 Community Matters here at four o'clock on a given Tuesday. Okay, we are honored today to have Provost Matthew Liao Tross from Hawaii Pacific University with us. We have a long and affectionate relationship with HPU. We are so glad to have you here with us. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you very much for coming down. And my co-host Carol Mon-Lee, who is an academician in her own right, is here to make sure we cover the ground. Welcome, co-host Carol Mon-Lee. Thank you. So nice to be here. Okay. So, news. The first thing is always news. Yes. You have, as of what, July 1st? A new president. A new president. Tell John Katanda. Tell us about him. So, John Katanda is a Roosevelt High School graduate. He's returning to Hawaii after almost 30 years off island. He is a graduate of another school on island, I will not mention. But went off to Washington, D.C. as an attorney, was very successful in that. Moved into academia, was a college professor, and ended up being the dean of the law school at Villanova University. Wow. So, we're really happy to bring him back home to Hawaii. Does that kind of bio sound familiar to you, Carol Mon-Lee? Let's see. It goes from practicing law, being a lawyer, to being an academician, going into law school, and all that. I mean, going into a law school. Sounds like you. Yeah, but he's gone on to bigger and better things, and we look forward to having him downtown with us. Yeah, he's very happy to be back. He and his family are very happy to be back to our island. And it was a seamless transition from Jeffrey Bannister, who was there one day meeting with you in the following day. Yes. My last meeting on Thursday, the 30th of June, was with Jeff Bannister. My first meeting on Friday morning was with John Katanda. Now, you are the provost and vice president for academic affairs at HPU. How does this affect your job, if at all? It affects everything. And in a lot of ways, part of my job is to make sure that things keep on moving along. I have two real different roles. Provost is an old, archaic word for the person who used to lock up the faculty and students in the monasteries. It's a great title. There's even provost jails out there that I've seen. So provost, I'm overseeing kind of the whole student experience from students coming into the university, in class, in their co-curricular activities and housing, continuing on through career services, placement internships, and then getting jobs and handing them off to alumni. Academic affairs specifically is working with the faculty, developing the curriculum, supervising the degrees we offer the academic integrity and research integrity of the institution. So they're very complementary roles. So as a new president comes in, they're going to, of course, change kind of the leadership. You know, they're going to affect the leadership vision of the institution. They're going to really kind of rally us all into, you know, where we're going to go next. And a lot of what I do is put that into practice. So, you know, these are the degrees we're going to offer. These are what we're going to do to make sure our students are successful. Sounds like a chief operating officer, doesn't it? In some ways, although I don't really deal with facilities other than making sure that we have, you know, desing classrooms. Do you see any changes in academic affairs as a result of the change in leadership? I don't think we're going to have a change in academic affairs. I think we're still going to have a very strong focus on academic integrity, integrity, the quality of the academic experience, making sure that students have a valuable transformative experience at Hawaii Pacific University. I think, you know, anyone coming into the role of president is going to bring a slightly different perspective based on their experience. And so Jeff Bannister was at Boston University and president at Butler University before he came to HPU. So he was bringing a president's experience from a regional university similar to our own in Indianapolis urban school where he had really focused on that. John Gatanda is local returning and so he really sees, having gone to the mainland and seeing some successful universities coming back and integrating that into what it means to be the urban university of Honolulu. So, you know, complementary roles in what they're doing. So, you know, other things are happening. I'd like to cover them with you. For example, you sold, it was in the newspapers, the Hawaii lower campus in Kailua. And you're kind of consolidating, but also expanding here downtown. And we know that you're in a pioneer plaza because our studio used to be where the business school is now. Yes. Now the business school is there. It's really nice space. So can you tell us, you know, the process of this consolidation, what exactly is happening, and especially with regard to Aloha Tower? Sure. The university adopted a new master plan for the institution in 2014. And part of that master plan was to consolidate the academic programs downtown. Right now, one of the big challenges for the students is they have a class at 8 o'clock downtown. They have a class at 10 o'clock at Hawaii Lower. You have to jump on the shuttle, go back and forth. You live at Hawaii Lower, so you get up, you come down, go to class, go back. Downing hall's over there, but then you have an afternoon class. So it's really messy from a student experience perspective. So in 2014, as part of our master plan, we decided we would consolidate all academic programs downtown. Since 2014, we were really focused on opening up Aloha Tower Marketplace, getting the student residences in there. And so we opened up last fall in 2015 with the student residences. We have had classes there for the past year in the multi-purpose