Alumni News

The property wasn’t for sale at this Open House, but children and adults could get up close and personal with live invertebrates! On February 12, the UH Insect Museum, which has one of the largest collections of insects in the Pacific Basin, celebrated the 210^th birthday of Darwin, a crucial contributor to the unifying principle of evolution, with some exciting activities.

A cheering chili pepper? A talking tomato? No, they’re dietetics and FSHN students from HNFAS! Monica Esquivel and the nutrition students are featured and thanked in a video recently created by the American Heart Association for their annual Heart Ball. The video, which was shared with over 1200 Heart Ball attendees, highlights the Kokua the Need campaign to which the dietetics students and Monica contributed.

CTAHR has roots around the world! Extension agent Sharon Motomura is a collaborator in the international Next Generation Cassava Breeding Project, which is working to identify and breed new varieties of cassava for smallholder farmers in Africa and around the world that specifically focuses on traits identified as desirable by the farmers and small producers themselves.

Students who are interested in becoming entrepreneurs can take FDM 437 Small Business Start-Up, a capstone course in which students build professional business plans and get hands-on experience in opening a retail store. A highlight of the course last semester was the 2018 Retail Business Plan Contest, in which students competed to present a workable plan for starting their own business.

Now macadamia growers have a new weapon against an invasive pest, the macadamia felted coccid. Alyssa Cho (TPSS) and her collaborators showed that pruning the canopy of the trees reduced populations of the insect by half. Alyssa collaborated with Mark Wright (PEPS) and Extension agent Andrea Kawabata, with support from Rosemary Gutierrez-Coarite and Javier Mollinedo.