University Communications & Marketing

By Tiffany Hervey, as published in the Honolulu Weekly

During the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Top Hat Bar in Wahiawa was hit. It closed for three days and reopened on Dec. 10, 1941 with the charging mantra that its doors would never be closed again. And the bar stayed open seven days a week, year-round, until early 2009, when it shut down for good.

Surfing The Nations (STN), a nonprofit organization, purchased the building and moved in. They opened Surfers Coffee Bar in the summer of 2011 after cleaning decades of nicotine off the walls. A bigger challenge was the neighborhood.

Rough Start

This block of Kamehameha Highway was considered by many to be the center of sex, drugs and violence on the North Shore. Neighboring businesses included porn shop Divine Pleasures, liquor store Market 88 and exotic dancing venue Club Texas. For most, it was an area to avoid. “We learned real quick that we lived in the bad part of town,” recalls STN co-founder Cindy Bauer as she looks out the window from the plush seats of the coffee bar. “This was where no one wanted to wander.”

STN, founded in 1997, had been looking for a place to call home after a series of rental situations fell through. The 15-unit, three-story apartment building behind the old, rundown bar in Wahiawa looked like a perfect place to house their staff, and they could use the bar for a meeting room.

“We knew this was going to be a rough neighborhood, [but it] seemed to work for us because we are for those who are voiceless and the at-risk youth here on the street,” Bauer says. STN feeds more than 3,000 people a week, most of them working poor. “Maybe three percent are homeless but a vast majority are households working hard to make it,” she adds. STN also tutors at-risk youth three times a week.

The block was such an eyesore that for years, parents told their kids to “look forward, don’t look over there,” Bauer says. When Leilehua High School students came down to hand out food for a school project, they told the STN staff that not one of them had ever walked on that side of the street before.

The Giving Surfer

STN thought they’d try to improve the neighborhood, and in less than a year, the owners of the neighboring buildings had agreed to sell. The nonprofit put its first building up as collateral, held a huge fundraiser for a down payment and purchased the rest of the block. “We were just the new kids on the block that weren’t smart enough to know we couldn’t do it,” Bauer says. “Sometimes, when you don’t realize you can’t, you do it.”

At present, Surfers Coffee Bar is the only open business on the block. The original bar from the 1930s remains in a spacious room filled with plush armchairs and tables, with a desk area where one could do some writing or read without feeling distracted. The walls are decorated like a surf museum with eponymous memorabilia and art, thanks to STN co-founder Tom Bauer’s enthusiasm for the sport. “Our motto is ‘surfers giving back,’” he says.

“Surfers in my day were takers, but today we’re trying to market them as givers,” Bauer says, adding that he hopes the coffee shop also helps to remarket Wahiawa. “Since it is the gateway to the North Shore, we feel that Wahiawa has an amazing responsibility,” he says, “[and] surfers have the responsibility to make this a better place.”

STN’s goal is to bring community-centered businesses into the six available storefronts on the block; Chaminade University’s design school is planning parking and gardens for the buildings.

Supporting Local

Surfers Coffee Bar’s menu practices what STN preaches by supporting local business. It carries organic Kona Estate coffee ($2-$3 a cup). All espresso shots and drinks are made from Waialua Estate coffee beans, grown and harvested on Oahu’s North Shore and roasted in Honolulu. This totally local coffee fuels the menu’s latte ($3-$4), Americano ($2.40-$3.10), cappuccino ($3) and mocha ($3.50-$4.60) drinks. Try the “Wahiawa Mocha,” flavored with coffee, white chocolate and pineapple. Get it hot, on the rocks or blended-this caffeine addict highly recommends the last.

Bagels ($1.99), muffins ($1.95) and cookies (89 cents) are available as partners in caffeine crime, but they are not house-made and taste generic. A refreshing alternative is the acai bowl ($7.95), made from packets of frozen Tambor acai berry puree, frozen bananas and apple juice or soy milk and topped with granola, honey and freshly sliced bananas. Macadamia nuts, chocolate, strawberries, pineapple and papaya are an additional 50 cents each. Fruit smoothies are $3-$4, and a wide variety of Hawaiian teas, including organic, are served iced or hot ($2-$3).

The bar hosts open mic nights Wednesdays at 7 p.m. and live music on Fridays at 7 p.m., featuring bands from Hawaii and around the world. Cindy Bauer envisions a community center and commercial kitchen on the property one day so that kids can learn career skills.

STN started with one building and a meeting room that turned into a coffee shop. Now that shop has the whole block a-changin’. Police have told the Bauers that crime in the area has dropped. The fast food restaurants in the area have remodeled. Cindy Bauer says she hopes the old Club Texas space will be filled by a higher-end restaurant. Nearby California Avenue was recently repaved, something for which the neighborhood board had fought for more than 13 years. Gentrification, surfer style, is in the air-and it smells like coffee.