rooms. We have a learning commons there. So we have an anchor downtown. Now it's time to focus back on bringing the rest of the academic programs downtown. Hawaii Lower College was a beneficiary from the Castle Foundation, just as Castle Medical was. So it was a natural relationship to really look at how we could best serve the windward community. We already have a relationship with Castle Medical. Our nursing students do clinical there and such. And you're going to offer a PhD in nursing, comes to mind. A doctor of nursing practice. I'm sorry. I'll get a couple of my accreditors. It will not be a PhD. It will be a doctor of nursing practice. But yeah, as the nursing has continued to professionalize and starting in 2020, the terminal degree in nursing will be the doctorate in nursing practice. And so we want to make sure we can offer that for our partners. That's great. We need nurses here. Yes. But the instruction will all be downtown by then. Yes. Well, you know, a lot of clinical work is done either at the hospitals and also for that particular degree, we'll have a lot of online components. And so we offer several of our degrees. We actually offer 17 degrees fully online. And so several of the classes for the doctor of nursing practice will be online as well. Designed for a low residency student so they can be a working, practicing nurse and complete their doctorate. And they would actually participate with local hospitals for this degree. Depending on their need for clinical hours and such, they might be working at a local hospital, for example, and need to move from a master of science in nursing to a doctor of nursing practice. You're going to be a center in that. So, you know, I remember you were heavily involved in the progress building. Is the progress building part of this, you know, campus going forward? Yes. So the model progress building is part of our footprint on Fort Street Mall. We actually have our, most of our College of Liberal Arts is located in the model progress building. We actually opened up three science labs actually over the summer, late spring and early summer we've developed and those will be opening up this fall. So we're bringing some of the sciences downtown already. And so, you know, we really want to look at, you know, plan and implement the plan to make sense for our downtown footprint so the students have kind of a contiguous university experience in downtown. Yes. Well, you know, it reminds me of GBA. I went to NYU Law School and I knew GBA pretty well. That's the Graduate Business Administration School. And they were a Wall Street school. They were right in the middle of Wall Street and, you know, their students came from Wall Street and went to Wall Street and spent their lunchtime rubbing shoulders with Wall Street. It was a Wall Street campus and a Wall Street school and that's what it sounds like you're doing. You're going to be a, you are now a downtown university. Yes. And I think NYU is a great example of an urban university really having a positive impact in a downtown community, not just business, but also the sciences, also the liberal arts. I mean, where's the center of the performing arts in Hawaii? It's in Honolulu. It's right downtown. So, you know, being able to make those connections, being able to walk out of class in social work and go have an impact on the community is really going to be a huge plus. It's actually brilliant. You know, because you'll be right here and there's all kinds of synergy involved. Being in the business community, having this kind of focused downtown experience, there's jobs, there's student possibilities, there's all kinds of events going on and you can do events and you can rub shoulders with the business community. That's really important. So I think this is a great direction, actually. Great direction. You know, and even if you look at the liberal arts, you know, where else can you actually do an internship in history? We have a lot of historical centers and locations in downtown Honolulu where we have guided tours for tourists and things. So there's a public history aspect. So you can really actually practice all of the liberal arts, both do them intellectually, but actually practice them and convey, you know, enrich people's lives through, you know, our studies in the liberal arts. A moment on history. John David Dan has appeared on our show many times and I want to tell you now, he's great. He's a beautiful teacher. I'm a minor in history and I really care about history and he's a great teacher and a great guest on our shows. You mentioned tours, Matthew, and I heard something about a Chinatown tour that you do. Is that something that you're... We've had one of our faculty members over time do tours of Chinatown and specific locations in Chinatown. So it's not, you know, it's not something we do all the time, but it ties into our classes and the student experience at HP. We want our students to really understand Hawaii and, you know, the impact that we have in the Pacific and so that's actually part of our new Gen Ed. It's something required, not necessarily taking a tour of Chinatown, but how all of this ties together, how what we do is unique and important here. And I know you also have another campus, right? The Oceanic Institute. Yes. Tell us about that. So the Oceanic Institute is really focused on aquaculture, how we actually, as society moves forward, how we can help feed the world with ocean products. Where is that information shared with our audience? So if you go out, if you head out to the one word side, go past Makaputu Point, you'll hit the Oceanic Institute. Actually, if you're coming around from that way, the first thing you'll see is Sea Life Park, which actually is a tenant of ours at that property. But we do a lot of