Campus News
- Commencement gets new look… and sound
- Native garden wins landscaping award
- WWII chaplain’s papers donated
- Young poets encouraged
- Leeward catalog, Mālamalama honored
- UH ranks with Princeton Review, U.S. News
- Honolulu fashion students tour Europe
- Hawaiian, travel, ethnobotany degrees added
- Online accounting master’s offered
- Simulated patient provides real training for nursing students
- Mānoa’s nursing PhD goes online
- Maui breaks ground for new student housing
- Native Hawaiian law center established
- Honorary degrees awarded to Keawe, Kashiwagi
Commencement gets new look… and sound
Mānoa’s May commencement had graduates and guests seeing green and marching to a new tune. Green caps and gowns replaced traditionally black regalia, and a new processional was introduced.
"Above All Nations," composed by Mānoa Professor of Music Donald Womack, takes its name from the motto engraved on Founders’ Gate (Above all nations is humanity) and incorporates subtle musical quotes from "Hawaiʻi Ponoʻī" and the campus alma mater, "In Green Mānoa Valley."
Highlight of the August ceremonies: an appearance by Star Trek actor and community activist George Takei as commencement speaker. Check the website for Mānoa commencement information.
topNative garden wins landscaping award
Mānoa’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources received its second consecutive Betty Crocker Landscape Award from Scenic Hawaiʻi.
The 2005 award in the Community Garden category went to the Native Plant and Ecosystem Educational Garden located in the Sherman Laboratory Courtyard on the Mānoa campus. Last year the Children’s Garden at the college’s Pearl City Urban Garden Center was honored.
Two years in the making, the Sherman garden incorporates 16 native Hawaiian trees, shrubs and ground covers.
"The diversity of plants reflects the diversity of students, faculty, staff and community groups who made this simple idea a living reality," says project leader Travis Idol. Learn more about the garden.
topWWII chaplain’s papers donated
Mānoa’s Hamilton Library has received the official papers, personal correspondence and other papers of 442nd Regimental Combat Team Chaplain Hiro Higuchi (BA ’31 Mānoa).
The papers document World War II-era activities from Harvard’s Army chaplain school to training at Camp Shelby and service on the European front, as well as details of life in Hawaiʻi as shared in letters from his wife Hisako.
"These boys, in regular kanaka fashion, just slop along until the tests and then crash through always with the highest mark the Army ever had," Higuchi wrote of Hawaiʻi’s Japanese American soldiers in November 1943. Visit the archives.
topYoung poets encouraged
The statewide Star Poets project gives voice to students in grades 3–12. A partnership between Windward Community College and Starbucks Coffee Hawaiʻi, the program publishes the work of young writers, provides cash awards to their schools and hosts winners like then-fourth grader Alden Simmer of Maui at a public reading and awards ceremony.
"The students write about moments in their lives that matter to them. They care about their families and friends and the state of the world," notes Windward Professor and Star Poets coordinator Libby Young.
Entry forms for the seventh annual contest, winning 2005 poems and a Star Poets Poetry Resource Guide are available at Starbucks stores or www.windward.hawaii.edu. Young compiled the ideas for teaching poetry to K–12 students and distributed copies to school libraries using a $10,000 Starbucks Foundation grant.
For information, contact Libby Young at 808-235-7396 or see the Windward website.
topLeeward catalog, Mālamalama honored
Leeward Community College’s academic catalog won first place in the 2005 National Council of Marketing and Public Relations Paragon Awards competition. Forty judges who reviewed 1,750 entries applauded the catalog for its organization of content and use of faculty and staff pictures to promote the people at the heart of the college.
Closer to home, Mālamalama magazine received its second consecutive Public Relations Society of America–Hawaiʻi chapter Koa Hammer award.
topUH ranks with Princeton Review, U.S. News
The Princeton Review recommends Mānoa in its 2006 America’s Best Value Colleges as one of 81 institutions with superlative academics, ample financial aid and comparatively low costs. The guide to the best undergraduate deals in 35 states bases selection on institutional data and student surveys at more than 350 campuses.
In graduate programs, U.S. News & World Report lists Mānoa’s College of Education 60th for teacher preparation schools (up 13 spots from last year). Also in the U.S. News top 100 for 2006: Mānoa’s College of Business Administration (22nd in international business) and School of Law (25th in environmental law and 83rd overall).
topHonolulu fashion students tour Europe
When fashion technology students visit Europe, the itinerary includes a lace school, glass and leather factories and the Piero Tucci handbag factory along with the Eiffel Tower and the leaning Tower of Pisa.
