Have Questions? CTAHR Has Experts!

With such a diverse portfolio of majors CTAHR has an Alumni that's an expert in almost everything. To showcase this, CTAHR Alumni Connections started a monthly Pau Hana talk story with an Alumni in the Spotlight. Each month, CTAHR alumni, students and members of the community have Zoomed in to ask questions about what the Alumni in the Spotlight is an expert in.

We kicked the series off in November 2020 with TPSS Alumni Sean Fong, owner of Hawaii Turfgrass, which was ranked as a 1st place business in Hawai’i’s Best 2020.  Sean offered advice to attendees about best types of grass for their homes and spoke about his expertise in lawn care and management. Our December 2020 session featured MBB Alumni Anthony Mau, co-owner of Kupu Place and diversified agriculture manager at Kualoa Ranch. Anthony spoke about his expertise in small scale commercial aquaculture and aquaponics systems and helped attendees trouble shoot some of the issues they had been having with their systems. In January 2021, we started the New Year off with NREM Alumna Frankie Koethe, of Koolau Mountains Watershed Partnership and Oahu Resource Conservation & Development Council. Frankie spoke about her career journey in conservation and let the Zoom attendees know how they could engage in activities to help care for our ‘aina. Our February Alumni Expert was CTAHR Dietetics Program Director, Dr. Monica Esquivel.  Dr. Esquivel helped attendees understand the choices available for healthy living and how dieticians help our communities live longer, healthier lives. March was time for some animal love with Animal sciences Alumna Dr. Raquel Wong, Hawaii State Veterinarian. Dr. Wong engaged attendees by speaking about the many kinds of animal interactions she is involved in as a State Veterinarian and answered questions and concerns that participants had about their own companion animals.  Our latest installment, April 2020, featured three time CTAHR graduate Jordie Ocenar who is working as a plant Pathologist for the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture.  Jordie was able to offer some insight to participants on what to do with their unhealthy looking plants and where to go to find the plant specialists who could help them.

If you are interested in any of these topics, all of the Ask the Alumni Expert sessions were recorded and are available on our YouTube Channel. CTAHR Alumni Connections plans to continue the series, bringing you many more opportunities to ask all your questions, so stay tuned!