From Mozambique to Mānoa: Graduate bridges continents through science and culture
Emily Velasquez in lab
University of Hawaiʻi (UH) at Mānoa graduating senior Emily Josefina Velasquez had full-ride scholarship offers closer to home. Instead, Velasquez, who came to Hawaiʻi from Mozambique, chose UH Mānoa for its culture of environmental stewardship and community-centered science. This weekend, Velasquez will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in global environmental science with Honors and her senior thesis was awarded an Honors Prize by the UH Honors Council.
Among the more than 2,500 graduates in UH Mānoa’s spring 2026 commencement ceremonies, Velasquez may have traveled the farthest to reach the islands. Her journey from Mozambique in southeastern Africa to Hawaiʻi spans approximately 12,000 miles, one of the longest possible distances between two points on Earth. She said Hawaiʻi immediately felt familiar in their connections between environment, culture and community.
“I wanted to study somewhere where the love and the passion for the environment and environmental science wasn’t separate from everyday life and kind of just ingrained within the culture,” she said.
Her family is expected to travel to Hawaiʻi to attend commencement. Velasquez said she told them that they didn’t have to make the trip, but they insisted on coming, and she said she is excited to welcome them to Hawaiʻi to watch her graduate.
Raised across continents
A global environmental science major in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, Velasquez was born in California before moving with her family to Nigeria at 3 months old. She later lived in Ecuador and Mozambique as her father worked on international shipping port development projects.
Before arriving in Hawaiʻi, Velasquez said she was searching for a university where science extended beyond the classroom. It was her high school English teacher at the American International School of Mozambique—where she graduated as the valedictorian—who told her what he knew about UH Mānoa.
“You can take a biology class, and they’ll teach you the same things, but it’s all about how it’s implemented,” she said. “I wanted to learn not only how the ecosystem works, but how it’s integrated within the community and the culture.”
‘I had a purpose being here’
She said Hawaiʻi’s emphasis on environmental stewardship reminded her of the collectivist cultures she experienced growing up in Mozambique and Ecuador.
“I felt like the Hawaiian epistemology and the way the culture just so resembles what I grew up in,” she said.
At UH Mānoa, Velasquez immersed herself in research opportunities across multiple disciplines. Her work has included invasive algae research in the Galápagos Islands, invasive species studies at Lyon Arboretum and marine carbon dioxide removal research through the Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education. She has received Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program funding and a scholarship through PICES to present research on invasive species in Portugal.
“I was just extremely busy doing things,” Velasquez said. “Joining the sailing team and joining organizations and work definitely made it not feel like I was so far away from home, but that all the work I was doing here was meaningful and like I had a purpose being here.”
Finding community in Hawaiʻi
Velasquez said the transition to Hawaiʻi was made easier through friendships she built at UH Mānoa, especially with her roommate, an international student from Switzerland and Brazil.
“Knowing that both our families are on the complete opposite side of the world, we were always there for each other,” she said.
Although she is graduating a year early, Velasquez said she plans to take time to reconnect with family and community in Mozambique before pursuing graduate school.
I haven’t gone back home for almost the entire time I’ve been here. I need to return, not just to my family but to my other community, to reconnect and reflect on why I chose this path and where everything I’ve learned can do the most good. Honestly, home is a complicated word for me since it’s not just where my family is but where I can show up, contribute, belong and wherever my curiosity takes me next.
Looking back on her time at UH Mānoa, Velasquez said the university shaped both her scientific perspective and her understanding of responsibility as a researcher.
“It definitely has shaped me to become the kind of scientist that I want to become,” she said. “It showed me that science and cultural knowledge do not exist separately.”
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