FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Tara Hicks, SOEST Outreach Specialist
(808) 956-3151, cell: (808) 429-7007, hickst@hawaii.edu
First graduates from UH Earth System
Science Immersion course for Native Hawaiian and disadvantaged minority
students
The Summer Immersion
Course in Earth System Science for Native Hawaiian Students and Disadvantaged
Minority Students is a 6-week intensive course held at the University of Hawaii
at Manoa and at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology at Coconut Island. The
main objective of the course is to offer exposure to Earth System Science, a
field little touched upon in traditional high school and college curricula, to
students of disadvantaged minorities, including native Hawaiians.
15
high school students and recent graduates will complete this certificate course
on Friday, August 2nd. During the 6-week course, students attended
lectures, performed laboratory work, participated in a variety of field trips
and conducted field experimental work in ocean/marine and Earth science and
ecology. Field trip locations included Heeia pond, Coconut Island, Manoa
Stream, Ala Wai Canal, Koko Crater Botanical Gardens, and Ordy pond.
Each
student was provided with a stipend of $1500, allowing for the students to
attend this course in place of a summer job. Some of the reasons students
participated in the course include;
-
“It gives me a good taste of what college
level science will have in store for me in the future” Justin Konia, 17.
-
“It’s pretty cool, you get paid to learn”
Brandon Lum, 16, from Maui
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“Looks good on college resumes” Maile
Nuuhiwa, 17
-
“Good opportunity for us” Nicole Chu, 17
Dr. Eric DeCarlo, one
of the organizers of the course, feels this course “teaches kids an integrated
approach to earth science that they won’t get in high school”. One of the other
organizers of the course, Dr. Fred Mackenzie hopes that the course will
“encourage native Hawaiians to go on in science”.
The course was funded
in full by the NOAA Sea Grant College Program,
and supported by the School of Ocean & Earth Sciences & Technology
(SOEST) and the Global Environmental Science (GES) program in the Oceanography department.
For
more information contact:
Dr.
Eric DeCarlo (808) 956-6473 edecarlo@soest.hawaii.edu
Dr.
Fred T. Mackenzie, (808) 956-6344 fredm@soest.hawaii.edu