The July 2004 issue of the BYU-Hawaii Alumni eNewsletter includes:
The new BYU-Hawaii Center for Instructional Technology and Outreach (CITO) has recently combined the media lab, the Academic Center for Excellence, the Division of Continuing Education and the Center for Instructional Technology (CIT) under one administration, headed by Dean Bob Hayden ('86, Accounting), to better provide media capabilities to students and alumni throughout the target area.
 |
Hayden |
Hayden's appointment, which was briefly announced in the May newsletter, is part of a larger reorganization of BYU-Hawaii computer-related entities which included Brett Ellis taking over Hayden's former position as Dean of the School of Computing and Jim Nilson replacing Ellis as the University's Chief Information Officer.
In addition to his overall CITO administrative role, Hayden explained he will oversee the former Continuing Education division and the former Academic Center for Excellence. Alumni Gael Weberg ('70, Elementary Education) and Dr. Peter Yee-Kong Chan ('95, Information Systems) will work in the Center for Instructional Technology, based in the Library. Former Division of Continuing Education Associate Dean Theresa Kalama Bigbie ('58, Music) plans to retire at the end of the year.
"It all came together at the same time," said Hayden. "CITO is a business entity within an academic surrounding that is taking technology and providing curriculum opportunities throughout our target audience."
"Over the last four or five years, BYU-Hawaii has built an infrastructure that is poised and ready to deliver. The University, under the direction of Dr. Brett Ellis, has matured technologically and is now ready to be fine tuned. We're going to be ready to deliver in January: knowledge, direction, education and opportunity to our target audience. We can help them prepare to come to college and also keep them informed when they leave."
CITO targets near-graduate alumni
Hayden noted that one of CITO's first objectives is "to reach alumni who have not finished their degrees for one reason or another. We have gone into the registrar's office over the past three-to-four months and listed about 1,100 names of alumni who have not completed their degree for one reason or another."
He explained CITO's next step is "developing a method of identifying those courses not taken that can be offered online, so these alumni can satisfy their graduation requirements."
"Obviously, that's a broad statement. For example, let's say an individual is missing English 315. We'll connect with BYU in Provo, find a course that's acceptable on our campus, and make that course available online."
Hayden added that BYU-Hawaii allows eight years from admission as a standard time frame for catalog completion, "but we may consider those who have been away from school longer than that."
He praised alumnus Alan Uyehara ('68, Asian Studies), "who has been very, very key in setting up the degree opportunity project as a consultant."
CITO will soon start to contact these alumni.
Touching the campus in a nontraditional fashion
"The idea is that the outreach part of CITO is poised to work with our constituents, who have an opportunity to be touched in a nontraditional fashion," Hayden continued. He said this involves:
"These will not be correspondence courses," Hayden said. "They will be technologically delivered, which means we'll use computers to deliver and monitor success. The materials might be delivered on a CD or a DVD, or even be Internet based.
"For example, Dr. Keith Roberts is considering credit-based course offerings for educators across the country who want to learn more about the cultural implications of teaching within an international setting," Hayden said. "So, we'll invite them to come here for a three-to-four-week class where they would experience both immersion in the subject as well as interact with each other."
Hayden said that in support of CITO and other University objectives, BYU-Hawaii enhancement of other media-delivering opportunities, even though we're going to leverage Provo's capabilities as much as we can. Technology and digital delivery are critical at this stage.
"Having those capabilities on our campus will greatly enhance what we can do at a distance," he said, adding that BYU-Hawaii has also "already established an instructional design and development minor, which comes under CITO and as an emphasis in Information Systems. This is a continuation of the multi-media lab, which will now include the theory of design. If you're going to build something to deliver, it has to have good design and curriculum theory behind it."
"In a nutshell, Continuing Education is alive and well," Hayden continued. "Our objective is to provide the best quality education that is possible to serve the community; and to invite customers from Asia and the Pacific to experience BYU-Hawaii by working with the Dean of the School of Education, the School of Business and the College of Arts and Sciences."
