At the recent University of Hawai‘i (UH) Board of Regents meeting on March 28th, President David Lassner unveiled the renewal of the UH System’s sustainability and resilience initiative efforts by showing an exciting, fast-paced video that was well-received by the standing-room only crowd at Kapiolani Community College.
The five-minute video, produced by the UH Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation, was the result of over five months of interviews and filming with key UH faculty and administrators involved in different and diverse facets of sustainability and resilience research, curriculum, operations and community engagement, all involving deep cultural connections.
“When we embarked on this project to reaffirm UH’s commitment sustainability and resilience, we anticipated on featuring three to four key individuals,” said UH Vice President for Research and Innovation Vassilis L. Syrmos. “However, as the project developed, we began to realize the complexities and often interwoven efforts made it a necessity to expand the scope of the video to include a larger cross section of individuals to provide a better perspective on the depth and scale of work being done at UH in this vital area.”
With erupting volcanoes, frozen summits, tropical rainforests, deep canyons, coral atolls and the deep ocean, Hawai‘i is one of the most geographically diverse locations in the world. This is what gives UH a distinct advantage in research over other institutions.
“It is this backdrop that gives the University of Hawai‘i the perfect working laboratory to conduct research and to develop a new cadre of scientists, scholars and practitioners well-versed in sustainability and resilience,” added Syrmos. “It is our strong belief that UH’s collaborative efforts across our ten-campus system in research, curriculum, operations, and community engagement with deep cultural connections — will serve as a model for sustainability and resilience not only here in Hawai‘i, but across the globe.”
Individuals featured in the video (listed in order of appearance):
- David Lassner, President, UH System
- Matthew Lynch, Director of Sustainability Initiatives, UH System
- Makena Coffman, Director, Institute for Sustainability and Resilience, UH Mānoa
- Ray Shirkhodai, Executive Director Pacific Disaster Center Global
- Chip Fletcher, Associate Dean, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, UH Mānoa
- Kamana Beamer, Associate Professor, Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, UH Mānoa
- Gwen Jacobs, Program Director, ‘Ike Wai, UH System
- Albie Miles, Assistant Professor, Sustainable Community Food Systems, UH West O‘ahu
- Lorna Tsutsumi, Professor, Entomology, College of Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resource Management, UH Hilo
- Leon Roose, Chief Technologist, GridSTART, Hawai‘i Natural Energy Institute (HNEI), UH Mānoa
- Patrick Cross, Program Manager, Ocean Energy, HNEI, UH Mānoa