Alumni News

Get ready to fall in love with veggies! Register here to join Food Sciences and Human Nutrition Instructor Lara Hackney this Friday, March 11th at 5:00 pm to cook up some fresh, flavor-packed dishes to kick off spring break with a delicious start. Together, let’s learn how to make a mouthwatering smashed chickpea salad, stuffed bell peppers, and peanut butter bonbons that are finger lickin’ good. 

CTAHR’s Graduate Student Organization is forming a Journal Club for nutrition, biochemistry, and biology sciences – and the club is open to all UH graduate students who have an interest in conversing about recent and critical journal articles. The self-organizing group of students will discuss current and novel journal articles in biochemistry, biology, physiology, nutrition sciences, and related fields. The students will choose articles relevant to their interests or courses of study, and will participate in critical review in a collaborative style. 

In place of Alumni BBQ’s, and to keep us all safe as the Covid-mess (hopefully) wraps up, Dean Comerford and the Associate Deans will be hosting a quarterly get together with Alumni via Zoom to challenge their multi-tasking skills...cooking up some tasty chow and chatting with Alumni about what’s happening around CTAHR. Saturday, March 26^th 3pm. The Academic and Student Affairs Office will let the Dean off easy by cooking up some of his favorites: Sloppy Joe’s with Bacon, Baked Beans, and an Angel Food Cake.

It’s baaaaack by popular demand. In fact, it’s now bi-monthly. Thanks to a great turnout in the last mini-conference, Roshan Manandhar is pleased to announce the next Virtual Invasive Pest Mini-Conference, set for March 23 @ 9:30 a.m. Please join your colleagues and other scientists to learn about two programs devoted to invasive species management: the Hawaiʻi Ant Lab (HAL) and Oʻahu Army Natural Resource Program (OANRP), with Heather Forester and Melissa Valdez, respectively.

Want to sustain our aging Ag workforce with the best and brightest of the next generation? How about try exposing young persons to the wide diversity of careers that are available? Faculty, staff, and volunteers of CTAHR’s Urban Garden Center (UGC) played host to field trips last week from Pearl City High School and Waipahu High School, partnering with the Hawaiʻi Agricultural Foundation (HAF) to promote awareness of agriculture at the high school level. With a grant to cover transportation, UGC and HAF worked together to bring more than 30 PCHS students to the CTAHR facility February 11 for a multisensory event.

Students had an opportunity to: 1) learn about the benefits of flowers, 2) smell the roses, 3) express themselves creatively with plants, 4) harvest, process and taste mamaki tea, 5) use their hands to propagate plants, 6) taste local and unique fruits grown at UGC, 7) convert home waste into a useable fertilizer for plants, 8) take home local roses and their personalized bouquets, and 9) taste how sour lemon can be made into a local treat by using gummies and lemon peel.