 Aloha, welcome to another episode of Think Tech Hawaii's Education Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. I'm your host, Carl Campania. Many people believe that education can be the silver bullet or the linchpin that can help solve problems like homelessness, drug addiction, social divisions, and income inequality. And in Hawaii, where our many intertwined cultures cherish our keiki and do all we can to open doors for their successes, we assume that a high priority is placed on having a world-class educational system. But is it? On this show we talk about the programs available to our keiki, the quality of our facilities and infrastructure, addressing deferred maintenance, increasing the number of cool rooms for our keiki and teachers, a more comprehensive curriculum approach, as well as appropriately recognizing and valuing our teachers and administrative staff. And perhaps most importantly, what life and career opportunities are we providing for our keiki to thrive today and into the future? Welcome to the show. Today's guests are Mr. Hayden Atkins, Environmental Education Program Coordinator from KUPU, and Mr. Tyler Suboda, recent Master's graduate from UH and former Clean Transportation Fellow for RISE, a program within KUPU. Today we will learn a bit about KUPU, RISE, and some career pathways. So welcome to the show. And guys, welcome to the show. Thank you. Glad to have you here today. So okay, Hayden, tell us about KUPU. Start with what is KUPU? Yeah, so KUPU is a non-profit conservation organization. We have a number of different youth-led programs that are trying to engage youth in the environment and sustainability. Okay, great, great, great. What got you into KUPU? I actually started as an intern myself, working for the HYCC summer program. HYCC, what's that? That's the Hawaii Youth Conservation Corps. Conservation Corps, thank you. Yeah, so HYCC is a summer program where I got to be a team leader working with four high school students, taking them out into the environment, doing conservation work, camping out, bonding, and that experience was life-changing, and so that's what led me to KUPU. Excellent, excellent. Now see now that, that's what they showed about how we actually make things happen through those experiences. So that's excellent, so okay. So what's your background? What's a bit of your background otherwise? So I'm originally from the Big Island, from a place called Puna. That's where their volcano flows from? Yes, yes, it's very frequently. And then I got my degree in journalism from the University of Oregon, went off to the mainland, got some perspective, came back home, and kind of went a different route, didn't want to go down the journalism route, got into HYCC, realized that I had always had this passion for the environment and this passion to engage with kids, and the two kind of just mesh together with HYCC, and I realized this is what I want to do the rest of my life. Excellent, excellent, excellent. So you sort of had a career path heading in one direction, but then has sort of a life-changing thing connecting you to the environment and kids, and that sort of led you in another direction. Yeah, it's interesting. I think growing up on the Big Island, I grew up on a three-acre native plant farm. And so I've always been into conservation and growing native plants, going on hikes on the Big Island, exploring the Big Island. So it was kind of interesting how I was like, oh, I don't know if I have experience in natural resource and conservation, but I realized that my whole life was kind of leading up to that. And so that's when I kind of decided I'm just going to keep going on that route. That's an important, how old were you when you realized that? College. Out of college. Out of college, I realized that your whole life was leading up to a thing that you went to, you know, regardless of what your education was in college. That's interesting. That's an important message as well for a lot of kids. So great. Excellent, excellent. Tell us a bit about, let's see, so what you do is the environmental program. Is RISE associated with that or connected to that? So RISE is one of four programs, four main programs that we run at KUPU. So I work in another one of those four main programs called E2U, which just basically stands for environmental education to you. And in that program, in the E2U program, what we do is we put interns, usually 21 and older. Right out of college and looking for a career opportunity. And we'll put them into a DOE high school to work with either a natural research teacher and agriculture teacher, environmental science teacher. And basically that intern helps that teacher get the students out into the environmental field, exposes them to field trips, exposes them to guest speakers, exposes them to cool hands on projects. All of it trying to kind of inspire this Malama Aina in conservation. Within the school, yeah, so just kind of attacking the problem from within the school