Alumni News

In a column in the Hawaii Tribune-Herald, former Extension agent Norm Bezona highlights protea flowers: “Of all the many floral choices available in the marketplace, none can beat the bizarre yet entrancing beauty of the Protea.” He praises former CTAHR horticulturist Philip Parvin, director of the Maui Experiment Station, who was responsible for expanding protea culture in the Islands.

Dean Comerford was interviewed for an article in the Maui News about Rep. Lynn DeCoite’s call for more state support for farmers. Dean Comerford, who has spoken with Rep. DeCoite, praises her ideas and explains that with the ten new Extension agent positions that have been funded by the Legislature, the college will be able to provide more outreach, particularly in ag economics and financing.

Some local 5- and 6-year-olds on Fall break spent the week off school at the Komohana Research & Extension Center helping to pilot a new 4-H Junior Master Gardener Early Childhood Development curriculum offered through East Hawai‘i 4-H. The week-long day camp was centered around the theme of roots.

MS alumna Keano Pavlosky, now in medical school at JABSOM, is first author of a recently published article, “The Effects of Transfer From Steady-State to Tidally-Changing Salinities on Plasma and Branchial Osmoregulatory Variables in Adult Mozambique Tilapia,” based on the MS thesis she completed in the lab of co-author Andre Seale (HNFAS).

We are saddened to report the death of former Extension economist and professor John M. Halloran at age 65 in Maine. John spent the first half of his career at UH, advising farmers on marketing in areas from cut flowers to coffee, bananas and papayas to livestock, forests to fisheries. He was instrumental in Hawai‘i’s early farm-to-table movement.