The Harold L. Lyon Arboretum is getting a new home on the org chart at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and students are expected to be the big winners. University officials announced on April 24, 2026, that the arboretum will move under the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience (CTAHR), a change they say will expand hands-on “living lab” opportunities for students in tropical agriculture, conservation and natural-resource programs. Leaders stressed that public programs, daily operations and existing staff positions will remain in place.
University says it is a win for student access
According to UH News, the shift will formally fold the arboretum’s greenhouses, seed conservation lab and micropropagation facilities into CTAHR’s academic and extension work. That setup is expected to give undergraduate and graduate students clearer pathways into field-based research and coursework, building on collaborations that faculty and staff on both sides have already been running for years.
What changes, and what stays put
As outlined in the UH Mānoa reorganization proposal, the move is mostly about who reports to whom. The arboretum director will report to the CTAHR dean instead of the provost, and all arboretum employees will shift administratively into CTAHR while staying in their current jobs and internal structures. The proposal describes the reorganization as cost-neutral and states that implementation will move forward once it receives presidential approval.
Lyon’s size and scientific reach
Lyon Arboretum covers about 193 acres in upper Mānoa Valley and maintains more than 6,000 taxa across its trails, greenhouses and conservation collections, according to the arboretum’s site. The grounds also house the Hawaiian Rare Plant Program, whose seed conservation and micropropagation labs support local conservation and reintroduction efforts.
What students and faculty can expect on the ground
CTAHR leaders say that bringing Lyon under the college’s umbrella will more tightly connect those conservation facilities with coursework, internships and extension projects across the islands, widening the menu of hands-on training for students, according to CTAHR. Faculty and staff involved in the transition say the new structure should make it simpler to run joint courses and scale student research from lab benches into the surrounding forest plots.
At the same time, arboretum and college officials are keen to reassure regulars that weekday public hours, guided tours, plant sales and volunteer programs will continue under the new setup, and that visitors should see little change in day-to-day programming, per the Lyon Arboretum website. If the reorganization is signed off by the university president, it will formalize what officials describe as a relationship that has linked UH Mānoa’s research collections with its agricultural and natural-resource training programs for roughly a century.