system. Wow. Okay. That sounds great. Now, where do these kids come from? Or how are these kids selected? Our interns. So usually they're graduates of either environmental science or they could be education graduates and they're kind of looking to get their foot in the door. I think that here in Hawaii, you know, we have a lot of conservation jobs but it's hard to kind of get your first foot in the door. And I think KUPU is playing a very vital role in kind of helping kids to get that one foot in the door and then see where that goes from there. That's an interesting question. Everybody experiences that there are barriers, right? Things we want to do and then I've got some education now, I want to go do this, how do I do this? So I guess, I don't know if you have any thoughts, I'd like to hear your thoughts on what it is that makes it difficult for some people to get into the environmental community. They've got some education, they've got some training or they just have an interest. What are the barriers? I think the lack of jobs in that sector, there's not a lot of whole lot of money going into conservation right now. It's picking up here in Hawaii but, you know, nationally I think it's still kind of under the radar in terms of priority. So there's not a whole lot of jobs and I think when people do get a job they tend to keep that job because it's so rare and so you kind of have to wait for someone to retire or move on to kind of get your foot in the door. But there's lots of internship opportunities but what we're trying to do is now push that into, you know, real staff positions and seeing more of those opportunities come around. Excellent, excellent, okay, wow. Well, that's all fascinating, that's all fascinating, okay. So how long have you been part of KUPU? Yeah, this is going on my third year now, with KUPU. Third year working as staff? No, the first year I spent as an intern myself, so in that ETU program I was placed into Kalaheo High School and Castle High School on the windward side and just to kind of give you an idea of what we do at the school is that Castle, you know, because each school is different, right, and each school has its own needs, its own wants and so you kind of go in as an intern, you look at the school and say okay how can I help. So at Castle they have a stream running through the back of their campus, one of the few high schools in the state that actually has a stream on the campus, and they had two pre-existing lo'i kalo that had been there for like 20 years, but there wasn't, like the agriculture class wasn't really engaging in that, it was kind of like this extra thing and so what I tried to do is try to connect the students to the lo'i, get them interested in that kind of thing, you know, realizing how special it is to have that right in their back door. Absolutely, yeah, and so what we did is we actually, we put in like five brand new lo'i at Castle High School and had the kids help actually create them so they got to learn how to make lo'i, and you know there's so much teaching that goes in that, right, there's math, there's science, there's biology, there's everything. And you don't realize that, right? You think that I'm just going to plant something and what? Exactly, and I think that's where the best learning comes from is when you're learning math and science and English and all that stuff without really knowing. That's been a big topic that we've talked about on the show as well is applying what you're learning and what we realize is we go through school, you go through elementary, middle and high school, and you're learning math, you're learning these things but you don't always know why. And if you can find a way to connect the why, I'm doing this math problem, why this is important because I'm not going to do this for the rest of my life. Well, you know what, maybe you will and you don't realize it. Exactly. So it's an important thing I think, so that, no I like that, that's good. Yeah, I think we tend to put subjects into silos and say, okay, when you're in science class, I'm only going to teach you science. Yeah. Right, when you're in math class, we're only going to learn math, but that's not how life is, right? No, no. You don't walk from place to place and, oh, this is a science problem. Oh, this is a math problem. No, everything is interrelated and you've got to, in fact, necessarily so. And with another topic we've talked about on the show is breaking down those silos in all areas because that's how we truly have more advancements in innovation. Exactly. And then also tying, you know, tying those lessons, whatever you're teaching to the place that you're in, right? So not only making it all integrated, but making it place-based, right? That's where the whole place-based education came from, is that, okay, I can do this great hands-on project, but if the kids can't relate to it, then are they really going to continue doing it down the line? So again, that's why the Lo'ikalo is so successful is