HB20: Lance Askildson, Chaminade University of Honolulu

By asking what the community needs first, Lance Askildson has launched five first-to-market doctoral programs and chairs the Pacific's first UN training center.

As provost and senior vice president at Chaminade University of Honolulu, Lance Askildson is the university’s chief academic officer and principal deputy to the president. A professor of Linguistics, he oversees the university’s academic colleges and operations while remaining active as a scholar.

“I like to tell people that I’m the dean of deans,” Askildson says. “My job is to make sure the entire academic enterprise is doing what it’s supposed to be doing—serving students, the community and the educational mission of the university.”

Askildson leads Chaminade’s academic deans and faculty and oversees more than 50 degree programs, ranging from associate and bachelor’s degrees to master’s programs and professional doctorates. His portfolio includes responsibility for more than 200 full-time faculty and staff, as well as academic planning, accreditation and institutional strategy.

A major focus of his tenure has been aligning academic offerings with workforce needs across Hawaiʻi. Since joining Chaminade in 2019, Askildson has helped establish a new doctoral culture, launching five professional doctoral programs in areas including clinical psychology, nursing practice, educational psychology, public health and organizational leadership—several of them first-to-market in the state.

“We start by asking, ‘What does the community need?'” he says. “How can we credential, train and prepare people to step into roles that matter right now?”

Askildson also oversees Chaminade’s role as host of the first United Nations Institute for Training and Research regional training center for the Pacific Islands. As chair of the CIFAL Center Honolulu, headquartered at Chaminade, he leads education and training programs for municipal leaders, nonprofit organizations and practitioners working in sustainability and resilience.

“We were selected because of the leadership Chaminade had already shown in sustainability,” he says. “The center allows us to connect local work to national and international priorities.”

Beyond campus, Askildson serves on the executive board of the Hawaiʻi Defense Alliance and on the steering committee of the Hawaiʻi IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence. He is also a United Nations fellow.

His academic specialization includes natural language processing and, more recently, the implications of generative artificial intelligence for higher education and national security.

As a leader, Askildson emphasizes empathy and collaboration. “You can hire for expertise,” he says, “but you should be hiring for character and kindness.”

Originally from Minnesota, he lives in Hawaiʻi with his wife and son, speaks French at home and spends his free time surfing and diving. “I can’t get through a day without a good laugh,” he says, “and I try not to take myself too seriously.”