Ramsay Taum, a speaker at numerous Maui Economic Development Board (MEDB) events, talks about the importance of integrating Native Hawaiian cultural values in every aspect of our lives, including business and educational programs. Mentored and trained by respected kupuna (elders), Taum’s extensive background and experience in business, government and community service makes him a valuable asset in both public and private sectors. In 2013, he received the Distinguished Peacemaker Award in recognition of his long career advocating the spirit of aloha in Hawaii and around the world.
A Kamehameha Schools graduate, Taum attended the U.S. Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, and earned a B.S. degree in Public Administration from the University of Southern California. He is the founder and president of Life Enhancement Institute of the Pacific, and Director of External Relations & Community Partnerships at the University of Hawaii School of Travel Industry Management.
At a recent MEDB event, Taum discussed the importance of Hawaii’s sense of place: knowing where you are from, who you are, and where you are going. Using a lōkahi (unity) analogy, Lessons from the Reef, he described how each part of the reef works in harmony. “Often when we discuss diversity, the purpose is really to come together, in unity,” Taum explained. “Aloha is the essence of relationships in which each person is important to every other person for collective existence, working in harmony.”
Taum added, “Aloha is a way of being, a way of behaving. Aloha is more than a greeting. It is the art and spirit of giving and receiving. It is to give and not expect anything in return, to receive and not forget to give back. It speaks of sustainability and reciprocity, rights and privileges, responsibilities and obligations. Our actions must express these ways of thinking with kindness and tenderness. Ha in the words aloha and mahalo is the breath that connects us all. Knowing that ha is the spirit of the air that we all share, we realize we are connected in the spirit of community among the people of Hawaii and the world. Thus, we give thanks for all our aloha blessings.”
Defining Hawaii as Ha (life-giving breath), wai (life-giving water), and i (supreme life-giver), connects us in the presence of divine breath where we are made whole in one community. When we agree to disagree, with aloha, we find that we are truly one people.
This summer, the University of Hawaii’s Space Flight Laboratory (HSFL) was awarded one of the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief grants (GEER) to find innovative ways to teach in Hawaii. Since May 2020, thanks to a NASA Artemis Student Challenge Grant, the HSFL team has developed an educational version of a 1U (10cm on each edge) low-cost cubesat kit, including hardware, software, and educational materials to enable community college and undergraduates, with no formal aerospace program, to do aerospace research. The recent GEER Grant also allows HSFL to bring the kit to middle and high schools in Hawaii.
“Through this grant, our team will provide participating teachers a hardware kit and a basic electronics lab kit to test their spacecraft,” said Amber Imai-Hong, HSFL Avionics Engineer Outreach Specialist. “Educators will be required to participate in an online UH course, at no cost, to provide them with technical knowledge and assistance integrating the kit into their curriculum. As with many scholastic robotics and science fair competitions, HSFL will host a design challenge for the students where they can develop a mission concept around Earth observation, and test their ideas using the Artemis CubeSat kit. There will not be awards; however, we will host an online symposium in April 2022 where the students can present their mission concepts, including designs and modifications to the kit, testing procedures, and results, to engineers from around the state.”
These current projects were inspired by Hiapo, a 1U cubesat satellite built and launched by a group of Hawaii students and staff at the Hawaii Science and Technology Museum. When HSFL was approached in 2019 to build an affordable 1U cubesat, they jumped at the opportunity to reach out to community members. “We were able to train over 30 students at UH and an additional 20 students in grades 3-12,” said Imai-Hong. “The satellite launched on the Firefly Alpha on September 2, 2021, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California — it was an excellent training experience. The entire Hiapo team are already talking about the mission and design of our next satellite!”
We are reaching out to educators at public, private, and charter schools who may want to integrate this open-ended project-based learning into their classrooms. For more information, email outreach@hsfl.hawaii.edu.
