Campus News
UH Hilo opens North Hawaiʻi center
The University of Hawaiʻ at Hilo opened the North Hawaiʻi Education and Research Center in the long vacant Honokaʻa Hospital building in May 2006.
The center includes classrooms, computer labs, a multi-purpose room and offices and offers credit, continuing education and personal interest courses for advance placement high school students, area employees, displaced workers, senior and others. It also serves as a resource for research, field study and internship opportunities in underserved Big Island communities.
State lawmakers have approved $3.75 million for development of additional classrooms, display hall and communication/data room with video conferencing capabilities and wireless connectivity.
topStudent continues Honolulu scholarship streak
Few students get called to the front of the class during a surprise visit by top campus officials. Honolulu Community College student Tyra Dela Cruz’s shock soon turned to pleasure when Chancellor Ramsey Pedersen announced that she would receive the prestigious and highly competitive Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship.
Just 38 community college students nationwide received 2006 scholarships, which provide up to $30,000 per year for educational (including living) expenses for the two to three years to pursue a baccalaureate degree. Dela Cruz is continuing her studies as a microbiology major at Mānoa.
"I can’t believe I got this scholarship. Thank you so much to the people who supported me," she said, a little overwhelmed after Honolulu Community College faculty and staff and her family, including 2-year-old daughter Kylie, filed in for the surprise presentation.
For a 37-year-old single mother of two who mourned the loss of a child to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and escaped an abusive relationship, the scholarship means an easier road toward a brighter future.
"I made the decision to return to school instead of going to work so I could provide my children with a better future. It’s difficult but rewarding to be a single mother going to college." Despite the difficulties, she’s maintained a 3.5 grade point average while working as a student aide in the Student Life and Development Office and serving as associate editor for the college newspaper.
Dela Cruz is the fourth UH community college student in five years to receive the scholarship. Previous recipients include Honolulu Community College students Brian Leamy in 2002 and Marcia Donovan-Demers in 2004 and Maui Community College student Krista Jo Dusek in 2005.
Read more on the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.
topBig music from a small program
You can master the synthesizer, learn different musical genres, gain confidence as a performer and get three college credits in Kapiʻolani’s Synthesizer Ensemble.
Since a synthesizer can sound like various instruments, an ensemble of just six or seven musicians can mimic anything from a hip band to a classical orchestra.
Assistant Professor of Music Anne Lum pioneered the synthesizer program in the late ’80s at Windward and brought it with her to Kapiʻolani in 1993. The ensemble performs several times a semester at Kahala and Ala Moana shopping centers, Kapiʻolani’s fall benefit brunch and spring graduation and other venues.
For information, contact Anne Lum at 808-734-9182.
topFrear today, gone ʻtil 2008 in Mānoa dorm project
With news media watching from nearby Gateway Hall, construction equipment brought down the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s dated Frear Hall in July 2006.
In its place, American Campus Communities will build a new student housing complex expected to open in fall 2008. The dorm is Mānoa’s first new housing since Hale Wainani was completed in 1978. More at the housing website.
topArson destroys lab school building
Fire destroyed a 67-year-old classroom and office building at the College of Education’s University of Hawaiʻi Laboratory School June 2006. Investigators blame arson.
The blaze consumed music, theatre and athletic facilities and about 30 faculty offices. Damage estimates top $6.5 million, and concerns about hazardous materials such as lead-based paint slowed removal of debris. Still, summer classes continued and officials renovated other spaces and rescheduled some classes to accommodate students and faculty until temporary classrooms arrive in November.
Even before the smoke had cleared, students and alumni rallied in support of the school. UH Foundation received nearly $90,000 in donations to the Fire Recovery Fund going into an August 2006 fundraising concert featuring major names in the local music scene.
Contribute care of the UH Foundation or mail to UH Foundation, P.O. Box 11270, Honolulu, HI 96828.
topCoral farm has record harvest
Waikīkī ’s largest-ever coral harvest is benefiting aquariums across the nation. In three months, biologist Charles Delbeek sent 2,500 pieces of south Pacific branching Acropora and other stony and soft species from the aquarium coral farm to colleagues at institutions from Georgia to Guam.
"To buy that coral would have cost anywhere from $50 to $100 per piece, so they were very happy," Delbeek says.
In keeping with the aquarium’s conservation mission, the farm harvest reduces demand for corals taken from the wild.
More at the Waikīkī Aquarium website.
topLooking for the Arizona Memorial?
Mānoa graduate student Dietra Myers Tremblay turned frequent queries from lost tourists into an urban and regional planning project. Tremblay, who lives in nearby Navy housing, interviewed guards and tallied tourists for 14 days at Naval Station Pearl Harbor’s Nimitz gate.
In a single day, as many as 684 people looking for the USS Arizona Memorial followed "Pearl Harbor" signs to the Navy gate. Tremblay's findings bolstered efforts undertaken by the Pearl Harbor Historic Sites Task Force.
