Keiki, adults plunge right in to UH-Hilo’s Ocean Day

by John Burnett

In Hawaii Tribune-Herald

Brothers Joao, left, and Daren Garriques hold clams and oysters like those found in Kaneohe Bay, Oahu. These 11/2-year-old specimens are being raised in greenhouse tanks on the University of Hawaii at Hilo’s Pacific Aquaculture and Coastal Resources Center, in hopes of developing a viable bi-valve industry in the state of Hawaii. Saturday’s annual Ocean Day opened the gates of the Keaukaha facility to the community, providing hands-on educational activities focused on celebrating Hawaii’s ocean and coastal heritage. - Photo By William Ing/Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

Families enjoyed music, food and fun — for example, touching live octopi and sea urchins — at the second annual Ocean Day Hawaii held Saturday at Puhi Bay in Keaukaha.

The event was hosted by the University of Hawaii at Hilo’s Pacific Aquaculture and Coastal Resources Center and the Marine Science Department, in partnership with the University of Hawaii Sea Grant. The site was PACRC’s 12.5-acre shorefront facility.

“It’s just beautiful; we couldn’t have asked for a better day,” said Kevin Hopkins, PACRC’s interim director and an aquaculture professor at UHH.

Subtitled “Year of the Reef,” the free, family-friendly educational event, celebrating Hawaii’s coastal heritage and resources, featured demonstrations and activities by more than 30 organizations, community groups and agencies.

The turnout was phenomenal, according to Sharon Ziegler-Chong, PACRC associate director, who co-coordinated the event with Masaki Takabayashi, an assistant professor of marine science at UHH.

“We figure we have about double the number of people from last year, which means about a thousand people,” Ziegler-Chong said.

The younger keiki, in general, seemed to have the most fun — counting fish in aquaculture tanks, interacting with scuba divers during demonstrations, directing robot-like remote-operated vehicles underwater and enjoying a close encounter with zooplankton using a powerful microscope.

“Every booth had some sort of activity, so it wasn’t just a poster telling you something. It’s truly interactive,” Ziegler-Chong noted.

Especially popular with the youngsters were the “touch tanks” — a marine petting zoo of sorts. Richard Cromwell, a UHH marine science major, said that the tanks contained “marine invertebrates collected from Onekahakaha Beach Park” in “fresh salt water, cycled — the tanks are aerated to keep them alive.”

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Marine Science lab. Photo by William Ing.

Jason Turner, a UH Hilo assistant professor of marine science and Jennifer Turner, a marine science lecturer, are the featured guests on tonight’s Focus on UH Hilo cable program. The show starts at 8 p.m. on channel 55.

The Turners will discuss UH Hilo’s Marine Science program, including information about the new bachelor of science degree. They also will preview the program’s course offerings for the upcoming summer session.

Focus on UH Hilo is a 30-minute show hosted by Chancellor Tseng and moderated by Ken Hupp that highlights UH Hilo teaching, research, and community service.

For more info contact Michele at the marketing and alumni office at melander@hawaii.edu.

UH Hilo’s ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center is partnering with the Merrie Monarch Festival to offer four days of free hula-related workshops and demonstrations for guests to enjoy during the popular week-long festival and competition. Special programs are also being offered in Japanese.

Tuesday, April 1

10:00 - 11:30 am The Way of Hula: The Legacy of Aunti Maiki Aiu Lake
As part of our week-long Merrie Monarch festivities, this workshop discueses hula history, genealogy and traiditions as taught through O‘ahu’s Halau Hula o Maiki, the oldest formal hula school in existence today.

12:00 - 12:30 pm Japanese Language Program: Speaking Hawaiian

1:00 - 2:30 pm Introduction to Basic Hawaiian Language

Wednesday, April 2

10:00 - 11:30 am Voyage to Wellness: The Relationship Between Hula, Star Lines and Traditional Hawaiian Healing

12:00 - 12:30 pm Japanese Language Program: Hawaiian Healing Arts

1:00 - 2:30 pm Tour of Hawaiian Native Landscape
A presentation and tour of Hawaiian native plants at ‘Imiloa (endemic, indigenous and “canoe” plants), with focus on plants used in hula.

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In the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (outside news source determines link expiration).

Route to knowledge: A seminar is passing on traditional way-finding methods to future generations

By Gary T. Kubota

Halona Tanner, left, and Kealii Roldan use way-finding skills to chart a sailing course from Hawaii to Tahiti during a recent seminar in Hilo. Photo by Gary T. Kubota.

HILO– Using a Hawaiian star chart, Halona Tanner leaned over a map of the Pacific Ocean and tentatively drew a line for a navigational course from the Big Island southward toward Tahiti.