"We're primarily going to broker courses that have already been developed. If there's a need for a unique course, we'll develop it here; but first we're going to do everything we can to leverage what's already been done through our sister institutions. We don't want to re-invent the wheel," Hayden said, pointing out this includes the "huge independent studies program" at BYU in Provo. "We're going to do everything we can to expand that to our target audience.
"These ideas have been here for a long time," Hayden stressed. "Great work has been done in the past. Many people have been working on components: Theresa Bigbie did a wonderful job of setting the stage. Dwight Miller, Gael Weberg, and Ed Jensen have done wonderful work in getting us ready."
"BYU-Hawaii has also matured tremendously," said Hayden, recalling that when he graduated in '86 the computer lab had 35 computers with 20-megabyte hard drives, 5.25 and 3.5-inch floppy drives; and big changes really didn't start to happen until four or five years ago."
"We now have the opportunity to expand these programs off-campus because of technology. As we approach the jubilee, we're ready to move into the next 50 years."
Hayden pointed out that some of the work is already underway. CITO employee Paul Hong-Choon Jean ('95, Travel Management) "has enlivened the Asian community to understand what BYU-Hawaii is. He's responsible for the Pacific and Asia. Great credit also goes to the Polynesian Cultural Center and their work through the Asian Executive Management Program."
"Lei (Kalama) Cummings ('86, Computer Information) now works in our program. "She's responsible for marketing BYU-Hawaii to Hawaii and the mainland. David Wade ('93, Information Systems) is currently in the midst of his Ph.D. program, but we use him to work with the Church and with Provo as this program grows. His Ph.D. will be in instructional technology. Peter Chan, who was in the School of Education, is responsible for assisting the faculty and department with instructional development and design."
For example, Hayden said Chan, Wade and four Mongolian students recently returned from Mongolia where they designed and developed an ethnography package that "brought professionals from a technology university and a health sciences university together to learn how to build a CD that rural doctors will use to study how to do surgical procedures. The four students, under the direction of one of our BYU-Hawaii professors, will complete that project this fall."
"Gael Weberg is responsible for curriculum development and the mentoring of our contingent of graduate students from Provo and Utah State who assists BYU-Hawaii in developing curriculum to be used technologically. We're into our second group of students on this project," Hayden continued.
He added that the group's English as a second language software that will be used on campus starting July 27th to teach 80 Chinese high school students and 40 other students from Asia.
"BYU-Hawaii and Liahona High School in Tonga are also partnered to examine the infrastructure of technology to deliver curriculum there," David Wade is the lead person on this project; but the Tongan project would not be where it is today without the alumni."
Dean Hayden sees that alumni will continue to play an important role in the development of CITO concepts and programs. "I can see if we're successful with the projects we've got going now, there will be even more to come in the future," he said.
"BYU-Hawaii is ready to touch the lives of our constituents prior to, during and subsequent to a BYU-Hawaii experience. To me, that's what makes the difference between an average institution and the University."
"We're truly interested in our students before they come, while they're here, and after they leave. That message reverberates through the faculty, administration and staff."
Aloha to our alumni family,
It's an honor and a privilege to serve the Alumni Association as its president. I particularly want to thank outgoing president, Mike Foley ('70, TESL) and recognize the initiatives that have already been put in place.
 |
Steward |
Now we have the opportunity to prepare our association for its next 50 years. As we look to the future, this is a wonderful time to build on our past accomplishments:
Please check out the schedule of activities for our Golden Jubilee. We especially invite everyone back for the major activities from October 16-23, 2005. We encourage chapters to develop a travel package for interested alumni.
These are exciting times for the campus and the Alumni Association. We invite all of you to participate in some way in building a lasting relationship with BYU-Hawaii.