very applied research there. So most of the white shrimp that people eat in restaurants comes from our brood stock, from research that came out of the Oceanic Institute. Around the world. Around the world. Those shrimp come from here, and they're grown in Thailand and other places in Southeast Asia. The market is the world. And they're the best in the world. They are the best in the world. Right here from Oceanic Institute. Other things we've done is we successfully bred yellow tang. So right now, if... Yellow tang. Yeah, the little ornamental fish that you have in fish tanks and such, the yellow fish, right now, if you want to have one of those fish, you buy it in a pet store, divers are going off the coast of the Big Island and taking them off the reefs. And so it's very hurtful of the reefs when you have over essentially farming of the yellow tang there. So we're the first place to actually breed yellow tang in captivity where there's a couple on display at the Waikiki Aquarium. And actually, I think last week, a school in Florida with our help actually bred royal tang, the blue tang, the dory tang, from finding Nemo and finding Dory following our procedure for breeding yellow tang. And so we're creating a way to, in a sustainable way, breed ornamental fish. Exciting. It's a big business ornamental fish, yeah. But fish in general is going to be a bigger and bigger business. I mean, we haven't realized our potential really in open ocean aquaculture. It sounds like Oceanic Institute can really participate in that going forward. There's an industry, you know, that will happen ultimately as we fish out the oceans. And you guys can be part of that, big part of that, I think, in Hawaii. Yeah, Oceanic Institute is doing a lot of really neat projects. One other one I do want to mention is something we're running on the Big Island. We're running essentially a feed mill using ocean products, so developing cattle feed. Because right now for the cattle on the Big Island and over on Kauai, we bring the feed over from, you know, the continental US. And so we're actually researching using ocean products to develop a cattle feed so that we can just pull it locally and feed the cattle. Save a lot of money and make an industry possible here. So where do you do it on the Big Island? It's in Hilo. It's actually a long-term project that the Oceanic Institute has been working on. That same feed can be useful for aquaculture, open ocean aquaculture as well. Sorry, Carol. No, it's just fascinating. And as far as the different locations that you have, do you have students who go out to these different areas, to Oceanic and to the Big Island? What are they studying? What is their field? Right, so we actually offer undergraduate degrees in marine biology. We also offer a master's degree in marine science and an undergraduate degree in oceanography. So students in those three areas generally are working on these different projects. We do have students who do work out at the Oceanic Institute. Our marine sciences program, a lot of our labs that our students work in are out at the Oceanic Institute, as well as in Kaneohe. They haven't been as involved with the feed mill. We just actually got that. We're building that right now. It's been a multi-year project, but it actually is going operational this year. Let's talk a little about your students, because I know in the past, each of you was very popular for students from all over the world. And is that the case now? Is the percentage of student body of local versus national and international? So on main campus, about 17% of our students are international. International? International. And I have to back out the numbers. Roughly 40% are coming from off island and 40% on island. We also have a fair number of students on military bases doing degrees with us part-time. But if I'm looking at main campus, we have 4,000 undergraduate students and 1,000 graduate students and then another roughly 1,500 military students. Well, you know that whole experience with the international students coming into Hawaii has given you, maybe it's all intended, but a global perspective on things. And we have seen that here on Think Tank. We've seen your global perspective in a number of ways. And when we get back from this break, we're going to explore exactly how that works and why. We'll be right back. And that provokes naturally our trust on HPU. Hello, I'm Patrick Bratton. Please join me every Thursday at one o'clock for Global Connections, where I talk to a variety of guests and range through many issues from contemporary international political events, things talking about national security, all sorts of international issues and also more local issues, history and so on. I look forward to having you join me and talking to some of my guests. Thank you. Thank you for joining Think Tank Hawaii, meeting people we may have not otherwise met, helping us understand and appreciate the good things about Hawaii. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tank. Hey everybody, my name is David Chang and I'm the new host of a new show, The Art of Thinking Smart. I'm really excited to be able to share with you secrets on giving yourself the smart edge in life. We're going to have awesome guests and great mentors of mine from the political, military, business, and nonprofit. You name it. So it's something for everybody. We're back. We're live. We're here with Provost Matthew Liao Troth who is the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs of Hawaii Pacific University. We are delighted to have him with us. It's great to be here. So one of the things we'd like to cover, I think, is the sort of global view that HPU does. And somehow it seems to be related to the fact that you have a substantial percentage and you have had over years of substantial percentage of international students here. But you also go out. What I mean is we met a number of your students and graduates who have gone with the State Department and had really promising careers. We have Patrick Bratton who runs a program called Global Connections here on ThinkTech and who gets out and about all over the world. Carlos Suarez was also involved in that program and he got out all over the world doing, you know, what was it, a program in Austria and in Poland and throughout Europe actually. Here's a Fulbright scholar. A Fulbright scholar is trying to think. And most recently, you know, we deal with a graduate of yours every couple of weeks who works for Brian Schatz in Brian Schatz's office in Washington. His name is Russell K. Kohler. He's a graduate of HPU and very knowledgeable about foreign affairs and specifically about what's happening in Turkey. And as you know, there's a lot of things going on in Turkey. He reports to us. I mean, so what I'm saying is that, you know, Connect The Dots, an HPU, has a real serious global consciousness and is graduating people who are going out and doing what I think, you know, young graduates should do anyway, participate in global activities in the State Department and diplomacy and whatnot. Is this part of your long-term plan? Yes. We actually were honored to, for the last several years, be recognized as the most diverse university in the United States. And a key part of that diversity is international diversity as well as geographic diversity in general. We revised our general education program a couple of years ago to really emphasize the global and the multinational and the multiple perspectives that you really get in a truly liberal education. And so we really challenge our students in that way and we really push them in that way. We have lots of students from the mainland as well as local students, as well as the international students who are coming here because of that reputation. They want to be in a class where someone is from one country is here, someone from local is here, someone from the continental US is here, and in front and behind them are people from other places as well. So you could have really broad-ranging conversations in any class about any topic. It's great. It's just great. I mean, we need this. Hawaii needs to be an international center and you are actually graduating from an international generation in that way. Speaking of which, somehow, HPU and maybe you individually got in the Hawaii Pacific Business Hawaii Business Magazine's black book the top 250 businesses. How does that work? What is that? So it's a program that they run about the top employers and top businesses in the state. And HPU is a large university, a large employer. We have hundreds and hundreds of employees. We're the largest tenant downtown actually because we're in multiple buildings across up and down Fort Street, Bishop Street and Loha Chowar Drive. Everywhere. And Baritania as well. The NYU of Honolulu. Yes. And growing. And so it's just a recognition program they do for impactful businesses and employers in the state. And I was one of the I was the person from Hawaii Pacific University that was rolled into that last year. Congratulations. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Well, so going to Aloha Tower, can you give me a walk through on how it is evolving, what it's going to be like? Can I still go to the restaurants there? Yeah. How is it changing? What does it mean to Aloha Tower? What does it mean to the university? And what are we going to do with that park? Oh, throw me a curve ball. Okay. So, you know, HP was really proud to be the steward of this property of Aloha Tower Marketplace. You know, it's nice that the evening news every night shows our campus. We really appreciate that. We had 270 students move in last year for the first residents living upstairs in less than a month. What a beautiful dormitory. Yes. We had parents dropping off last year saying I'm sending my kids home. I'm moving in. The next group, you know, we've had students living there during the summer. We have new students moving in this fall for the new semester. It's really exciting. And it's not just students coming from Off Island. We actually have some students who are local who've lived at home for college, saving their money. But so their senior year, they wanted to live, you know, have that college experience. And so, as seniors, they're living at Aloha Tower Marketplace. It's a real draw. I'm sure to live near the water there, the beautiful location. Yes. Well, you know, we've been joking about it for the past week, but we have our own gym. A Pokemon gym. Right there in Aloha Tower Marketplace. Downstairs, we have, we still have the shops. We still have the restaurants. We have a couple who are under letters of intent for moving in and all that. Our big focus was getting the students in because we purchased this property specifically for the students. We wanted to make sure the student space was up and running first. And so we have multiple kind of, we're in discussions and letters of intent for multiple businesses coming in. And I can't talk about who they are, but we do have downstairs. We have, you know, the Welcome Center. So the campus tours start from there, going up Ford Street Mall. We have our learning commons, kind of the contemporary library, the future, essentially there. We have a lounge. We have three multi-purpose rooms that are used by community organizations, as well as by students. We have some classes in there. We do events there. And then we have community partners using the space as well. So the community organizations can use it for, is there a charge, or how does that work? There is. That's one of the few things. It's