Honolulu Community College’s summer fashion tour included museums and monuments in Paris, Venice, Valdagno, Como, Milan, Pisa, Florence, Rome and the Vatican City.
Design firm Valentino allowed a rare peek inside the secretive world of fashion houses, and students were able to "shop and shop and shop" at designer outlets, reports Assistant Professor of Fashion Technology Joy Ann Nagaue.
topHawaiian, travel, ethnobotany degrees added at Mānoa
Beginning this fall, the College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature will offer an MA in Hawaiian, and the School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies, an MA in Hawaiian studies. The latter program incorporates five concentrations’envisioning the nation, native history and literature, mālama ’āina resource management, visual and performing arts and comparative Polynesian and indigenous studies.
The School of Travel Industry Management launches its MS in Singapore in February. The 18-month program will provide on-location and online courses geared for travel industry professionals and government agency employees. Details on the TIM website.
Responding to high interest in an emerging discipline, the College of Natural Sciences has established a BS in ethnobotany focused on cultural interaction with plants. See the department website.
topOnline accounting master’s offered
Students from Colorado to Taiwan are taking advantage of a new Internet-based master’s degree offered by Mānoa’s School of Accountancy.
The program, which started in January, meets needs both at home and abroad. In the U.S., it trains public accountants to address increased federal reporting requirements in the wake of Enron and WorldCom scandals. It also makes the MAcc available to international students who find it harder to study in the United States under tightened Homeland Security procedures.
Also available are prerequisite studies for students who lack a background or undergraduate degree in accounting. For information, visit the website.
topSimulated patient provides real training for nursing students
The patient moans, vomits and cries out for help, his breath labored and his pulse slow. Nursing students cluster around his hospital bed, using newly acquired skills to evaluate and respond. Behind one-way glass, their instructor both observes and controls the situation while video cameras record the session for later review.
Such is the value of SimMan, the Laerdal manikin that simulates life and even death while giving students practice in procedures such as intubation and defibrillation. SimMan and his simulated hospital room are new learning tools in Manoa’s School of Nursing and Dental Hygiene.
The school is seeking funding to add SimBaby to its patient list.
topMānoa’s nursing PhD goes online
Students who entered Mānoa’s PhD nursing program this fall will pursue their doctorates online, but the experience isn’t all digital. They gather in a Waikīkī hotel for orientation, initial instructions and a chance to get acquainted with each other and instructors. Interaction continues online through topical discussion boards and informal, real-time chat rooms as they study lessons and library materials from their home computers.
"Students now in the program seem very enthusiastic about it. They think it will make for a much more accessible program," says Lois Magnussen, interim associate dean of the School of Nursing and Dental Hygiene.
In addition to accommodating work schedules and other constraints, online education allows international students to forgo student visas in favor of shorter, easier-to-obtain tourist visas for those segments requiring in-person attendance.
Magnussen hopes the online program will encourage more nurses to pursue doctoral training, both to conduct nurse-directed research and to boost the number of qualified instructors as demand for nurse training increases.
topMaui breaks ground for new student housing
Maui Community College officials, students and community members broke ground in July for a new $21 million student housing project. Developed by Agora Realty, it will accommodate 400 students in 100 two-bedroom, two-bath units that include kitchens and living rooms.
Environmentally friendly features include solar-powered lighting and water heating and irrigation by a non-potable source. Completion is anticipated in fall 2006.
topNative Hawaiian law center established
Mānoa’s William S. Richardson School of Law received a $600,000 federal grant to open a Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law.
Focusing on Native Hawaiian issues, rights and community relations, it will be an important resource in reconciliation over the loss of Hawaiian sovereignty, notes Sen. Daniel Inouye. It will also provide support for Native Hawaiian law students.
Center Director Melody Kapilialoha MacKenzie has written extensively about Native Hawaiian rights and taught for many years as an adjunct professor.
topHonorary degrees awarded to Keawe, Kashiwagi
Generosity characterizes the most recent recipients of UH’s honorary doctor of humane letters.
Legendary Hawaiian musician Genoa Keawe was honored during May commencement ceremonies at Windward Community College, where she has shared her knowledge and expertise through the Hawaiʻi Music Institute.
Scholar and Japanese senior international attorney Kaoru Kashiwagi was recognized during ceremonies at the William S. Richardson School of Law, where he has provided financial support for a program in Japanese law and job opportunities for students and graduates.
top2005 Regents’ Medals awarded
The University of Hawaiʻi awarded 12 Regents’ Medals for Excellence in Teaching and 3 Regents’ Medals for Excellence in Research for 2005. For a complete listing and information about the winners, see the awards website.
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