“I think we’re a bit off,” said Tanner, checking his plotting with his partners.

Tanner, 33, of the Big Island, was one of more than 130 people in Hawaiian sail voyaging groups statewide participating in a seminar that taught native way-finding skills.

The course, called Imi Naauao 2008, is an attempt to merge modern teaching strategies to impart traditional way-finding knowledge to people voyaging on double-hulled sailing canoes.

Without Western tools such as a sextant and chronometer, modern way-finders are using native knowledge of nature including the stars, winds and currents to navigate their way to Pacific islands.

The seminar, sponsored by several organizations including Matson Navigation and the Alexander & Baldwin Foundation, took place Saturday at the University of Hawaii-Hilo’s Imiloa Astronomy Center.

The crews were to receive lessons in Hawaiian crafts and knot tying yesterday, followed by a sail on small double-hulled canoes today.

Chad Baybayan, a native Hawaiian way-finder and principal organizer, said the intent is to give voyagers a quicker route to knowledge and a deeper understanding of their Hawaiian history.

The seminar was also an opportunity for voyaging societies to share way-finding information.

Currently, four deep-sea voyaging canoes are operating in Hawaii, and three are being built or refurbished.

“This is a collaboration of the way-finding community,” Baybayan said.

Baybayan said islanders traditionally learned native way-finding by watching while aboard a voyaging canoe.

He said it took him 30 years and several voyages to feel comfortable enough to be a navigator on a voyage.

Baybayan said attendance of the event has tripled since its start last year, indicating an increasing interest in Hawaiian voyaging and navigation.

Most of the male and female participants were in their 20s and 30s, representing the next generation of native voyagers and potential way-finders.

The crew members might also be among the future voyagers in an around-the-world journey being discussed by the Polynesian Voyaging Society, perhaps by 2011.

Society president Nainoa Thompson said he was encouraged by the turnout.

“This room is powerful,” Thompson told the group.

Thompson said the society was still discussing the idea of an around-the-world voyage, and it would only be possible if young voyagers were behind it.

“This won’t go if young people don’t come,” he said.

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Chancellor Rose Tseng stands with award recipients and their nominators at the UH Hilo Alumni Banquet. Front row, l-r, Rose Tseng; Stanley Hara, Marcia Sakai; and back row, l-r, Jerry Chang, Tom Murphy, Robert Dircks, Leon Hallacher, Don Hemmes, Walter Dudley, Hansen Tsang, Gay Porter, Kay De Mello, Loretta Matsumoto, and John Farias. Photos by James Rubio.

Last Friday’s Distinguished Alumni and Distinguished Service Awards banquet was a great success! Distinguished Alumni Awards went to Gay Porter, Hansen Tsang, and Robert Dircks. Distinguished Service Awards were given to Don Hemmes, Stanley Hara, John Farias, George Martin, and Eddie De Mello. More here about the winners and their bios.

“Special thanks to our UH Hilo ‘ohana and our community for coming to honor our distinguished alumni and distinguished service awardees,” says Yu Yok Pearring, director of marketing and alumni affairs.

Chancellor Tseng, at the podium, welcomes guests at the annual UH Hilo Alumni Banquet .

The event’s program included a write up about the pivotal moment in time when UH Hilo’s fate was put in the right direction by the distinguished service awardees honored on Friday. Here is the text:

“By Inquiry into the Past, One Will Develop a Greater Appreciation for the Present”

During its 60-year history, the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo has faced numerous challenges. Despite its growth potential with a large land mass and strong community support for expansion, UH decision-makers sometimes failed to grasp the role UH Hilo could play to enrich and enhance the university system, while expanding the state’s base for higher education.

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Chancellor Rose Tseng (left) and UH Hilo Director of Financial Aid Jeff Scofield (right) stand with John & Linda Tolmie, who have established an endowed scholarship at the university. Photo by Walter Dudoit.

Longtime community and UH Hilo supporters Linda and John Tolmie have established a $50,000 endowed scholarship in the names of their parents, John and Mary Tolmie & James and Fulvia Bailey.

The Tolmies, who operate Tolmie Properties Ltd., a commercial real estate firm in Hilo, have lived in Hawai‘i since the mid 1970s and have been active in a number of community organizations. John, a former Marine Corps officer, is a longstanding member of the UH Hilo Chancellor’s Advisory Board. Linda, a former teacher, served as Vice Chair of the UH Hilo Performing Arts Center Advisory Committee from its inception in 2003 until 2007.

“UH Hilo has the highest percentage of students receiving financial aid of any of the 10 campuses in the University of Hawai‘i system,” said Chancellor Rose Tseng. “We would never be able to assist so many students with only government aid at our disposal. We are indebted to the Tolmies for making a critical difference.”