because a lot of those kids have grown up on Lo'ikalo farms, you know, they're from Kahalu'u, they're from, you know, Wahe'e, and it's like, oh, I know Kahalo, and it brings this pride in them, and then they come out there and they get to build their own Lo'ikalo, and they can relate to that, and that's something they take with them. Yeah, the more we connect, the more we connect. Whereas let's say if we had gone out there and planted, let's say soybeans or corn, you know, okay, cool, you learned how to plant something, but then where is that connection, right? Again, it's always been what? Okay, great, now what? What's next? So, okay. Well, let's hear from Tyler a little bit. Tyler, you have a different story. We're going to go, we're left, we're going to cover a number of things here, but you have a different story. But let me hear, let's hear your experience with Kupu and the RISE program, which is a different program, but I know there's interrelationships. Let's hear about your experience. What, what initiative, what got you into that program? What got me into that program? I applied. You applied? Well, why were you interested in the program? I mean, why, oh, specifically, like, what were my interests that tied to Kupu? Okay, the RISE program. So, it's a long story. Short story, short version of it is essentially that, I mean, I'm from Big Island as well. Yeah, quite close, but close enough. But anyway, so it's basically, I mean, I grew up with the outdoors. I mean, fishing, diving at the beach, all of that. That is what I still do as much as I can on this island. Yeah. But I mean, so that sort of, that's the sustainability aspect. At the time, which was not even a year ago. I was actually still in my master's at the University of Hawaii studying urban regional planning, specifically focused on transportation. And then we get this job notification. Oh, clean transportation fellow with RISE. Oh, hey, I will apply. So that kind of comes together. So you have an interest in connecting with nature. Then it's been a big part of your life growing up. You're getting your master's in, well, transportation, although it's rural and urban planning, but with a transportation focus. And then this, so this opportunity comes up that kind of brings things together. That's perfect. So excellent, excellent. So again, what was the position? Clean transportation fellow. Clean transportation fellow. Okay, so now this is all like, I see all of this as like a career path opportunity. And that's really, I guess the point of this show is how are we transitioning career path opportunities? How are we creating career path opportunities for our kids, especially when there aren't necessarily jobs? How are we creating those jobs? Or how are we helping to provide a workforce for a future job that's on the way? And so that's, those are some of the challenges that we have. So, okay, so Tyler, before we go to break real quickly. I know, so what high school did you go to? Kauai Preparatory Academy. Kauai Prep, okay. And then you, and then where'd you go to college? Where'd you go to get your bachelor's degree? I did my bachelor's in political science at Seattle University. At Seattle University, okay. And what was it that drove you to Seattle? Different change. I mean, you grow up on a rock, you want to see what life is like. But under the clouds. What other rocks look like. What bigger rocks look like. Okay, okay. Bigger, flatter, rainier, much rainier. So for you it was less of a, you know, what I want to go do this career this way. And this is the best place to do this and more of that with an opportunity to see somewhere new. Life experience. Life experience with it. Excellent, excellent. And then were you always planning on coming back to Hawaii? Didn't know. I mean, I'm just out there like, oh, I'm going to go to Seattle. That's super exciting. Who knows if I'll come back. And then you go out there and then you sit in the rain for like four years. And then you're like, oh, maybe, maybe the rain's not for me. Maybe I should go back home and it's nice weather and nice beaches. Sure. So then you came back home and then went from there. So okay, we're going to take a quick break and we're going to come back. We're going to go a bit more into that and we're going to talk more about how this stuff comes together a bit. So, all right. Thank you for joining us again. This is Think Tech Hawaii's Education Movers, Shakers and Reformers. I'm your host, Carl Component. Today we have Hayden Athens from Kupu and we have Mr. Tyler Saboda. Currently with the University of Hawaii Applied Research Lab and former Kupu fellow. So, thank you. See you in a minute. Aloha. How you doing? Welcome to Ibachi Talk. I'm here at Gordo the Tech Star on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm here with my good old buddy, Andrew the security guy. Hey, everybody. How you doing? Aloha. Thank you for watching. Good to have Andrew here in the house. Please join us every Friday from one to one thirty and follow us up on YouTube. And remember, as we say at the end of every show, how you doing? You're watching Think Tech Hawaii offering lifelong learning from passionate hosts and fascinating guests ready to explore and explain Hawaii's place in the 21st century. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Hi, I'm Donna Blanchard. I'm the host of Center Stage, which is on Wednesdays at two o'clock here on Think Tech. On Center Stage, I talk with artists about not only what they do and how they do it, but the meat of the conversation for me is why they do it, why we go through this. A lot of us are not making our livings doing this. And a lot of us would do this with our last dying breath if we had that choice. And that's what I love to talk to people about. I hope you enjoy watching it. And I hope you get inspired because there's an artist inside you too. Join us on Center Stage at two o'clock on Wednesdays. Bye. Aloha, welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii's education movers, shakers, and reformers. I'm your host, Carl Campania. Once again, we have today with us Mr. Hayden Adkinson from Kupu and Mr. Tyler Sabota, currently with the University of Hawaii Applied Research Lab. Again, welcome guys, thanks for the show. Okay, we'll go back a little bit to what we were talking about a second ago. Tyler, your career path. So you went to Hawaii Prep, you went to Seattle to go to get your bachelor's degree in political science. Right. After that, you kind of realized that the weather wasn't really for you at the very least. So you came back to Hawaii. And then you went to UH to get your current degree that you just finished about two months ago, right? Yes, very interesting. Which was rural and urban planning. Urban and rural planning. Urban and rural planning. Okay. Was it part of this connection to Hawaii, into the land, into the water? Or what was it that got you into that program? Into that program. Well, actually, I mean, I studied political science. So the original intention was, oh, Tyler, you're good at English. You're good at history. You write. You talk. You talk a lot. Go be a lawyer. So political science. I mean, I was personally interested in political science. So that kind of fit nicely into it. It's like, yeah, I can study that and we'll decide later. But we'll say I agree with you. And then I'll go study political science. Okay. And then I met with a bunch of lawyers, just asked, oh, what do you do? Who are you? I mean, just those sorts of basic questions. Like what type of people are lawyers? And a lot of them are just much too busy to give me like real time of day, like they'll show face and be in the same space as me, but not quite there. And then I actually was fortunate enough to meet a professor, Doc Wong, Marie Rose Wong at Seattle University. And she was an urban planning professor. And I was just curious. I was like, oh, what is urban planning? And I walked out of her office about two and a half hours later. Oh, wow. And I mean, she's just so passionate about what she does. And I find that to be true about almost every single planner I've ever had conversations with. You ask them what they do. They'll sit you down. Okay, this is what I'm doing. This is my plan. Here's how we do it. They'll just tell you every single detail about anything planning related. So it's inspiring. It's totally inspiring. It's passion for what they do. And I mean, urban planning is all about forward thinking. Yes. It's about saying, okay, this is where we are, but you know what? We can do more. We want to do more. We want to develop some more. So now that is, so that informed your thought process that got you into the program here at UH. Correct. I chose UH because the biggest thing with the masters is, oh, you're starting to build actual connections that will then lead to work. Yes. Where do you want to work? I kind of want to go back home. There you go. And there we go. So okay, now, so this is connecting the whole thing. So we've got, you're going to elementary school, you're going to middle school, you're going to high school. After high school, you go to, hopefully, you're going to college. But for what? Most kids, I have a friend. His name is Kurt. He may have watched the show, I don't know. His name is Kurt. He knew in sixth grade, he wanted to be an architect. And he is an architect to this day. And he's good. And I'm proud of that for him, excited for him. I didn't understand how he could know. And that his follow through was impeccable. So that's great. That's wonderful. I wasn't that kid. I had to go through different variations and permutations of life, in order to figure out where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do and how. So from what I'm hearing from you guys, that's more of a common story. We all have, you know, we sort of wind our way through what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. So from your perspectives, both of you, I want to hear from both of