not under the Provost portfolio. But yeah, so there's a whole process. So if you go to, there's a separate website for Aloha Tower Marketplace for doing that. And I will make sure I get that information to you all so we can share that. I believe it's email at alohahtowerathpu.edu to inquire about community and business meetings in that location. I think a great idea actually, because it is ideal. I mean, so many reasons. But you know, do you mind if we come around with cameras? We'd really like to do a little OC16 show at Aloha Tower to see who it looks like. The new Aloha Tower. Our bookstore is there. It's a constant location opening up, so it's really neat. Have you closed the Hawaii Loa dorms? No, no. Not yet. No. We've entered this relationship with Castle Medical, but we're going to be there for several years there. Really? Yes. So incoming students, the freshmen coming in this fall, they will probably still have, still be at Hawaii Loa four years from now. It's a multi-year relationship. So there's a, we will be leasing space and it's a long-term relationship. But you have a regular shuttle that goes between the both campuses? Yes. Three to four an hour. So it's very, it's helpful to get back and forth because we really want people to have, not be reliant on cars, but it adds one more thing to a student's life. Yeah. Oh, great. That's a beautiful location. Yes. So you have that. The dormitories, that's the principal use right now for Hawaii Loa. An office space too, is that right? Is that where your offices are? So at Hawaii Loa, we have 190 bed dorms, dining hall, and then we have the Academic Center building there, which has a couple of science labs, some science lab classrooms, and then our nursing simulation lab is there, as well as faculty offices for the College of Health and Society and the College of Natural Computational Sciences on the natural sciences side. Some athletic fields too. So it's a migration. I mean, in a few years' time, everybody would be down in town. They won't be there anymore. So where's your office? My office is on one of the buildings up Fort Street. Not at Aloha Tower, and not at Hawaii Loa, but not in this building, not in Pioneer Plaza. No, I'm actually at 1164 Bishop Street. HPU has been in that building for a long time. So we have up the Progress Building. We have 1164. Pioneer Plaza. Pioneer Plaza. We have Aloha Tower. Hawaii Loa. I know you can't tell us what's next. Oh, yeah. Well, we only have Model Progress. We have the Fort Street Center. We have the Lower Bishop Building. We have the Cuy Plaza. And then there's the military bases when we're in there. And the military bases. We have facilities. Yeah, we have offices to service our students. And then there are shared classrooms for anyone who's offering classes on the military bases. Neighbor islands? We primarily serve neighbor islands through online. Oh, yeah. Let's talk about online for a minute. Sure. What do you offer online these days? How big a part of your curriculum is online? So we actually offer eight associate's degrees fully online. And those are targeted primarily towards part-time students, primarily on the military bases. They can start there. They can transfer to Texas or St. Louis or D.C. and finish up with us. We also offer several bachelor's degrees, business administration, psychology, computer science, public administration, human resources development, criminal justice. And I'm sure I'm missing one in there. You have a prominent alum from the online program we had talked about. Yes. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is an alum of ours. She actually did most of her coursework either while deployed in the Middle East or in deployed in Washington, D.C. And it's really nice to be able to help serve someone who's serving the U.S. I bet she did very well in her classes. She did. How long would it take? For proper reasons, I can't tell you her grades. Of course not. But all her professors say great things about her. Shout out to Tulsi. Good work, Tulsi. But how long did it take for her or would it take typically to finish a degree online part-time? Part-time, it really depends on how many classes you're taking part-time, whether you're going full-year or part-year. So you could, I mean, you could finish a whole degree in three years. That's a little, that's pretty aggressive though and hard to work while doing that. But it's pretty easy to, you know, if you're going half-time, then you could do it over six years if you're taking classes during the summer, fall, winter, spring. You didn't bring in the application forms with you, Matthew? hpu.edu. hpu.edu. Apply here. Click the button. So take a minute and talk to camera one over there. And tell the people, you know, where hpu is going. What's the general vision? I know it's early for John Quatanda, but so as it exists today, where is hpu going? We are Porta Lulu's University. We are serving the downtown area. We are providing kind of the urban experience. We are the center of the Pacific Rim. So we are pulling people from around the world for an American liberal arts education with a distinctive Hawaii flavor to it to really build global citizens who are going to make this a better place. We have students from northern Europe, northern Asia, southern Asia, South America, north America, Africa all around coming here and gathering in the gathering spot to really make a difference at hpu. And we're really proud of our students. We have great faculty, great staff, and we really want our students to be successful. Fabulous, and here we are in your lap. We are going to cover you, Matthew. Yes. Watch out for us. That would be great. We're going to talk to you lots more. That's fine. Thanks so much. Thank you so much. Aloha. Aloha. Thank you, Matthew.