Warmest regards,
Les
Steward
President, (Ô72, Accounting and Business Management)
Professor Ron Jackson passes away:
We're sorry to announce that psychology professor Ron Jackson, who was associated
with BYU-Hawaii for 35 years, died on July 18th, following a long battle
with cancer. Read
moreÉ
Iosepa returns from the Big Island:
 |
The Iosepa, training
off Kawaihae on the Big Island of Hawaii. Photo by Monique Saenz |
With seashell trumpets blowing and a contingent of Laie kupuna [Hawaiian elders] to greet them at Hukilau Beach, the crew of BYU-Hawaii's voyaging canoe, Iosepa, returned to Laie on July 23 after two months of training with leaders and crew of the voyaging canoe Makalii at its home port of Kawaihae on the Kohala coast of the Big Island.
At a special fireside for the crewmembers on Sunday evening, July 25, BYU-Hawaii President Eric B. Shumway stressed that the whole process of creating and sailing the Iosepa "has been a sacred journey. Iosepa represents the very, very best of what Laie means, and what BYU-Hawaii, the Polynesian Cultural Center and the Temple mean. It means inclusion."
"Even though it's part of the Hawaiian Studies program, it was never exclusively Hawaiian. It was inclusively all of Polynesia, the Church and Laie," he continued, "and that aloha spirit so well represented here by our Hawaiian people was embraced and infused into every person who touched this project in any way."
Hawaiian Studies Director and Iosepa captain William K. "Uncle Bill" Wallace III ('72, History) responded by showing a picture of his ancestors who moved to the largely Hawaiian settlement of Iosepa in Utah in the 1880s Ñ the picture which inspired him to "hear the voice of my grandfather, when we were building the canoe," which told him to name the canoe Iosepa.
"Our ancestors are always with us," he continued. "They're there to help us. I think of the courage they had to not only accept the gospel but to sacrifice and give up all that they had to move from Hawaii in 1889 to Utah to be able to receive their full temple endowments."
 |
Hale Laa Blvd. |
"We're the beneficiaries of their faith," he said. "Iosepa will continue to live only as long as we can continue to maintain our faith in the gospel."
Improvements on campus, community and PCC continue:
Construction
work on the new two-foot-high blue-rock wall in front of the campus and
the Little Circle should be pau [complete] by the time
fall semester begins.
The wall design ties into the look of the new six-foot wall that now extends the length of Hale Laa Blvd. leading to the Laie Temple. Work on that project has also extended to Temple beach, where a meditation garden will soon be built. Work is also well underway on renovations to the Temple Visitors Center.
Meanwhile, the Polynesian Cultural Center is poised to start up its third luau facility where the old Hale Kuai used to be. The Center's luau dinner-show has been extremely popular this past year, and both seatings in the new Hale Aloha (the original PCC theater) and the Hale ÔOhana (behind the IMAX Theater) have frequently been sold out this summer. When not needed for luau seating, the new Hale Kuai will be available for special group dinners and events.
'Genuine Gold' project:
Recent graduate Debra
Renoso ('04, ICS: Communications) has joined the BYU-Hawaii University
Advancement team and is working with the 50th anniversary "genuine gold"
project, which she explains in the following request:
As part of the legacy of the University and in preparation for the 50th anniversary of BYU-Hawaii, University Advancement is collecting success stories from alumni, faculty, staff, students, and community members within your families, communities, and individual careers.We want to gather your unique "genuine gold" stories of contributing to international peace that will inspire and uplift others.
We believe that through these stories others will be convinced of the significance of the BYU-Hawaii experience and how it directly and indirectly ripples down to many around them.With a rallying cry, we invite all to join and contribute once again in proclaiming the mission of this school, as President David O. McKay stated during the dedicatory address, "Éthe world needs men who cannot be bought or sold, men who will scorn to violate truth Ñgenuine gold. More than that, they will be leaders."
"Genuine Gold" is what all alumni become as they share their BYU-Hawaii experiences with those around them. We desire to share the spirit of that prophecy among the alumni with the current and prospective students.