Now, six new signs along Nimitz and Kamehameha Highways read "Pearl Harbor Historic Sites," encompassing both Arizona and Battleship Missouri Memorials, USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and Park, Pearl Harbor Historic Trail and Pacific Aviation Museum, set to open in December 2006. Overhead signs on the H-1 freeway are to be changed in fall 2006 to specify "Naval Base" or "Pearl Harbor Historic Sites."
topStudents create clinic for homeless
State plans to open an emergency homeless shelter in Kakaʻako caused some alarm among nearby residents and businesses. Students at Mānoa’s John A. Burns School of Medicine were also concerned… with helping their new neighbors.
First-year student Carrie Marshall, who had been exploring healthcare for homeless people at Ala Moana Park as a school project in community health, took the lead. Other students joined the cause. A bake sale raised $1,000 to buy medical supplies, and donations of clothes, toiletry items and surplus medical equipment poured in.
The free clinic opened in late May with more than a dozen volunteer medical students, medical residents and JABSOM faculty physicians tending the shelter’s 200 adults and 90 children. Every Tuesday night they perform checkups, bandage cuts and advise patients on their ailments—diabetes, skin infections and high blood pressure are common.
"The homeless situation in our community has reached the point where everyone needs to pitch in to help. This is why I went into medicine, to help out," says Marshall.
See the clinic website.
topAccreditation is NICE
The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s New Intensive Courses in English is the first Oʻahu program of its kind accredited by the national Commission on English Language Program Accreditation.
The noncredit Outreach College program spent nearly two years working to meet CEA standards. The accredited courses, Intensive Spoken English and English for Conversational Purposes, use English for professional purposes and to communicate effectively in the community.
NICE offers 3- and 10-week courses as well as NICE at Night to accommodate students’ diverse schedules.
Read more about Outreach international programs at the NICE website.
topWant two tickets to the game, good seats?
Web-savvy season ticket holders who can’t attend a particular University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa sporting event will find it easier to let other people have their seats this year.
Season-ticket holders can go online and email their tickets to friends, who then print out a scanner-readable page, much as travelers do an online check-in boarding pass. Or they can return the tickets to UH’s online system for resale and have up to 60 percent of the face value credited to their account for next season.
Athletics officials hope the plan will put fans in unused seats and encourage would-be season ticket buyers who hesitate if they can’t attend all of the games.
For information, see the athletics website or call 808-944-2697.
topPilot project brings language institute to Molokaʻi
The Molokaʻi Language Institute held its first month-long intensive course in July 2006 for 10 employees of agricultural company Monsanto Hawaiʻi. The company paid for participants’ enrollment to help them improve their language skills.
The pilot summer project was a partnership between Maui Community College’s Molokaʻi Education Center, Office of Continuing Education and Training and Maui Language Institute and the Molokaʻi Rural Development Project. For information on future sessions, contact Donna Haytko-Paoa at 808-553-4490 extension 22.
topClasses promote safe ocean sports
Windward Community College provides classroom-based ocean safety courses for certification for tow-in surfing and recreational thrill craft operation.
The courses are required for participants in those sports. Topics include safe ocean practices, endangered species laws and jet ski operations and safety techniques.
More under professional development at the Office of Continuing Education website.
topCampuses share kudos
Both undergraduate and graduate programs at Mānoa fared well in recent rankings. New York–based Princeton Review included Mānoa in its 2007 America’s Best Value Colleges list.
U.S. News and World Report ranked three colleges highly. The College of Education was in the top quarter of 240 graduate programs nationwide. The William S. Richardson School of Law was again ranked in the top 100 overall, 21st for environmental law and 16th for diversity. The College of Business Administration’s international law program was tied with George Washington and Dartmouth Universities for 21st.
In other honors—
- Honolulu Community College’s chapter of Phi Theta Kappa received one of 25 Distinguished Chapter Awards and Kapiʻolani chapter officer Christine Tooher was recognized by the international honor society representing 1,200 chapters in community and junior colleges in the Pacific, North America and Germany.
- The law school’s Jessup International Moot Court Team finished tops in the nation and 2nd in the world in the Andy C. Dillard memorial competition for its brief analyzing a hypothetical situation involving an international corporation, human rights violations and sovereignty over natural resources.
- Kapiʻolani education student Jose Carlos Tomé was named a New Century Scholar and member of USA Today’s All USA Academic Team.
- Leeward TV production student Kent Harland received a National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences regional EMMY Award for Best Videography.
- Third regionally, a team from Mānoa’s Department of Civil and Environmental engineering was the first UH team to compete in the American Institute of Steel Construction’s national student steel bridge competition, finishing 18th overall.
Capital improvement news
- The National Institutes of Health approved relocation of a proposed Pacific Regional Biosafety Lab from Pearl City to Kakaʻako, on the site of the John A. Burns School of Medicine. Funded by a federal-state match, it will be one of a series of level 3 biosafety labs across the country prepared to deal with emerging health threats, such as pandemic influenza. See the project website.
- Gov. Linda Lingle released $1.3 million for planning and design of a new social sciences facility at Leeward Community College and $3 million for planning, land settlement and design of Kapiʻolani Community College culinary facilities at the old Cannon Club site.