Alumni News

FDM 437 Small Business Start-up class recently opened their new retail brands, Hidden Essentials and Artists Collective, which features handmade products created by the FDM students and selected merchandise sourced from local/national vendors.

Hidden Essentials is an online boutique run by 10 fashion design and merchandising students at UH Mānoa. This includes our e-commerce team: Michelle Kinumatsu, Makali'i Saunders, and Hoku Serna; our marketing team: Kanako Yoshitsugu, Melanie Simmons, and Jisoo Kim; our merchandising team: Cailin Kaneshiro, Jada Rogers, and Danielle Gersonde; and our team leader, Sabrina Weaver. The Artists Collective is a joint shop created by Olivia Maguire, Jordan Casteen, Crystal Lam, Enzo Silvestro, Riana Kawamura, Megan Medrano, Blaise Sugita and Dominique Au....[For the full article, click "Read more"]

Four holokū from the Historic Costume Collection are on display through January 2023. When missionaries arrive on the Islands in the early 1800s, Queen Kalākua women asked the missionary women to make her a dress in their style. The women sewed a loose-fitting dress using woven fabric. Eventually, a train would be added and the garment named the holokū, translated as a loose dress made of foreign fabric. The four holokū on display in Miller Hall include a 1920s floral print and a 1998 vivid orange creation; 1950s eyelet lace dress made in a Mother Hubbard design with images printed images of Hawaiian women; and 1970s Mamo Howell with cowl neckline and printed with shell lei.

Welcome to our inaugural issue. We view this as a means to stay connected with our stakeholders and share our program achievements and highlights. 

Students and faculty were very excited to be back and filled with energy, as we began the fall semester in person after two years of online and hybrid learning. Fall also marked the revival of the FDM Advisory Board, composed of community stakeholders, whose function is to act as a sounding board and provide advice on program direction. Many members participated in our 5-year review. Actually, this time the review became a 7-year review due to delays caused by the pandemic. In the review process we reflect on our mission and outcomes and include feedback from our stakeholders. An external review team composed of faculty from other universities visited the campus in October to assess the College, and were overwhelmingly supportive of the program and provided excellent feedback.... [For the full article, click "Read more"]

Congrats to Mark Thorne on a Partnership Award for Multistate Efforts! His National Connections Teams for Forest & Rangeland Resources team was recognized by the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture for developing the web-based conference series, “Strengthening RREA programing Through Enhanced Connections.”

If you’re not familiar with CTAHR’s Environment and Bioenergy Research Group, just ask the faculty and students of Can Tho University in Vietnam. Led by Samir Khanal of the Dept. of Molecular Biosciences and Bioengineering, the group will soon travel to the Mekong Delta in a new international effort “pairing some of the United States’ top research institutions and scientists with their counterparts from countries where agriculture is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change,” notes the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service.