CTAHR Notes

The SOFT student group and TPSS GSO are partnering on a Sustainable Agriculture Lecture Series that explores issues of importance to Island agriculture. On Thursday, April 18, at 3:30 p.m. in BusAd A102 they present “Food Movement,” on distributing locally produced foods. Featured at this event will be O‘ahu Fresh representative Lisa, who will discuss her organization, which provides delivery of food from famers’ markets; Vivian Best, who runs Give It Fresh Today (GIFT), which collects donations of fresh food at farmers’ markets to give to the hungry; Lynette Larson, representative of the natural foods coop Kokua, and Jill Nordby, who will discuss the mobile Holoholo General Store. The next lecture will be on sustainable land stewardship on April 25.

Banquet Bonanza

Monday, April 22, is the deadline to register for the CTAHR Awards Banquet on May 3, so make sure to do so if you haven’t yet ensured your place amongst the merrymaking crowd. Laugh at MC Derek Kurisu’s hilarious videos paying tribute to award winners Dennis Teranishi and Wayne Iwaoka (HNFAS), vie over who gets to take home the beautiful CTAHR-grown flower arrangements, and pay tribute to the student winners of scholarships, the CTAHR Entrepreneurial Competition, and the CTAHR-COE Student Symposium!

Grants & Awards

What to Wear While Starting a New Business

It’s not too late to cast your vote! CTAHR students now have the opportunity to demonstrate their creativity and entrepreneurial spirit in two competitions—CTAHR’s Entrepreneurial Competition and CTAHR’s Aloha Shirt Design Competition—and you have the opportunity to help determine the winners! In the CTAHR Entrepreneurial Competition, CTAHR students or teams led by CTAHR students were challenged to share their ideas on a new product or a repurposed existing product made with biological materials from Hawai‘i. Here are the four YouTube video entries—your vote will help the judges determine the winning entries for the following prizes: 1st place: $1000, 2nd place: $500, 3rd place: $250, and viewers’ choice: $100.

In the CTAHR Aloha Shirt Design Competition, APDM majors were challenged to create men’s and women’s Aloha shirt designs incorporating “CTAHR” and/or the CTAHR spirit mark and suitable for professional wear. The designs also had to reflect or connect with Hawai‘i agriculture or natural landscapes. Here are the designs created by the four APDM finalists. Your vote will determine the winning entries in the CTAHR Aloha Shirt Design Competition for the following prizes: 1st place: $500, 2nd place: $300 prize, 3rd place: $100 prize. Voting will close at 4 pm, Thursday, April 18, so get voting!

Veteran Designer

Junior Trevor Manu, who has worked for HNFAS since his freshman year, was just named the 2013 Student Employee of the Year for Categories A1-A3 Student Assistant. Trevor, who is a Fine Arts major with an emphasis in Graphic Design, is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps, and his job as student assistant was his first civilian job after leaving the Marines. Besides helping out in the HNFAS office, Trevor uses his skills as a graphic artist to help with the HNFAS and other departments’ web pages. Trevor says, “Considering this would be my first civilian job after getting out of the Marines, I was worried that my skills would not translate properly. My apprehensions were quickly dispersed, however. Working at HNFAS has not only allowed me to carry over my skills into a civilian world setting but also develop new skills that will help me professionally.” We are delighted to have such a capable young man as Trevor as part our HNFAS ‘ohana.

Malama na Pua‘a

The Animal Welfare Research Priorities for the Spring Call Proposals for 2013 is now available on the www.pork.org National Pork Board’s website. The deadline for submission is Tuesday, May 21, at 5:00 pm CST. For questions about the funding history of the National Pork Board, click here; if you have questions specific to the content of your proposal, please contact the program manager for Animal Welfare, Sherrie Niekamp, at sniekamp@pork.org or (515) 223-2533.

New Funding Opportunities Newsletter Apr 17 2013

With CTAHR’s Awards Banquet coming up, doesn’t that put you in the mood to be awarded yourself—with some funding? If so, you need look no further than the Current Funding Opportunities newsletter. Those that are likely to be of special interest to CTAHR faculty include the following:

Spotlight on Our Community

Scat!

Two NREM undergraduates were featured in a recent KITV News segment about the growing population of feral cats at the Hawai‘i Kai Park and Ride. Anela Whisenhunt (left) and Stephanie Nagai have been conducting a month-long survey of area residents to see what they think should be done about the cats, which now number about 100 and which are becoming a nuisance and even a possible hazard.

New Faces: Cheryl Ernst

OCS is pleased to welcome Cheryl Ernst as its new events/public information officer. Prior to joining OCS, Cheryl served as director for Creative Services in the UH System’s External Affairs and University Relations Office, and she has 25 years of progressively responsible public relations roles at UH. Welcome, Cheryl!

Thanks for All the Fish

The staff at the He‘eia Fishpond recently expressed their gratitude for Clyde Tamaru’s generous donation of moi fingerlings to their fishpond. The transfer went smoothly and appears to have been a success in terms of fish survival. Almost 300 fingerlings at an average fork length of 114mm were released, and workers at the fishpond have high hopes that they will flourish in their new home.

Science Fair Synergy

In a quantum leap from last year’s count of eight, this year 19 CTAHR faculty and graduate students volunteered as judges in the 56th Hawaii State Science and Engineering Fair, April 7-9, at the Hawaii Convention Center, where they got to marvel at the accomplishments of hundreds of Hawai‘i’s best and brightest middle- and high-school students. With funding from USDA-NIFA, CTAHR presented a $500 award on behalf of all campuses in the UH system to Ariana Kim, a 9th grader at St. Andrew’s Priory, who presented results from research performed under the mentorship of HNFAS’s Soojin Jun and Food Science graduate student Kara Yamada (both shown flanking Aliana alongside her award-winning poster) and Priory teacher Michael Grech. Ariana’s project, “Microwire Biosensor: Novel Detection of Escherichia coli,” shows great promise for increasing the accuracy and speed of testing for E. coli, one of the most common causes of foodborne illness. CTAHR was hardly alone in recognizing the excellence of Ariana’s research—she was also selected to represent Hawai‘i at next month’s International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, Arizona. The CTAHR Alumni Association also presented $100 awards to two high school students at the Fair. Mahalo to the many CTAHR faculty, staff, and students who generously mentored the next generation of scientists and engineers participating in this year’s Fair.

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.

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News & Events

Food Movers