Talk Story: David Lassner
It was not your idea to vie for this job; the UH Board of Regents asked you to apply. Given the troubles facing the UH, what made you accept the challenge? This is the only grownup job I’ve ever had.…
Education
21 Century Internships
Mericris Neyra knew she wanted to be a nurse back when she was at Farrington High School, so she enrolled in nursing at UH Manoa. But as she neared graduation in December 2014, the 22-year-old faced a saturated nursing-job market…
Overcoming Hardship
By sixth grade, Cedric Gates' future already looked bleak: Severe childhood obesity had pushed his weight over 200 pounds. A year later things got worse: His mother collapsed at work and died from heart disease. By the time he was…
What's the Big Idea?
For many years, Vassilis Syrmos didn’t spend much time thinking about business. An electrical engineer with a Ph.D. from Georgia Tech and a new career in academia, he was happy to focus on pure research. “When you’re a young assistant…
Sustainable Schools Earn An A
Private and public schools discover many benefits to their sustainability programs, including financial, educational, motivational and recruiting returns. For companies, the path to sustainability often starts with a volunteer task force (a “green team”) and some small initiatives with quick financial…
How Does Hawaii’s 529 Plan Rate?
HI529, Hawaii’s College Savings Program, now boasts assets of $67 million and some 4,260 participants – an average of about $16,000 per investor set aside for a keiki’s education. National analysts give Hawaii’s program good marks on the investment returns…
The Growing Crisis of Student Debt
Ryan Delaney had been teaching at Waianae High School for two years when he received an offer he couldn’t refuse: Return to UH-Manoa’s Speech Department to get his M.A. at a discounted price. While earning that degree, he served as…
Fixing a Broken Budget Process
A fiscal crisis this past fall, coming on the heels of the Wonder Blunder and other missteps, is forcing UH and its flagship Manoa campus to reform its flawed budget process. For decades, UH allocated funding to individual departments and…
What’s Hawaii’s Environment Worth?
The coral reefs of the main Hawaiian Islands are worth $9.7 billion. That’s the finding of a well-known 2002 study by Dutch economists Herman Cesar and Pieter van Beukering. They created an elaborate equation that summed up the various types…
Got Life Experience? Maybe It’s Worth College Credits
One woman used UH’s new program to help change careers. But a word of caution: The program is still a work in progress. For working people struggling to find the time to get a college degree, the University of Hawaii…
Eyes on the Sky
The world’s worst traffic is not in Los Angeles, Bangkok or Beijing. It’s hundreds of miles above the Earth, where an ever-increasing mishmash of satellites, debris and junk are circling the planet at thousands of miles per hour, and a…
Getting At-Risk Kids on Track
Name: Malia Alo Job: Program coordinator at Hale Kipa Experience: 2½ years Education: BA in sociology and criminal justice from UH West Oahu. Her start: Alo was a student at Campbell High School when she realized she wanted to help…
Hawaii Rotary Awards $250,000 a Year in Scholarships
The Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation has awarded 1,562 scholarships worth more than $5.6 million to Hawaii high school seniors since 1976. The program started when Maurice J. “Sully” Sullivan, co-founder of Foodland Super Market Ltd., decided it was important to…
If You Can Read This, You Can Help
Attorney Nancy Youngren was looking for a volunteer opportunity that would really make a difference in an individual’s life when an ad for Hawaii Literacy caught her eye. She looked no further. Starting in early 2011, for almost three years,…
Retiring and Starting Over at the Same Time
When veterans retire or separate from the military, they leave more than their jobs, they leave a way of life. What makes the transition tougher is their skills sometimes don’t seem to translate easily to civilian jobs or running businesses.…
Legacy of a Popular Candy: Millions in Scholarships to Local Students
Erica Shin graduated from Kalani High School in May with an ambitious plan that carried a huge price tag: biology major and pre-med student at UH-Manoa, before attending the John A. Burns School of Medicine. That’s why she was surprised…
Research into Hazards Leads to Device that May Save Lives
Problem: Doctors didn’t have a reliable, noninvasive method to measure changes to the water in a patient’s lungs – an important factor in the early detection of heart failure. Heart failure affects an estimated 5.1 million people in the U.S.…
Financial Problems at Hawaii Pacific University
Hawaii Pacific University is suffering financial problems that have prompted layoffs of more than 100 faculty and staff, and major cuts in the scholarships that for decades have encouraged local students to attend the state’s largest private university. Meanwhile, the…
Ulukau Serves Many Roles
The home page of www.ulukau.org has few words in English, but a click on “English Text” reveals this translation: Ulukau: “In the same way that unexplained supernatural interpretive powers can be divinely given to a person, so knowledge and understanding can…
Hawaii Universities Attract a Global Student Body
Almost a thousand Japanese are studying in universities here, but so are at least five students from Tanzania, 22 from Saudi Arabia and three from Cameroon. In the 2012-13 school year, Hawaii Pacific University had 210 students from Norway – almost as…
Training the Workers of Tomorrow
Did you get all the way through high school and college without actually learning about a potential career and test driving it? Did your college courses have little connection with what you learned in high school? If you answered yes…
Editor's Note: Wrestling with Contradictions
We all live with beliefs that are not perfectly compatible. Look deeply and think carefully, and you can find contradictions or at least tensions within your morality and worldview. Excuse me for being presumptuous, but if your whole belief system…
Not Your Parents' College Degrees
The world will always need people trained in traditional fields such as education, medicine and law. But many college students today are looking to emerging fields where the number of jobs are growing, not shrinking, or careers that seem more…
Million-Dollar Business Runs Out of Kahuku High
From July to December, customers crowd a classroom-size room at Kahuku High School where almost everything is red. Kahuku.org, which has made over $1 million in revenues since 2001, sells Kahuku High T-shirts, hats and hoodies while also teaching students how…