Issue 7   |   October 29, 2010

News & Events

Gumbo for the Gulf

On Friday, Oct. 22, HNFAS hosted “Gumbo for the Gulf,” a fundraiser to support sea turtle rescue in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. HNFAS faculty, students, and staff—including Department Chair Doug Vincent, Chef Mark Segobiano, Ashley Stokes (right), Shawn Murakawa (MS-ANSC, left), and Colleen Bird—planned and organized the event. Several hundred attendees, including Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw (middle), did their part by feasting on the delicious Cajun food. Special thanks to Clyde Tamaru (MBBE) for arranging the donation of shrimp from Romi’s Shrimp Shack in Kahuku; to Hansen Foods for a donation of chicken; and to John Johnson of One Breath Photography, who donated photography of sea turtles for a silent auction. The event raised over $1,400 for the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies of Gulfport, MS.

Bee There or Bee Square

CTAHR’s Honeybee Project will host the Honeybee/Pollinator Expo 2010 on Friday, Nov. 5, at the East-West Center’s Keoni Auditorium. International and local bee researchers will present their most recent findings on Varroa mites, sustainable beekeeping, stingless bees, pollen usage, and more during scheduled talks throughout the day. Demonstration booths will also be open from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and honey producers from various islands will provide free honey samples from their apiaries. Between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., students from the Slow Food International-KCC chapter will provide samples of foods made with local honey. The event is free and open to the public; for more information, check out the Expo's Web site.

Dealing with Disaster

Hawai‘i’s agricultural growers face multiple challenges, and here's one more: a major change in national disaster assistance rules. The USDA Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) Disaster Assistance Programs are now directly linked to federal crop insurance—producers must get crop insurance to be eligible for the FSA disaster funds. For non-insurable crops (vegetables, cut flowers, animals, cacao, taro, and fruit other than bananas and papayas), they must get coverage under the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program. CTAHR’s Local Immigrant and Farmer Education (LIFE) program, with co-sponsors USDA Risk Management Agency and the Farm Service Agency, is offering workshops statewide through November and December for growers to learn about crop insurance, disaster assistance, and risk management. For more information, check out UHM's news release for specific dates and times, or contact Stuart Nakamoto at 956-8125 or snakamo@hawaii.edu.

Grants & Awards

Close Scrutiny

The National Science Foundation awarded a Major Research Instrumentation Grant to David Christopher (MBBE), Marilyn Dunlap (PBRC), and Allison Sherwood (Botany). The $404,128 award will allow the University to purchase a new transmission electron microscope, which is vital for cellular biological research on plants, animals, and microbes. It will be located at UH’s Biological Electron Microscope Facility in Snyder 118 and will be used by researchers throughout the UH system. For examples of electron microscopy work, click here and here. Learn more about the facility here.

Get WELD

The Western Extension Leadership Development program (WELD) requests nominations for their 2011-2012 internship class. The program emphasizes development of leadership skills and entails a personal leadership inventory, two Mainland seminars (Feb. 2011 and May 2012), and development of a leadership project. Recent WELD interns include Linda Cox (NREM), Jari Sugano (PEPS), and Kelvin Sewake (PEPS); and Lynn Nakamura-Tengan (HNFAS) is on the WELD Planning Committee. Please contact your Department Chair or County Administrator to request nomination and application materials. Send completed applications to Carl Evensen by email (evensen@hawaii.edu) or fax (956-9105) by Nov. 8. Here's the program Web site.

Spotlight on Our Community

Got Something to Say?

The CTAHR Task Force on Facilities will be assessing CTAHR's off-campus and Magoon Lab facilities and developing recommendations regarding their use to meet current and future program needs and sustainability. The task force is soliciting your comments on the current and future needs, opportunities, value, etc., of our off-campus facilities. Please submit your comments (general and/or specific to a particular facility or facilities) using this link by Nov. 12, 2010. The members of the task force include Wayne Nishijima, retired and former CTAHR Associate Dean/Director of Cooperative Extension (Chair); Duff Zwald, Director of the UH system’s Procurement and Real Property Management Office; David Hafner, UHM Assistant Vice Chancellor for Campus Services; Walter Harada, retired and former Director, CTAHR Planning and Management System Office (PMSO); and Thomas Lim, Support Staff, Director PMSO.

That Mess in the Gulf

In other Gulf oil spill news, Chennat Gopalakrishnan (NREM) recently co-authored a paper, 'Promoting Ecological Sustainability and Community Resilience in the US Gulf Coast after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill,' detailing the immense scope and ramifications of the spill and discussing the steps that must be taken if the problem is ever to be resolved, let alone prevented in the future. Gopal was then featured in UH's Malamalama newsletter (see here), describing the spill in words that sound like an understatement but actually turn out to be a technical description (in the language of problem-solvers, that is): 'It's a messy problem,' he says.

Manoa Makeover

October 23, 2010, was National Make A Difference Day, and in honor of it CTAHR’s Scholarship Recipients volunteered their Saturday morning to participate in a Manoa Makeover project in QLCSS courtyard. They pulled weeds, tugged on roots, turned soil, mulched, and planted in order to beautify the courtyard. Ken Leonhardt and Andy Kaufman (TPSS) partnered with UHM to create a design that would delight passers-by—but since this picture doesn't do all their hard work justice, we suggest you pass by and be delighted!

Stream Re-Leaf

When the City and County of Honolulu mounted its own Make a Difference Day earlier this month, students in Janice Uchida’s (PEPS) class stepped up to the challenge as well, participating in an environmental demonstration sponsored by the Adopt a Stream Project and coordinated by Iwalani Sato, the Deptartment of Environmental Services’ Community Relations Specialist. The students cleared out weeds such as honohono grass and replanted the stream banks with native plants, including naio, 'uki'uki, 'ahu'awa, and 'a'ali'i.

Help our community to keep in touch! Please send news items -- awards, grants, special projects, special people -- and pictures to Frederika Bain at ctahrnotes@ctahr.hawaii.edu.

Do you have an upcoming event that you'd like to promote? CTAHR faculty and staff can post events to the CTAHR website's calendar.

All CTAHR Notes readers can browse the calendar to learn more about the college's activities.