Full story here .

Photo by Marcia Heller.

Chancellor Tseng saddled up yesterday to welcome guests to a fundraiser held at UH Hilo’s Agricultural Farm at Pana‘ewa. “Cowboy Up 2008: A Blue Jeans and Black Tie Barbecue” was held to raise funds to equip the new UH Hilo Equestrian Center with interior panels, pens, bleacher seating and equipment.

Everybody had tons of fun with live country music, great BBQ and auctions.

Plans for the facility include equine and livestock shows, 4-H and other community events.

UH Hilo’s 2008 Distinguished Alumni and Service Awards banquet will be held on Friday, Feb. 29 at the Campus Center Dining Room. The event begins at 5 p.m. with no-host cocktails and a silent auction to raise scholarship funds.

This year’s Distinguished Alumni Awards recipients are (left to right): Robert Dircks, Hilo High principal; Gay Porter, Hilo branch manager of Business Insurance Services and president of General Insurance Association of Hilo and Hilo Rotary Club; and Hansen Tsang, owner of Mauna Kea Electric and pioneer in renewable energy technology.

This year’s Distinguished Service Award recipients are: (left to right top) Don Hemmes, UH Hilo professor of biology and president of the Mycological Society of America; John Farias, former member of the UH Board of Regents; George Martin (shown here in 1977), former Hawai‘i Division director and international vice president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union; (and left to right above) the late Eddie De Mello (shown here in 1973), ILWU member, labor organizer and lobbyist; and Stanley I. Hara, former state senator and chair of senate education committee.

Martin, De Mello and Hara played instrumental roles in transforming the UH Hilo campus from a two-year institution to a four-year University of Hawai‘i at Hilo in 1971.

Tickets are $50 per person and $350 for a table of eight. RSVP deadline is Feb. 19. For more information, call 974-7643 or 974-7501.

UH Hilo Chancellor Rose Tseng and Hawai‘i Community College Chancellor Rockne Freitas sign the articulation agreement between the two campuses. The agreement ensures a student-friendly, virtually seamless process for transferring credit for courses taken at HCC to the UHH. Photo by William Ing/Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

The Hawaii Tribune-Herald covers the signing of the articulation agreement that will move university toward seamless transfer of students from the community college to UH Hilo four-year degree.

Summary:

Chancellors of Hilo’s community college and university signed an agreement Wednesday that’s designed to ease student transfers between the two centers of learning.

The agreement calls on faculty, advisors and department chairs to coordinate undergraduate courses so that students who transfer from Hawai‘i Community College to the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo will already be set on a course to graduation, rather than finding that courses they took at HCC don’t meet UHH degree requirements.

“Students who get an associate’s degree with us will know they won’t have to retake anything at the UHH. They’ll be full-fledged juniors,” said HCC Chancellor Rockne Freitas. “Our students will now have the confidence that the credits they completed and degree they earned will count.”

Chancellors signed the agreement during a traditional Hawaiian ceremony at the HCC campus.

The Degree Pathways Partnership Program will spell out the courses that students must take for a seamless transfer to the UHH College of Business and Economics and other programs. The agreement between the UHH College of Business and the HCC — the first to be signed — goes into effect this fall.

Articulation agreements for other programs are in the works. Faculty from Hawaiian language and Hawaiian studies at the two campuses will meet to discuss expectations for first and second-year language courses so students transferring to the UHH will be able to go directly into junior-level course work. Another partnership is being discussed between the UH Hilo College of Forestry, Agriculture and Natural Resource Management and HCC’s forestry program, with an eye to getting students on the way to a bachelor of science degree in forestry.

Full story here (outside news source determines link expiration).

Remarks by Chancellor Rose Tseng
Ho‘oulu Terrace

Aloha and Welcome to the Spring 2008 semester!

Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to join us today.

Before I start, I’d like thank faculty and staff for advising our students this semester. I appreciate your dedication and commitment. Your Spirit of Aloha makes UH Hilo a very special place!

Today, I’d like to share some highlights of the university with you.

As background, when I came to UH Hilo in 1998, I surveyed our faculty and staff and the community. Together, we established three major goals: academic excellence, enrollment growth, and resource development.

The most important highlight today is UH Hilo’s commitment to excellence. It’s a commitment to high-quality programs and the best education possible. It’s a commitment to build strong communities, a thriving economy and professional workforce for the 21st century.

Thanks to your vision and hard work, UH Hilo has transformed into a comprehensive university with 36 baccalaureate, six master, and two doctoral degree programs.

Our six master programs are in response to our state’s social, economic and cultural needs. Thanks to your dedication, the programs were approved so we can bring dynamic education to our students.

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