Student Space Day went virtual at the 22nd Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies Conference (AMOS) with guest speaker NASA Astronaut United States Space Force Col. Michael Hopkins. Presented by the Maui Economic Development Board (MEDB) STEMworks™ Program, the popular event for Hawaii’s STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) students, drew over 350 youth in grades K-12. Streaming live from AMOS, teachers and students heard a video and talk about Hopkins’ time on the International Space Station (ISS).
Most recently, Hopkins served as Commander of the Crew-1 mission, SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle named Resilience, which landed on May 2, 2021. He also served as Flight Engineer on the ISS for Expedition 64. In his talk, he engaged students and made the material accessible with student friendly language using ‘Baby Yoda’ as a co-host. The presentation gave a glimpse into the day-to-day life of an astronaut who accumulated 168 days in space with five spacewalks.
“A wide-range of experiments across all scientific fields are being done on the space station,” Hopkins explained. “Scientists focus on research revolving around human health and physiology, agriculture and much more. Examples include: understanding how plants grow in microgravity; how technology can improve liquid movement in space; and how long spaceflight affects the human body. These experiments play a crucial role in planning for future deep space travel.”
Wendy Wells, Lihikai Elementary Science and Math Curriculum Support, said, “The students had many questions for Col. Hopkins such as why the return pods land in water and about weight in space. One student was particularly fascinated by the fact that they were growing plants in space. Another was asking about how long it took to build the rockets used to get to the ISS. Even if students are not inspired to go to space themselves, they could see all the connections to other professions and skills. It is life-changing for any child to feel that their interest or talent may have a use in something as fantastic as space. It motivates us as teachers to provide as many of those experiences as we can.”
I have worked with MEDB’s STEMworks for many years. I am so grateful for the extensive, relevant, and high-quality opportunities they provide.
Wendy Wells, Lihikai Elementary Science and Math Curriculum Support
The East Maui Animal Refuge (EMAR), a kindhearted nonprofit, was established to care for any animal, domestic, farm or wildlife, in distress, when no individual or other organization is available to deliver the necessary care. “We provide this care at no charge to the individual or group who rescued the animal,” said Sylvan Schwab, EMAR Executive Director and co-founder. “Any financial assistance provided to us is given freely as a donation to support the mission of the Refuge.”
EMAR began in 1977 as a unique therapy program for Suzie Schwab, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Sylvan, her husband, noticed that her caring for an injured bird gave Suzie the strength to fight her illness, and so he began bringing home more animals in need of her loving care. Consequently, her therapy program developed into EMAR, a unique rehabilitation center with 300-500 animals being cared for at any given time; 365 days a year. “Incredibly, for 41 years the love Suzie showered upon the animals contributed to her recovery from cancer until her passing in 2018,” Sylvan explained. “Suzie’s compassion and love for the animals inspired and sustained EMAR’s mission. Since most of the animals have come to us with injuries or ‘boo boos’ of one type or another, EMAR is also known as the ‘Boo Boo Zoo.’”
Licensed by the state to rehabilitate animals, EMAR continues to care for animals that are unwanted, have been abused or abandoned, or cannot be cared for properly. “We provide a sanctuary where they can live out their lives happy and loved,” Sylvan said. “Our committed volunteers work tirelessly to sustain our organization, many of whom have been with us for over ten years.” Sylvan’s vision is to one day start a Community Veterinary Clinic, with a veterinarian that lives on-site. He reflected, “Many people cannot afford emergency veterinary services, which are presently extremely expensive on Maui. I have always felt that if you do the right thing, the universe will support you. We are not about money; we are about life. We are doing what is pono and that’s what matters.”
I am grateful to all those in the community who help the animals in whatever way they can.” Visit us at: www.eastmauianimalrefuge.org for more information.
Sylvan Schwab, EMAR Executive Director and co-founder
Presented by the Maui Economic Development Board (MEDB), the 22nd Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies (AMOS) Conference, was hybrid this year, having both in-person and virtual components. The premier technical conference in the nation devoted to Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and Space Domain Awareness (SDA), offered a cross-section of government, academic, and private-sector participation to help foster dialogue and international collaboration.
