Dr. Nyle Sky Kauweloa is an alumnus of both the Communication MA (2014) and the Communication & Information Sciences PhD (2022) programs. Since 2022, he has served in official capacity as the University of Hawai‘i System’s first Director of Esports and as a faculty member in the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at UH Mānoa.
Esports refers to competitive, organized multiplayer video gaming and is aligned with a wide variety of jobs in a multi-billion dollar industry. A growing community of mentors, educators, and alumni across the UH System engage students to pursue an array of career paths into the video game industry. In addition to professional video game players, students find work in marketing, education, game design, and other content creation.
Sky has led UH Esports since its inception, harnessing campus-wide student interest and guiding UH Esports to become recognized as one of the top 10 programs in the country by 2021. In 2022, UH Esports was voted for by hundreds of peers across the country and honored as the “best collegiate esports program” by Esports Awards, the premiere awards-granting body in the industry, at an event with a peak viewership of 300,000.
Sky is always quick to note that the students at UH Esports are collectively responsible for the program’s many successes, and he often credits UH Esports Program Assistant Kevin Nguyen (COM BA, 2019). Among these is a groundbreaking partnership with Activision-Blizzard to hold the Overwatch League’s Grand Finals at UH Mānoa. This marked the first time in history that college students were able to run this major event, providing invaluable professional experience. Last summer, a successful internship partnership was launched with leading South Korean esports company Gen.G. Undergraduate students received course credit to travel to South Korea and participate in the Gen.G Global Academy. Sky has also led the UH Esports Academic Task Force in the College of Social Sciences since 2019. The Task Force is currently at work to create concentrations of classes in esports across campus.
Sky is uniquely qualified to lead this development. Inspired by his own academic research into the nascent collegiate esports scene, in 2018 Sky created and taught one of the first college courses on esports in the United States. The popular COM 369 —Esports and Society— is now offered each fall semester. As a graduate teaching assistant for the Communication Program, Sky won both the Dan J. Wedemeyer Excellence in Teaching Award and the Frances Davis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching for a Graduate Assistant. Sky’s dissertation advisor, Professor Jenifer Sunrise Winter (COM), notes that Sky’s published research on collegiate esports has “garnered remarkable attention, with his early paper ‘Taking College Esports Seriously’ selected as one of six readings for the 2021 AP Capstone examination taken by thousands of high school students around the world. He’s a stellar teacher and researcher who has international legitimacy and appeal. I’m glad he chose to direct his talents towards developing an esports program here at UH.”