She investigated the creation of state law based on customary local management practices, and suggested means of improving initial phases of collaborative resource management partnerships. She also worked with Native Hawaiian fishermen to understand community level benefits created though sharing of subsistence harvests. Funding from Theresa Heinz and Switzer Foundations, along with U.C. Berkeleyʻs Community Forestry and Environmental Research Partnership, supported her doctoral research.
Mehana will be joining the faculty of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UH) in Fall 2013 as an Assistant Professor of Sustainable Watershed and Coastal Management in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, with a joint appointment to the UH Sea Grant College Program. She will work with a consortium of scholars from the UH law school and Hawaiʻinuiakea School of Hawaiian knowledge to focus on cross-disciplinary solutions to natural and cultural resource management, sustainability, and food security issues. She is currently a NSF SEES (Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability) post-doctoral fellow.
Mehana loves lei making, dance, writing poetry and creative nonfiction, kalo, long mountain hikes, and beach days with her three children. She has lived and taught in Masvingo, Zimbabwe and Indangalasia, Kenya, and hopes to return to both communities one day. She is grateful to her ‘ohana (family) and the many friends, teachers, students, kūpuna (elders) and Hawaiʻi communities that have supported, guided and informed her work.
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I'm continually amazed by the flexibility, support, and sense of community I find here at IPER. The program really is growing and adapting right along with us. We are encouraged to venture into widely varied parts of this incredible university to weave ideas and learning together. The diversity of interests and experience among my classmates and fellow students is especially enriching.