you on this. From your perspectives, when, as we're saying, really in college, as you're about to finish your bachelor's degree, you're starting to really think about what you want to do and how you want to do it in a different way. When could this, or should this, these ideas have started sooner? Could you imagine a time like, you know, hey, someone brought some of these ideas to you in high school or in middle school? What would that have meant to you at the time? Would that have in any way helped you? I don't know. I don't know if you guys have some thoughts on that. Yeah. No, I think it's got to happen earlier. It's got to happen way earlier. And I think we need to expose our students to professionals who are in these pathways and bring them into the school or bring the kids out to them. If you think about a traditional educational system, there wasn't these four walls, there wasn't this school. It was, you go learn from uncle, then you go learn from auntie, then you go learn from uncle, and you learn all these skills. And you're going to catch an interest in one of them when you're exposed to multiple different career opportunities. And I think we don't necessarily give our kids that as much in the education world today with more standardized tests, past this test, get good grades, go off to college. But then it's like, we both can say like, whoa, what does college do nowadays? It's like, you may not even find yourself in college. So I think it's exposing the students at a younger age to career opportunities, giving them idols and role models within their own community to look up to and say, oh, that's something that I would be down to do. And I think it's also showing, you know, I think both of us kind of found a purpose in our jobs. And so I think it's important to show our youth that purpose should kind of drive your career choice rather than money. And I think we get caught up in this, in this Western world of thinking that money is the most important thing. And we chase these dreams that you're not really happy with. It doesn't fulfill you. And so you end up unhappy later in life. I'm like, why didn't I choose this career? Yeah, so purpose driven. You need a balance there as well. And I have a different thought process how I go through that with my kids. But I agree with you. I agree with you. It's just, there's more to it. I think, but I'll go into that in a second. I want to hear from Tyler. Your thoughts on how some of these ideas and some of these, if what you're currently passionate about was introduced to you as a potential career path, sooner, would that have informed any of your decisions or would that have helped you maybe get involved sooner in some of what you have been doing lately? I think I'm fortunate where even if I knew I wanted to do this earlier on, I kind of hit that perfect trajectory of how to get there. Just happenstance. Just happenstance. It wasn't a plan. It was not quite a plan. The plan is to never have a plan. I'm a planner. Terrible. Terrible. But I mean, so like, I mean, when I really trace back where my interest in transportation, because that's weird. Like, that's really weird. I'm not going to lie. Like, I really find transit and get moving people to be a fascinating problem in the world. But that came about when I was really young, actually, one of my first trips to Portland for ODP Soccer Olympic Development Program. And we get on the bus and we get sent to our camp and the bus goes over this bridge. It's got like six lanes across. There's an actual bottom floor beneath it with six more lanes going the opposite direction. Wow. And coming from Big Island where there's one road, one road, two lanes, you drive one, you drive the other way. That's it. I mean, that in and of itself was very like, just, I was awestruck. I was like, what is this? How does this even work? How do cars flow in here? And you're right around the river. You're taking these sharp bang-and-bangs. How old are you at that time? I think I was like 10 or 12. 10 or 12, yeah, around there, somewhere around there. Pretty young. So you had this experience where you were like, okay, wow, what is this stuff? How does this happen? But then that kind of- Basically, it's civil engineering to make it actually happen. But it's the urban and rural planning that really decides how and when and where to make this happen. Yeah. And so I had no idea that was actually a career path. Like, so I kind of just put that on the back burner. Yeah. And just went on to potentially be an Olympic soccer player. That's just, that's just stuff. Could have. It's just a thing. That's all right. That's all right. Anybody want to talk? Yeah. No, no, that's excellent. And that actually plays into the whole thing. It's like, well, maybe you wanted to be a professional soccer player. Maybe you could have different things and all that. But that's all good. Okay, so you've both are currently involved in careers that five years ago you couldn't have imagined. But you both went through your education sort of plotting through, trudging your way through to a certain extent. Oh, I've got to do this. I've got to do this. Not quite sure really what the end goal was going to be. Is it with that? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. But then earlier in life, you really started to realize things that were interesting to you, things that were really percolating in your brain of interest. And whether you realize there was a career or not opportunity, most of the time, we don't realize there's a career opportunity. So perhaps if someone, if you would have had the opportunity to be brought to the State Department of Transportation and say, oh, okay, Director Fuchigami, can you please tell young Tyler some career opportunities throughout Department of Transportation, you would have learned at that point, oh, wow, I can actually, I could do that. And what sort of a degree do I need for that? And what's the career path? How do I really get from where I am today to becoming Director of the Hawaii Department of Transportation? How does that happen? Because that honestly is an option for you later in life. Maybe. Maybe. You know, there's a lot of things, but as life goes, you'll see. So, okay, in the last couple of minutes, let me ask this, and I want to hear from both of you. What you're doing at the moment is something that you enjoy doing, you are passionate about. Do you see this being a big part of your life five, 10, 50 years from now? Yeah. And what do you see for yourself as far as that development? Yeah, for me, this job at KUPU has been the perfect blend of educational opportunities and environmental opportunities. And so, I think wherever I go in life, I'm going to be doing one or the other, or a combination of the two. I just think that here in Hawaii, we are at such a fragile point when it comes to environmental issues. And really our only weapon is education to help fix that. And so, I think I'm definitely going to be doing this the rest of my life. Either educating kids about the environment or working on conservation. Exactly. Some form of... And getting kids out there to see. Either way, getting kids to see. I really appreciate that part. Getting kids engaged because that's what is informing them. So, okay, excellent, excellent. Appreciate that. And thank you for that and continuing to do that. And always let us know what you need, what is needed to help make that happen. That's an important piece. So yes, there's not enough conservation here. It's not as big of a focus, but we need to balance it sometimes with other things that we need. So how do we do that? I think that's a good topic of conversation for an urban and rural planner. There's a problem for you. So, okay, how about you? What Tyler, do you think as far as five, 10 years from now, what is it, what you're doing now? And do you have any ideas? It's hard to imagine, but do you have any ideas? It's very hard to imagine. It is hard to imagine. Sorry, now I do a lot of work with biofuels, as you know. And I mean, I never imagined I would become a subject matter expert on biofuels. But when it comes to biofuels, and we'll do it quickly, when it comes to biofuels, you spend like six months working on a thing and you become a subject matter expert in it, because it's such a new industry, such a new world as far as transportation fuels are concerned. Oh, yes. And how to do that. So, yeah, certainly. It's especially in this transportation sphere in Hawaii, it's very relevant. I mean, we can move things closer together. We can build rails, but to get people to the islands themselves, we have to fly or by boat, and the boat to those things costs way too much in terms of fossil fuels. So there's a huge opportunity, regardless of land transportation. And so will I still be in this sphere? The broader sphere of clean transportation, yes, will it be specifically biofuels? I have no idea. I really enjoy this currently. So I'm tempted to say yes. The planning piece for clean transportation is a piece that you envision being a part of, which is something that occurred to you when you were 10. I don't know if it was clean. It's not clean, but this is really a cool world. Yeah, as you have been more informed. So, okay, let me say thank you both very much. I truly appreciate that. I think this is a, for me, it was a good conversation. I hope everyone can also wing from this a little bit. I think there's some important stuff to understand and make sure that we can think later where it is. So I truly appreciate the opportunity. I would always love to learn more about KUHU and various things there. So please welcome to come back. Thanks for having me. So thank you so much for joining us. This was Fink Tech Hawaii's education movers, shakers, and performers. I'm your host, Carl Campania. Today we have Mr. Hayden Adkinson and Mr. Tyler Sabota. Thank you again. Let me thank the crew and the staff of Fink Tech Hawaii. And we will see you next week. Bye-bye.