Alumni News

From among CTAHR staff, faculty, and donors to this year’s UH Aloha United Way campaign, Kellie Taguchi of the Academic and Student Affairs Office is the lucky winner of an awesome box set of CTAHR gear from the Office of Communication Services!

This includes:

• 1 polo shirt
• 1 baseball cap
• 1 canvas tote bag
• 1 baby onesie
• 1 webcam cover

With the current pandemic, the economic hardship for many Hawaiʻi households has increased dramatically. Every dollar contributed through AUW’s campaign stays in Hawai‘i, touching the lives of our own friends and neighbors, children and families. AUW and its partner agencies address the greatest needs in our community, from helping prepare our keiki for kindergarten and keep them on a path to succeed in school, to feeding the hungry, to caring for the elderly.

Congrats Kellie! and Mahalo to everyone who supported the campaign this year.

Food insecurity was a reality for many UH students long before Covid. And just because you donʻt see it, doesnʻt mean it hasnʻt gotten worse during the pandemic. But thanks to the super-popular FoodStack run by the Academic and Student Affairs Office, our super-appreciative undergrad and grad students just need to pop into the CTAHR Student Lounge and grab what they need. Students even have the option to take ingredients home to cook up later.

The food largely comes from donations, so the next time you’re out grocery shopping, consider picking up a little extra for the FoodStack. ASAO will accept shelf-stable, individually-wrapped canned goods or pantry items.

Since 2018, the CTAHR Student Lounge, located in the first floor of Gilmore Hall, has continually provided our students with a place to study, a space to engage with their peers, and an eating area complete with a kitchenette and pantry to ensure open access to food. Mahalo for your support.

Next Friday at 6:00 p.m., settle back, zoom in, and celebrate the outstanding accomplishments of our CTAHR Fall 2021 Graduating Class! To honor them, the CTAHR Academic and Student Affairs Office will host a Virtual Convocation ceremony. Each and every one of us in the CTAHR ʻohana is invited to join in cheering and wishing our graduates a bright future. Bonnie Buntain, our 2021 Outstanding Alumnus, and Michael Bruno, UHM Provost, are our keynote and guest speakers. A link to the event will be posted on the CTAHR Convocation website closer to the event date. Graduating students will also have the opportunity to participate in a photo session with CTAHR Dean Comerford on Saturday, December 18th, at 9:00 am, in the SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center. Students are invited to wear their cap and gown and bring four guests.

For questions, please contact Herbenia Bowen.

Mahalo and Aloha to seven familiar faces who’ve served CTAHR for decades but will be retiring at the end of this year. They are:

• Susan Miyasaka, Researcher
• Richard Manshardt, Researcher
• Samuel Fortna, Research Associate
• Frank Matsuno, Ag Tech VI
• Juanito Garces, Ag Tech IV
• Craig Okazaki, Ag Tech V
• Neal Chang, Ag Tech IV

From everyone in the CTAHR ʻohana, we wish you a happy retirement full of leisurely pursuits and new adventures, and don’t forget to keep in touch. Until we meet again…

Last October, we overhauled the way Cooperative Extension publications are published, and after 12 months of piloting this new process, it is an unqualified success.

Extension publications are fundamentally important to CTAHR as the land grant college of the University of Hawaiʻi system. We have a federal obligation to provide practical, research-based information and educatio­n for the people of Hawai‘i. Our Extension agents and specialists fulfill this very important “community outreach” function – and Extension publications are a primary tool for getting applied science and practical recommendations into the hands of residents and businesses across the state. A committee of faculty and administration defined a publication process. We set a publishing goal of 90 days from submission. For the 30-odd manuscripts that were processed from October 2020 to October 2021, the average time has been much shorter – 11.6 days – and that figure includes weekends and holidays.

Quality is not suffering, but rather, has improved. The new process includes a basic level of review that was previously missing (however, it is not designed to match the level of rigor in national, peer-reviewed journals). We also raised the standard of scientific editing and formatting. The resulting papers have a consistent and recognizable look, and are higher in readability, clarity of information conveyed, and aesthetics.

Feedback is remarkably positive, from faculty authors to agency officials to state legislators to UH leadership to my professional contacts in industry and at other land grant universities. If you haven’t visited the Extension publications site recently, I suggest you do.

I’ve instructed CTAHR’s Office of Communication Services to drop “interim” and trim down the guidelines to further streamline the process. The OCS Advisory Council will provide input before the revised guidelines are disseminated. This 24-seat council represents all six departments, as well as CTAHR units, programs, Extension, and administration.

During the interim, authors could choose between an older publication design and a new one. The majority chose the latter. Moving forward, all Extension publications will use the new format. This will increase efficiency and maintain timeliness, as well as uniformly brand CTAHR Extension Publications for our broad community of readers.