Source: Honolulu Weekly

Spring 2015–Chaminade students were awarded first place in the annual IACBE ethics competition. The critical thinking, academic background, and practical skills necessary in this competition are closely tied to the students’ service-learning projects in the Business Capstone course.

According to IACBE.org, The International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education (IACBE) is the leading outcomes-based professional accrediting organization for business programs in student-centered colleges and universities throughout the world. The IACBE exists to promote, develop, and recognize excellence in business education.

The IACBE annual student case-study competition focuses on business ethics and is open to students from all IACBE-member institutions worldwide. The competition is scheduled in conjunction with the IACBE Annual Conference and Assembly Meeting each year.

The IACBE is committed to “partnering with colleges and universities in preparing today’s business students for tomorrow’s workplace.” In this spirit, the case-study competition is intended to provide students with an opportunity to showcase their abilities to analyze a case, to identify and discuss recommendations for ethical action, and to “think on their feet.” The case-study competition requires their ability to (1) work as members of a team, (2) collect and analyze data, and (3) effectively present case information and answer questions in a clear, concise, and professional manner.

In their case presentations, teams are expected to explain the relevant background information of the case, which may include legal, financial, economic, marketing, and management issues relevant to the case, and to present the ethical issue identified in the case.  After presenting the case, each team must make and justify recommendations for action that are solidly grounded in ethics theory.

Jasmine Cho, Staff Writer
April 1, 2013
As Published in The Silversword

In Chinatown, a room bustles with student volunteers tutoring elderly people each week as part of Project Students Helping in Naturalization of Elders, or Project SHINE, a program where college students teach immigrants basic English and civic skills necessary to become a citizen. Although targeted at Chinese immigrants, anyone who’s willing to learn English is welcome to join on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

For students, Project SHINE isn’t just about helping immigrants and performing the required amount of community service or fulfilling service-learning requirements because it’s a part of the class’s curriculum. It’s about the relationship people develop with each other and the self-satisfaction of making a difference by helping those who need it.

“I found that it becomes important to a lot of people because people develop relationships with the learners [tutees] … they teach you as much as you teach them,” said Candice Sakuda, who is Chaminade’s Director of Service-Learning and a community partner of Project SHINE.

Although reluctant at first, many people involved in the program are first introduced to it through a class. Several professors on campus incorporate service-learning projects into their curriculum. It becomes a part of a student’s assignment where he or she learns from participating in service-learning.

Chelcy Reyes, a SHINE coordinator who has been in the program for seven years, said she learned of SHINE from her intro to sociology class with Professor Bryan Man. Although hesitant at first, she grew to love the program and said whenever SHINE asks her to come back, she says “yes.”

“Really, the best part about SHINE, at the end of tutorial, the learners [tutees] always are just so thankful,” Reyes said with a smile. “Even as tired as you may be, from either a long day of work, long day of classes, it’s early Saturday morning, at the end of tutorial, they are so happy and so thankful and you feel that. It makes a difference.”

Although rewarding and self-satisfying, tutoring immigrants isn’t without its hardships.

Alanah Torre, a communication major who is also SHINE coordinator, said the language barrier was one of the difficulties she experienced when tutoring the learners.

“There are some learners [tutees] with no basic English skills at all and expect us to understand Chinese, which of course we don’t understand at all,” Torre said.

Often, online translators, English to Chinese dictionaries, pictures and hand motions are used to overcome the problem, but it’s still possible for a simple task like learning “What is your name?” to take an hour.

Another difficulty is the fact every immigrant’s level of English is different. It’s not uncommon to see a tutor teaching two to three people. Sakuda said tutors may find themselves not being able to progress into different subjects; however, they should not be discouraged.

The way tutors teach their students vary. Immigrants may bring in storybooks, or tutors may teach their learners phonetics, or use flashcards asking questions that will be on the naturalization test. If the student wants to go over the N-400, the application for naturalization, the tutor will teach what the words on the form mean.

Sakuda said the passing rate for the Project SHINE learners is 80 percent on the first try, and although the tutees passed their naturalization test, some still come back to learn more English.

Many students in the project are thankful for the time and effort volunteers put into tutoring them. According to Sakuda, “people win,” everyone gains out of SHINE. Immigrants learn English, tutors get their required assignment for their professor done, Chaminade has hours added to its 50k hours project and Project SHINE serves its purpose.

“Everybody has to give,” Sakuda said. “That’s why we really try to make it clear what everybody’s roles are because we need everybody to participate. I can’t do it by myself. They can’t do it by themselves. It’s all of us working together. It’s like our baby.”

See if you can answer these civic questions that can be seen on the naturalization test:

Who makes federal laws?

How many U.S. senators are there?

What are the two parts of congress?

What is the name of the current president?

If both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President?

Who vetoes bills?

Who signs bills to become laws?

What is the highest court in the United States?

Who is the Governor of your state now?

What is the political party of the President now?