“Thanks to the meticulous health and safety planning by our MEDB Conference Team, we were able to move forward,” said Leslie Wilkins, MEDB President and CEO. “The health and well-being of participants was our highest priority while maintaining the important dialogue and networking opportunities the AMOS Conference is known for. This year, having a hybrid conference allowed our international partners to participate in building collaborations, partnerships, and protocols for good actors in the space domain.”
In addition to the technical sessions, the AMOS Conference included keynote speakers, SSA policy forums, exhibit sessions, technical short courses and networking events. The policy forums, organized in collaboration with Secure World Foundation, were held after the keynote at the start of each day, of the 3-day conference. These sessions brought together the developers and implementers of SSA capabilities and the architects of SSA policy to explore international issues related to space sustainability.
In collaboration with the American Astronautical Society (AAS), the AMOS Conference provided participating authors the opportunity to be published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Astronautical Sciences. At the close of the conference, AAS recognized outstanding efforts by presenting an award for Best Student Paper to Shaylah Mutschler, University of Colorado, Boulder and Best Paper to Maui resident Dr. Channing Chow II, founder and CEO of Cloudstone Innovations LLC.
Chow reflected, “On behalf of myself and my coauthors, we were honored to receive the 2021 AMOS Conference Best Paper Award. We are humbled to be selected amongst a host of such high-quality papers. The AMOS Conference brings together a truly unique juxtaposition of academia, industry, and government working collaboratively towards space safety, security, and exploration. Every year AMOS provides the opportunity to share innovative concepts, challenge stagnant norms, and showcase the latest advances in research and development.”
Space is indispensable to every aspect of daily life. During a live virtual SSA Roundtable preceding the AMOS Conference, experts addressed the current growth of objects in space and the long-term sustainability of the space environment.
Maui lost one of its true characters and treasures this last June with the passing away of Peter Damon Baldwin. A scion of the longtime Maui Baldwin family, Peter was the fourth generation to head Haleakala Ranch and Dairy, and was actively involved in community and business leadership throughout his life.
In addition to his credentials as rancher – Peter was inducted into the Paniolo Hall of Fame — Peter was a family man, inveterate prankster, and consummate athlete. In his younger years he was a standout high school athlete in baseball, basketball and tennis, and at university his Cornell polo team won the Collegiate National title. He represented the U.S. in polo, won numerous national tournaments, and his Maui polo teams were a dominant force in the sport. Another passion was roping and rodeo, dating from his All-Round Cowboy title at the Makawao Rodeo in 1968 and competing in the Calgary Stampede. Peter even won the annual Maui Golf Championship four years a row in the 1960s.
The community contribution of which he was most proud was founding the Maui Youth Soccer Organization (MYSO) in 1976, the first organized soccer league on Maui. His Haleakala Dairy sponsored its inaugural year, providing uniforms and equipment for 600 youth participants. Soccer on Maui has never looked back. The Dairy also sponsored a week-long football camp for hundreds of keiki in the early 70s that featured Roman Gabriel, Merlin Olsen and several members of the LA Rams.
Another of his community accomplishments was a to lead the fundraising campaign for the J. Walter Cameron Center in Wailuku. As a savvy and successful businessman, Peter held numerous company directorships, including Bank of Hawaii, Hawaiian Airlines, and Maui Land and Pine. He was also involved in developing the Kihei Safeway center, Piilani Villages, and the Maui Tech Park in Kihei. Peter was an expert delegator – he liked to say that his guiding principle was to hire people who were better than him and knew more than he did.
Makalapua Waring, the wife of Peter’s right-hand man at Haleakala Dairy, Dick Waring, sums Peter up best: “Peter treats everyone the same way. He’s been one of the good guys – he’s done so much for so many for so long.”
