Chaminade University of Honolulu

Faculty

Hogan Students Learn How Culture and Business are Intertwined

Ramsy Tatum and Elena Farden
Ramsy Taum (President & Founder, Life Enhancement Institute of the Pacific) and Elena Farden (Hogan Entrepreneurs Program student)

LAWE I KA MAʻALEA A KUʻONOʻONO.
Acquire skill and make it deep. This ‘Ōlelo No’eau, or wise proverb, outlines the path of success in becoming good at anything, you must immerse yourself in practice and learning until it becomes part of you. Serving as a guide on this deep journey of enlightenment, was our honored guest speaker, Kumu Ramsay Taum.

Ramsay Taum is the President and Founder of L.E.I, Life Enhancement Institute of the Pacific that provides sustainability consulting, cultural impact assessments and facilitating community engagement and planning. Taum also leads the MBA Island Business concentration program at Chaminade University. Through his work in teaching students and helping companies understand the value-impact vs. the value add of Hawaiian cultural values in the workplace, he describes himself as a community lei maker.

Lei ‘imi na’au’ao (lei of seeking knowledge; enlightenment)
And like an expert lei maker, Taum selects each piece and explains its value to the lei, starting with culture.
“Culture is important,” explains Taum. With culture in place, this moves the conversation from a values-conflict space to prioritizing what’s truly important as a business leader. To successfully navigate this we must understand that we all come with a “supply-side thought”, or preconceived notions, experiences and biases. In business management, when everyone does this they can take weight of their collective principles, values and practices towards shaping things together for deeper impact in business and the community. As Hogan Entrepreneurs, this sentiment resonates with our motto of doing business that makes social sense, and social impact that makes business sense.

Lei haliʻa aloha (Lei of fond remembrance; often said of someone cherished, such as a beloved elder)
As graduate of Kamehameha Schools, US Air Force Academy and University of Southern California, this knowledge Taum shared with the Hogan program wasn’t just given to him, it was gathered and earned. Throughout his life, key mentors such as Papa Lyman, former Bishop Estate Trustee, and Pīlahi Paki, beloved kupuna and cultural expert, pushed Taum to deepen his worldview and identity as a Hawaiian.
Today, Taum is a kumu and mentor himself. He teaches the values he has learned to help local businesses align a place-based approach of people, place, and prosperity in the context and content of how they do business in Hawai’i.

Lei pilina (Lei of closeness; a woven relationship or association)
Above all, the culture that shapes us and the values that help define us are all driven by relationships. Taum explains that culture is the lens that gives us new eyes – new eyes to see and new eyes to see how success is measured. To that he closed the evening with a simple question to measure if you are successful as a leader and business: did you eat.
If you can feed your family, if your workers can feed their families, if your community has access to food and the means to feed others less fortunate in the neighborhood, then you are successful.

Written by: Hogan Entrepreneurs Program student, Elena Farden
Speaker Session with Ramsay Taum 4/19/17

2017 Alumni Reunion Was Hot, Hot, Hot!

It was innovative.  It was fun. And it was family.  Chaminade University’s alumni ignited the campus with positivity for their annual reunion celebration from Thursday, March 31 to Sunday, April 2.

2017 Alumni Reunion Mocktails and MasterpiecesThursday evening’s Mocktails and Masterpieces event kindled the fire with bursts of creativity.  With artist Jenny B. facilitating, alumni painted canvas masterpieces that they could take home. The alumni mingled and caught up with old friends.  The familiar warmth of campus ‘ohana surged feelings of nostalgia and fanned their anticipation for Saturday.

On Saturday, a gentle mist of rain blew through campus, and the angelic acapella voices of Kaipo Leopoldino, BS ’14, Teuila Tauaese, BA ’13 and Baron Kaholokua, BA ’13 sang the Hawaiian Doxology Ho‘onani I Ka Makua Mau ( Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow). People in the crowd pulled out their cell phones to record the “chicken skin” moment. With that blessing, the Alumni Reunion Street Festival – Food Truck Rally opened into a free-flow night under the stars.

Residence Hall Association (RHA) students lined the Sullivan Family Library stairs to welcome home alumni. The RHA students wore white “I LOVE CHAMINADE” T-shirts accessorized with round Chaminade spirit buttons that read, “Once a student, Always an Alum.” Blue ribbons with the message “Alumni in Training” hung from the buttons.

