Connecting Learning, Life and Aloha
‘O ka ‘imi na‘auao, ke ola a me ke aloha kā kākou e huliāmahi ai

UH Hilo Strategic Planning

Meeting Notes - September 29, 2020

Relationships Committee Meeting: Tuesday, September 29 at 11:30am

Present: Makamae Kamaka-Mauhili, Kealiʻi Beck, Julie Mowrer, Justina Mattos, Pat Guillen, Kathleen Baumgardner

Meeting purpose: Digging deeper into our identified projects. We started moving beyond what we could do, to determine what we should do. The discussion was focused on the identified projects.

A UH Hilo Version of The Moth

The idea: A series of themed events that create a stage for storytelling in our community, breaking barriers and helping people to find common ground and appreciation for each other while empowering members of our community (on and off campus) to share their stories.

  • How often would the event occur? Monthly, quarterly, once each semester? It could be that we open the effort with more episodes early in order to build community on campus rapidly. Or, we could get our bearings on this after we get deeper into the details.
  • Venue or virtual? Virtual for now. We might be able to present the talks on stage at the Performing Arts Center (similar to Live from the Empty Palace at the Palace Theater).
  • Who does what? We will invite UH Hilo’s English Club and the Vulcan Video Club to partner with us, so this is a campus community effort. Pat also suggested applying for a student intern to help with project and committee logistics.
  • What is the best platform to present this virtual event? There are many options to explore. Maile may have ideas.
  • Guidelines for stories? We should set guidelines for story length/content.
  • Do we offer coaching? We would connect storytellers with coaches if they are interested.
  • Might there be an award for people’s choice? There could be a people’s choice award for each episode. After a year, the people’s choice selectees would come together for a capstone event, featuring the people’s choice speakers telling new stories.
  • Who are potential storytellers and audience members? Students, faculty staff, community members, alumni, research partners, etc. This may be a great opportunity to reconnect with alums.
  • What do we name this event / effort? Who should name it?

Action items for this storytelling-based project:

  • Justina will reach out to the English Club to see if they are interested in taking the lead on seeking out stories based on event themes, taking storyteller applications, as well as vetting and selecting talks. Kirsten Mollegaard is the advisor.
  • Julie will reach out to Maile Boggeln to discuss potential platforms.
  • Kathleen will reach out to Joseph Sanchez, advisor of Vulcan Video Productions, in order to open a discussion about partnership.
  • Julie will look into The Moth’s guidelines for content and report back.
  • Pat will contact Andrey Simonov who is the UH Hilo Internship Coordinator to get information about a student intern through a for credit internship class (3 units).
  • Justina will ask about the use of the Performing Arts stage for the virtual event.
  • Makamae will reach out to Darlene at the Kīpuka Center and begin a discussion about the name of this effort.

“Break Room” Events

The idea: Create informal spaces and opportunities for connection across campus.

Who has participated in good online events?

  • UH System Sustainability - break out rooms, active chat, a shared document that you contribute to and walk away with
  • A large conference - set up like school with a homeroom at the start and end of day with a facilitator, live chat, opportunity to raise your hand. The content in between was pre recorded.
  • Once-a-week happy hour that started out strong at the beginning of the pandemic, but attendance dropped off as people established new routines.

Would you participate in another Zoom event? Probably not.

For now, this effort will be put on the back burner, until in-person events are possible.

Database of Collaborative Projects / Efforts / Interests

The idea: facilitate new collaborations between the University and community, provide a way for students to seek out mentors, and showcase collaborations between UH Hilo and the community through a searchable, interactive database with an outward-facing website.

Julie and the Center for Community Engagement started researching the options for developing a database. They applied and were accepted to the American Democracy Project, "Engagement in Times of Crisis." UH Hilo will be able to use Collaboratory, a database created by university engagement professionals to document, track, assess, and report on their engagement projects. Julie has a meeting with Joseph Sanchez, director of UH Hilo’s library, and Brad Thiessen, UH Hilo’s Director of Institutional Research, next week. CCE will begin work on collecting data in October and could use the committee's help.

A university that has developed robust resources is University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Community/University Partnership Day

The idea: Build collaborative efforts to solve some of the challenges we face on the Island through an opportunity-based event bringing people together from on and off campus

The cohort of Engaged Scholars feel very strongly about the partnership fair. The cohort has been extended to a second year.

The key to success is discovering the needs to fill. Needs are typically found through one-on-one relationships so it has been a slow process. We need to build engagement beyond one-off efforts.

Example of a strong partnership: Todd Inouye’s capstone class in the College of Business that has resulted in long-term relationships with community organizations resulting in projects, internships, etc.

This effort could be done virtually through a collection of videos. It could be announced to the faculty in Spring, matches made, talk story. This spring event and matching would then result in partnerships evolving in the Fall semester. Is the Chamber a resource for identifying projects?

Action item for this project-based partnership effort:

  • Keali‘i will ask community members for ideas about their needs and how to best identify community needs.

    At this point in the discussion, the 90 minute meeting time had expired. The other potential project on the committee’s radar was not discussed - an Exhibit or Presentation of Faculty Work, intended to showcase faculty works in order to build healthy relationships between faculty and students. We will pick up this discussion at a later date.