“News from KCC” offers a chance for the community to get to know more about the island’s only institution of higher education by highlighting the people, places, and events that make the college the hub of so much of what happens on Kauai. We welcome comments and suggestions for future columns, and also welcome the opportunity to keep the community up to date about goings-on at our Puhi campus.
-Greg Shepherd, Professor of Music
Here are some upcoming events at Kauai Community College:
• The National Tropical Botanical Garden, in collaboration with Kauai Community College, will continue its public lecture series on Tuesday, September 17 from 5:30 p.m. Dr. Uma Nagendra, Conservation Operations Manager and Ecologist at Limahuli Garden and Preserve, will discuss how the April 2018 “rain bomb” and flooding impacted the people, land, and waterways of Limahuli Valley. Attendees of the free lecture will learn how sudden and dramatic changes created challenges and opportunities for Limahuli Valley, as well as about NTBG’s ongoing efforts to promote ahupua‘a resilience and ecosystem strength. The talk will be held in the KCC Campus Center Cafeteria behind the Performing Arts Center. For questions about access or special accommodations, call (808) 332-7324 Ext. 225 at least 10 days in advance. Visit https://ntbg.org/events for details.
• On Thursday, September 19 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. there will be an information session on the UH-Manoa’s Shidler School of Business Executive Programs which commence in Fall 2020. Topics will include the Distance Learning Executive MBA; the EMBA in Health Care Management; and Master of Human Resource Management. The session will be held in the Learning Resource Center, 124B. To attend, please RSVP http://www2.shidler.hawaii.edu/executive/info-session. For more information about this and other University Center programs at KCC, contact 245-8330 or uckauai@hawaii.edu
• The KCC Math Department recently put on its annual Summer Boot Camp which consisted of five days of intensive math instruction for new and continuing students under the guidance of Math instructors Gigi Drent and Pomai Burkart. In addition to learning not to fear math, the 37 students of the program learned a variety of skills, including overall conceptual understanding of math; visual representations of relationships between quantities; and the solving of math word problems that have potential application in students’ everyday lives. Students had the option of taking the Accuplacer placement test used at KCC, and of those students, seven showed growth in their scores, ten placed into college level Mathematics.
• Dr. Steve Taylor, head of the KCC Natural Science degree program, spent the past year at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada where he taught an upper-level course on climate change for science majors. Dr. Taylor says, “Teaching at UBC provided me insight into preparing our science students for transfer, such as the level of expectations, challenges, and capability of students. The experience will help our efforts to prepare a larger and stronger STEM workforce in Hawaii.”
• Music professor Greg Shepherd spent a year-long sabbatical writing the music, song lyrics, and script for an original musical based loosely on the book “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse. The full-length musical will have its premiere at the KCC Performing Arts Center in May, 2020. Information: Greg Shepherd, 245-8269 or shep@hawaii.edu.
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Greg Shepherd is a music professor at Kauai Community College.