If you feel that your story is unique, or if you know of someone with a "genuine gold" story that should be shared, please contact Debra via email at dr010@byuh.edu or Celva To'a ('98, Business Teacher Education), toac@byuh.edu, and contribute to the Golden Jubilee celebration.
Interested
in serving as a chapter chair in your area?
Contact Rowena Reid a t808-293-3791 or e-mail reidr@byuh.edu or alumni@byuh.edu.
Fiji:
Polynesian Cultural Center president Von Orgill and human resources vice
president John
Muaina ('90, Human Resource Development), along with BYU-Hawaii
Dean of Admissions Jeff Bunker, will meet with Fiji alumni in Samabula
on Saturday, July 31.
Idaho:
Co-chairs Grant and
Stephanie Guinn announce the Idaho chapter is partnering with the BYU
Alumni Association, the Cougar Club, the J. Reuben Clark Law School Society
and BYU-Idaho to host a Pre-Game Party on Friday, September 24, 2004, prior
to the BYU vs. Boise State U. football game:
LDS Chapel (Broadway & Boise Ave.)
5 p.m. (pre-purchased dinner served from 6Ð7)
The game is expected to be a sell-out. Purchase tickets now by calling 1-800-322-BYU1, or go to alumnievents.byu.edu and enter code #1826. For more information, e-mail Grant, or call them at 208-855-9644.
San Francisco:
Chairman Raymond
Jou announces the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter will hold its:
Aloha Fireside
Éfeaturing Dr. Charles Goo of BYU-Hawaii International Student Services, speaking on "BYU-Hawaii Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow"
Saturday,July 31, 7-8:30 p.m.
Virginia Meetinghouse:
4705 Virginia Ave., Oakland, CA 94602
Raymond said refreshments will be served, sponsored by his employer, Asia Pacific Groups. He adds chapter leadership is also planning for its Pacific Cultural Festival, with details to come.
Utah:
The Utah chapter will support the Kahuku High Alumni
luau activity on Thursday, August 19, starting at 5:30 p.m. at Skyline High
(north end of the football field). Tickets cost $20 each, and the program
includes a performance by the Polynesian Cultural Center promo team. Local
arrangements are being handled by Larry (Ô75) and Pat
Leong, 801-292-8584; Wayne
Fonoimoana, 801-426-7957; or Ben
Au (Ô73), 801-721-7026.
The Kahuku High Red Raiders will play Skyline High on Saturday, August 21, at 8 p.m. in the University of Utah Rice Eccles Stadium. Call any of the contacts above for ticket information or purchase your tickets at the stadium box office before the game.
 |
The Kanekoas |
1970s
James "Moose" Kanekoa ('71, Business Management) and his wife, Shannon Lee Kanekoa ('71, Art Education) recently stopped by the Alumni Association office to talk story: Moose is a consultant to oil, gas and gold drilling companies and Shannon teaches English as a second language in the Reno (Nevada) School District. They both beamed as they related their most special moment at CCH, when they fasted for three days to seek assurance from the Lord that they were right for each other. "We've been married for 33 years," said Shannon. Moose quickly added, "and we are still in love as we were back then at CCH." The couple has five boys and one granddaughter, and they plan to be here for the Jubilee Celebration.
Pometi Ah You ('73, English) and his wife Nan Ellen Simmons (Ô71) wrote that their son, Benjamin, is serving in the Honolulu, Hawaii, Mission until October. "Please feed him for our sake," they ask.
1980s
Kyle ('84, Art) and Lola Alo (Ô81) have been living in Van Nuys, California, since 1985. Kyle still works in sculpture and design, and the couple is enjoying their first grandchild.
John Hester ('86, Business Information Management), the director of learning and development for Nike in Beaverton, Oregon, writes that his "oldest son, Matt and his wife Leyla, are on their way to Laie this coming fall. Matt has been accepted as a transfer student and will study computer science."
