Chancellor's Corner

Welcome Back

Our spring break closure went smoothly, and I hope you all had some well-deserved rest and relaxation!   I have several exciting things to share this week.

Successful Accreditation Visit for our Culinary Program

Please join me in saying congratulations to the Culinary Program for a very successful accreditation visit!  At the exit interview, the ACF accreditation team listed numerous strengths of the program, a few small suggestions and told us that there are NO areas of noncompliance!!!  Some, but not all, of the strengths they noted are:

• the attentiveness of our students
• the support of the community
• the quality of student-instructor interaction
• the professional demeanor of our 2nd year students
• the summer high school culinary institute
• the strong culinary team

So thanks to all of you in the Culinary Program for our hard work and dedication to your students, your profession and KCC.  And Hip, Hip Hurray to you all!!!!!!

PV Panels now generate electricity!

During spring break we were able to flip and switch and begin to generate our own power.  Our OSC panels can generate over 6% of our total power needs when conditions are optimal.  Right now we are trying to set up a display in the One Stop Center and on our website so that everyone can see just how much power we are generating real time. So soon when you come to get your mail, you can also check out our power production!

Follow-up on the Sustainable Living Institute

I want to thank you all for your great brainstorming on March 5 on our Sustainable Living Center.  I have now compiled what you all came up with and will be sending it out to you  today and put it on the website under the Chancellor's Office.  There are some really great ideas in the list!  Those of you who wanted to be on advisory team for this initiative will be meeting with me before the end of semester, so we can make sense of the brainstormed list and suggest some directions for the initiative.  At that point we'll share with the campus where we are and pull in external members to be on the team who can help us move forward in the directions we have targeted.  From having spoken to those in community, I can tell you that there is real excitement about this initiative and even the American Culinary Federation accreditation team noted that their standards are changing in the future to make sure students know about sustainability issues and learn sustainable practice.  We can be at the forefront of making Kauai economically, environmentally and socially sustainable and at the same time train our students for future employment!

New Happenings at the One Stop CenterNext time you come to get your mail at the OSC, you'll notice some improvements.

We now have a greeter at the One Stop Center one hour a week to welcome guests and help them find their way. Please welcome Joshua Iloreta who joins us from the Kapaa High School. Joshua will be greeting people on Wednesdays from 10-11 at least through the end of the DOE school year.

We have a wonderful new painting, "The Gathering Place," on permanent loan from our very own Kyungsoo Lee! It has added lots of color and light to the OSC lobby and created a warm, inviting atmosphere. Please come take a look and thank Kyungsoo when you have a chance.