Hawaii residents contributed to key space-related discussions at the 4th annual EMER-GEN Conference. This year’s program, presented by the Maui Economic Development Board (MEDB) was the first hybrid event, with both in-person and livestream components. A joint initiative of the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies Conference and the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC), the EMER-GEN experience offered mentoring, networking, professional development sessions and scholarships for university students and young professionals, ages 18-35.
“MEDB was honored to be a platform for dialogue for the 2021 EMER-GEN cohort,” said Leslie Wilkins, MEDB President and CEO. “This experience provides a significant pathway into future careers.” The 2021 program was filled with critical-thinking exercises, including three pre-event webinars fostering innovation and entrepreneurship among the cohort. They were also challenged to solve problems through a hack-a-thon and consensus-building session to help create new opportunities for space-based technologies.
Along with MEDB, three young professionals helped shape the program. Two representatives nominated by SGAC, Quentin Verspieren, Space Policy Researcher with the University of Tokyo, and Christine Dubbert, a Project Engineer with York Space Systems, were joined by Maui resident Micah Nishimoto, an undergraduate student of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Southern California.
“I was humbled to be part of the organizing team,” said Nishimoto. “EMER-GEN is a great opportunity to learn about space engineering, space policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Our guest speakers, Ramsay Taum, Life Enhancement Institute of the Pacific, LLC, and Dave Baiocchi, Imaginative Futures, tied all of these important topics to native Hawaiian culture and values.”
Katlynn Vicuna, UH Hawaii Space Flight Laboratory, added, “I enjoyed the interactions among the diverse cohort, and applaud the mentor session. Presently, I am not sure which career path I want to follow. It truly helped to talk to mentors from academia, military, and industry.
Mentor Tom Kubancik, Trusted Space, Inc., said, “EMER-GEN is important. Each year the program enriches the cohort’s effectiveness to work in a global environment. Our industry is strengthened when we are inclusive and incorporate the ideas of every age group and nationality. This cohort is bright and smart. I learned a lot from them!”
MEDB has successfully evolved the EMER-GEN program over the years. They keep it fresh while staying true to its roots in terms of development of the young intelligent people in our industry.
Tom Kubancik, EMER-GEN Mentor, Trusted Space, Inc.
A pair of Maui musicians, five-time Grammy Award winner George Kahumoku Jr. and KAOI radio host Cindy Paulos, a UNESCO Cross-Cultural and Peace Crafters Award winner, teamed with musician and filmmaker Rupam Sarmah to produce a special CD release titled Aum─Aloha Blessings. Kahumoku said, “Throughout the CD the aloha chant connects our ha (breath) with the aina (land) and the kai (ocean) creating lokahi (harmony) and peace between man, the creatures of the earth, the plants, and the fruits and vegetables that sustain us.”
Using music for uplifting, redirecting, and reflecting the emotions is vital to improve wellbeing during these challenging times. “The stress of Covid made me turn to the creative side within me to find something positive to do to counter the flood of bad news and fear that was present in the news,” said Paulos. “It felt so good creating this project in a time of such need. The results are direct and immediate.”
The new release, Aum─Aloha Blessings, is available in stereo and Dolby Atmos® on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Tidal, and other platforms. It has 154 minutes of eight tracks plus an additional eight instrumental tracks for meditation. “The divine sound is music for the soul,” Kahumoku emphasized. “The chanting and healing energies from around the world are over 7000 years old.”
Aum─Aloha Blessingswas inspired by Sarmah’s visit to Maui when he showed his film One LittleFinger at the McCoy theater. His feature film made history with a cast of over eighty persons with disabilities. “One Little Finger is not just a film,” said Kahumoku. “It’s a movement to promote inclusion and diversity to break the barriers of stigma in disability. I worked on the project long-distance during the pandemic with over 100 musicians to create the blending of Indian music with Hawaiian chant and spoken-word invocation.”
Sarmah reflected, “The aloha tradition combined with ancient mantras produces forward-thinking creations of sound. The music compositions will help in meditation, yoga, and healing our minds, with proceeds going to the nonprofit One Little Finger Global Foundation. Our work reflects the message of oneness, peace, and aloha.”
