Welcome to “News from KCC,” a chance for the community to get to know a little bit more about Kaua‘i Community College, the island’s only institution of higher education. On the first Friday of each month we highlight the people,
Welcome to “News from KCC,” a chance for the community to get to know a little bit more about Kaua‘i Community College, the island’s only institution of higher education. On the first Friday of each month we highlight the people, places and events that make the college the hub of so much of what happens on Kaua‘i. We welcome comments and suggestions for future columns and also welcome the opportunity to keep the community up to date about what’s going on at our Puhi campus.
The college recently launched its official Facebook page (www.facebook.com/KauaiCC) and is looking to increase the number of people that “like” our page. It will include all the latest campus events both on the credit and non-credit side.
Pat McGrath, Associate Professor of English, is once again serving as Assistant Director and dialect coach for the Hawai‘i State Department of Education’s fall KPAC high school production. Students from Kaua‘i and Kapa‘a High Schools will be staging six performances of “The Crucible,” Arthur Miller’s scathing indictment of religious and political hypocrisy and hysteria, at the KCC Performing Arts Center. The show opens on Oct. 26. For more information contact Dennis McGraw at 651-2417.
Certification in any field is a mark of professionalism. For academic nurse educators, it establishes nursing education as a specialty area of practice and creates a means for faculty to demonstrate their expertise in this role. It communicates to students, peers and the academic and health care communities that the highest standards of excellence are being met. Kaua‘i Community College currently has three certified nurse educators, comprising 27 percent of the nursing faculty at KCC. They are Victoria Mathis, Cherie Mooy and Kurt Rutter.
The KCC’s campus newspaper, Ka Leo O Kaua‘i (The Voice of KCC), returned after a 20-year hiatus last semester. The online and print editions feature news writing, poetry, photos and opinions submitted by almost 30 students. Each semester, the students of the journalism news writing class and news lab begin to research issues and gather facts to develop news stories and articles of interest about the campus. This fall, the first updated online stories appeared in September, and three printed editions are planned, the first appearing this month.
KCC student Jin-wah Lau has been selected for the highly competitive Research Internship Scholarship sponsored by the Hawai‘i Statewide Research and Education Partnership (HSREP) in conjunction with the IDeA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) program. This is a collaborative program between the primary research departments at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa and other academic institutions and community colleges of Hawai‘i. Jin-wah is currently taking three Plant Bioscience courses at KCC. During her internship, she will be researching the positive and negative effects of strawberry guava on agriculture field weeds through two separate experiments.
Another KCC student, Patricia Fewkes, was awarded the Summer Undergraduate Research Internship Scholarship. Patricia worked on a non-chemical nematode management approach. A poster of Patricia’s research finding is currently on display at the KCC Library.
eWaste Disposal
There will be an opportunity for community members to recycle their obsolete or unused electronic items on Oct. 27 at the college. Printers, old cell phones, speakers, walkie-talkies and surge protectors can be brought to the campus for eWaste disposal.
Focus on faculty
KCC’s new Instructor of Electronic Technology, Georgeanne Friend, comes to the island from the Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio where she worked as a researcher for eight years. She earned her Ph.D. in electrical engineering and optics from the University of Texas, Arlington while raising five children as a single parent. Georgeanne is an avid backpacker who is section-hiking the Appalachian Trail 120 miles at a time.
Tante Azares, Assistant Professor of Automotive Technology, began teaching at KCC in 1983 when the college was still at its old campus near Kaua‘i High School. Tante figures that just about every auto mechanic on the island has come under his tutelage at some time or another. He describes the joy he gets from teaching as “seeing the light go on in their eyes when they understand something they didn’t know before.” But Tante’s greatest joy in life comes from his two daughters and four grandkids — all girls!
• Greg Shepherd, is an Associate Professor of Music at Kaua‘i Community College. ‘News from KCC’ appears the first Monday of every month.