Faleula Aoelua Sappa ('89) went on to graduate in elementary education from the University of Hawaii in 2003 and now lives in Aua, American Samoa. She writes that she has been teaching at the local elementary school there for the past 10 years: "My teachers at BYU-Hawaii were patient and encouraged me to finish the course work. I enjoyed it."
1990s
Emeretta McGrath ('91, Theater), who lives in Albion, Victoria, Australia, writes that she "misses the aloha spirit. BYU-Hawaii gave me the opportunity to explore horizons that I never thought existed. It gave me great confidence in communicating with everybody and anybody. Since leaving Laie, I feel like I left a family and the truth is...I have missed my BYUH family. In retrospect, my friendships from there have remained the best and closest."
Patricia C. Rollins ('94, Elementary Education) and her husband, Ronald Rollins, was an education missionary at BYU-Hawaii from 1992-97. She writes: "After serving in Hawaii we returned to the Coeur d'Lene, Idaho, area where we served a welfare mission for two years. After a brief break we were then called as temple missionaries in Bern, Switzerland, where we have been serving since March 2003. It is our hope to make it to the big celebration in 2005. We look forward to seeing our beautiful BYUH once again and feeling the aloha spirit we grew to love so much. In the meantime, we would love to hear from any of our friends."
U.S. Army Major Roger Pukahi ('94, Business Management) is currently serving in Kandahar, Afghanistan, as an aviation maintenance officer test pilot, while his wife, Jodi Pukahi ('89) and their four sons are living in Laie. Jodi is the award-winning manager of Domino's Pizza in Laie Shopping Center.
Ricky Pudja Mak ('98, Accounting and International Business Management), is back home in Jakarta, Indonesia, where he is an internal control coordinator for the Ford credit company.
Jennifer Starr ('99) who now lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, says BYU-Hawaii "was the best learning experience of my life. I not only learned secularly, but have enhanced my life in every aspect."
2000s
Sandra Jensen Letioa ('01, Special Education), and he husband, Malaetasi Letioa, are living in Cardston, Alberta, Canada. She writes: "BYU Hawaii was the best experience of my life. My education prepared me in all aspects of my life. I have been teaching since 2001 and will currently be the new Special Education Coordinator for our entire School District (covering 16 schools ranging from Elementary to High School). Teaching has been one of the greatest rewards in my life and there is nothing that compares to being able to touch the lives of my students. And, it is my experience, professors, and the people who touched my life at BYU-Hawaii who have made it all possible. Much Mahalo's!"
Kerri LeMonds ('04, Social Work) has recently gotten a job with the Utah State Office of Rehabilitation in Provo as a vocational evaluator.
Editor's Note:
Once again BYU-Hawaii's magnificent voyaging canoe, Iosepa, provided some "chicken-skin" moments when it came back to Hukilau Beach on July 23 after being away for two months of training on the Big Island. The greetings and kisses by Hawaiian kupuna, family, friends, students, other crewmembers and community residents were simple yet fully charged with aloha spirit. It's the same spirit we all feel whenever we come back to Laie after being away. I hope you can enjoy it with us next year during the jubilee celebration.
 |
The BYU-Hawaii Alumni Newsletter is published by the University Advancement office, under the direction of Napua Baker ['59-61 and '70-72], Vice President; Rob Wakefield ['75, Asia/Pacific LTM], Director of Communications and Media Relations; and Rowena Reid ['76, Social Work], Alumni Association Director. Brigham Young University Hawaii Campus is a four-year comprehensive undergraduate institution sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. About 2,400 students from 70 nations are currently enrolled.You have received this e-newsletter because you are an affiliate of BYU-Hawaii.If necessary, please update your alumni profile. If you have received this e-mail inadvertently, or wish to unsubscribe, please send a message with NEWSLETTER UNSUBSCRIBE in the Subject line and your e-mail address in the body to alumni@byuh.edu. If you are aware of other BYU-Hawaii alumni who have not received this newsletter, please forward a copy and encourage them to update their profiles. Mahalo.
Read previous issues of the BYU-Hawaii Alumni Newsletter