We get to know each other through music. It brings joy amid the pandemic and it is a wonderful way to connect us.
Maui resident Rinko Jeffers, a recipient of the Nihon Bunka Award in 2019, is a gifted haiku master poet. The Award recognizes individuals for their excellence and contributions to the Japanese arts and culture and for their unselfish willingness to share their talents with the community Jeffers aloha and knowledge have been key to her success in bringing the joy of haiku to so many poets writing in Japanese and English alike. In 1996, following her 14-year employment with the United Nations in Japan and Africa, Jeffers co-established the Maui Hototogisu Haiku-kai Club, which she continues to lead. In 2009, she started the Maui Haiku Poetry in English Club. Chancellor of UH, Emeritus, Dr. Clyde Sakamoto, is the honorable resident of both haiku groups.
To Jeffers, enjoying life with haiku is to consciously appreciate the energy in our natural environment. Haiku poetry, a type of short-form poetry originally from Japan, consists of three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. It is a unique form of art between the author and the readers.
“A haiku verse must be written about something that caught the author’s attention for a flash of a second, something that nature presents,” Jeffers explained. “The moon, the flowers, the birds, the wind, and mundane human activities are all there, all the time, around us. But at odd moments, something may hit us unexpectedly, leading us to an aha! moment, a re-recognition of self. To evoke such deep feelings is the essence of haiku writing, and we share that moment. It is a condensed form of a conversation between human souls, between the author and the readers, similar to the effect of emoji.”
Jeffers, a volunteer at the Maui Friends of the Library, also provides introductory haiku classes to third and fourth grade students at Paia, Waihee and Lihikai Elementary Schools. She reflected, “Sometimes, by invitation of the teachers, I introduce haiku to the children in their class as a community service. The students seem to enjoy trying to write haiku. They realize they too are great poets. I have received many thank-you letters from them.”
To write haiku, we just keep on trying to catch the moment and keep practicing, writing with our own language in this short and poetic form.
Today in Hawaii, science-minded students, like the ancient celestial navigators, look to the sky to understand what is going on in the cosmos. For over a decade, the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy’s (IfA) Hawaii Student Teacher Astronomy Research (HI STAR) program has attracted middle and high school students from across the state. Led by Dr. James “JD” Armstrong, IfA Maui Technology Education and Outreach Specialist, HI STAR introduces students to the basic practices of science – exploring, going out and discovering new things, and adding to humanity’s understanding of the universe.
Despite the pandemic, Dr. Armstrong and his team, interacting through online Zoom meetings, were able to run the 2021 HI STAR program. An advantage to holding the program online was that researchers from around the world were able to give instruction in their areas of expertise. While the group missed meeting together, the program was a great success.
“A highlight of my job is mentoring students and assisting them with their science projects,” said Armstrong. “Using Astrometrica, a software tool that calculates precise positions of the celestial bodies, students can remotely observe the sky as it is seen from different parts of the earth. They can analyze collected image data, as well as watch an asteroid make a fly-by of the earth. Fourteen students attended and worked on projects ranging from solar rotation to active galactic nuclei.”
One student reflected, “The HI STAR program felt like somewhere I truly belonged. It was a pleasure meeting new people that had my same interests and discovering extraordinary objects in space together. Dr. Armstrong helped me with sorting out how the physics works which brought me a step closer to my dream of becoming a professional astronomer. I am so thankful for this opportunity!”
Another student added, “Dr. Armstrong has encouraged my interest in hypervelocity stars; stars thought to originate when a binary system encounters the supermassive black holes in our Milky Way. He has motivated me to better understand the age and classification of these stars and has given me the confidence to think that I could actually discover something new about the universe!”
Since the end of the 2021 HI STAR session, several of the students have received high honors at science fairs and their work has been in the press.
Dr. JD Armstrong, UH IfA Technology Education and Outreach Specialist