“It was so beautiful to see that we had alumni, commuter students, resident students, and faculty come together for this event. When I stepped onto Second Road and saw all the food trucks and so many people, it was overwhelming,” said RHA student president Savannah Lyn Delos Santos from Saipan.

2017 Alumni Reunion Acts of Kindness boothOutside of the Sullivan Family Library, a photo booth captured the memories of friendships and newly made friends. There was a ceramic pot sale setup by Fine Arts professor Yukio Ozaki, and the Campus Store offered Chaminade logo items for sale. Alumni like Teresa Fujino, MBA ’16 guided activities such as “DIY – Salty Scrubs,” where participants made bath scrubs. Kacie Cohen, MSCP ’13 and Darren Iwamoto, MSCP ’98 with Dale Fryxell, grant director of the E Ho‘opili No Na Haumana Project and interim dean of Education, manned the 110-AOK (Acts of Kindness) beading table.

The crowd echoed excitement when Leopoldino kicked off his shoes to dance the hula.  From that point on, the event accelerated into high energy as Stacie Ku’ulei, BS ’02, MED ’10 emceed and entertained throughout the evening.

2017 Alumni Reunion Food Truck RallyThe Reunion Street Festival – Food Truck Rally had many memorable highlights, thanks to the collaboration of the Office of Alumni Relations and Residence Hall Association. Tasty smells from the food trucks permeated the air as people lined up in front of Hawaii’s favorite food trucks on Second Road.  Chardonnay Pao, BA ’13, MBA ’15 and Cherie Ann Park, MSCP ’13 served various ono plates from Kapakahi Grindz. The Nalo Made Lemonade booth was a hit.  Shawn Niwa Kadooka, BBA ’91 mentioned how happy she was to be a part of the event, and said it required two resupply runs. Also, depending on your appetite, you could also choose dishes from Prime Sandwiches or Chamorro Grindz or something refreshing from Tats Shaved Ice.

2017 Alumni Reunion“Featuring alum or alum related vendors is the best! It brings a sense of pride to the event knowing that Chaminade is investing and supporting alum businesses. I saw alum, current students, and employees coming to buy our product. The positive vibes were just on a whole other level of awesome,” Pao said. “Good music, ono food, and the use of Chaminade Dollars brought another sense of school spirit to the event.”

Jeannie Pinpin Lum, BA ’05, MBA ’07 crafted a social meet-up game, Mingle Bingo, which gave participants the opportunity to meet each other and for students to connect with alumni and build their Chaminade networks. Lolita Lum Hoy ‘61 gave it two thumbs up. “The Bingo game was fun.  It gave me an opportunity to meet many new people.  I was able to meet people from Pittsburgh, Texas, Guam, Georgia, Oakland, and Mililani,” she said.

2017 Alumni Reunion alums say aloha to Bro. BernieDuring a more structured part of the evening, Aunty Susan Frank Kama, BS ’61 in her melodic voice started a Lei Aloha ‘oli that cued alums to form a line as Chaminade president Bro. Bernard Ploeger, SM was escorted to the lawn.  The chant continued as alums showered Bro. Ploeger with lei, warm hugs, and bid him a fond farewell as he concludes his 23 years of service at Chaminade University.

Pinpin danced to “I’ll Remember You,” the classic song by Kui Lee. She offered the heartfelt emotional hula as a gift to Bro. Ploeger on behalf of the alumni.

The program also highlighted those classes ending in two and seven, pioneer classes from 1959 – 1966, and the class of 1967 celebrating its 50th Reunion. Those, who had traveled from out of state to attend, were also recognized.  There were lots of prizes to give away, thanks to generous alumni, as well as lots of nostalgia and the tears that go with it.

2017 Alumni ReunionThen Micah G hit the stage and got the students, alumni, faculty, staff, and Marianists to get out of their seats and dance.  The lawn in front of the library turned into a huge dance floor.

Night settled, and lights dimmed.  On Sunday morning, the warmth of the embers could still be felt at Mystical Rose Oratory for the Alumni Mass. The alumni received a special blessing. Later they hugged each other and said their ‘a hui hou’ (until we meet again).

“There’s a lot of behind the scenes work that goes into a reunion celebration, and it is gratifying to see so many come out and enjoy the festivities,” remarked  Be-Jay Kodama, ’86, MBA ’16, Chaminade’s director of Alumni Relations. “This year’s reunion committee took a rather bold move to carefully craft a reunion that would create moments of renewed connection to our Chaminade community, and create opportunities to enrich the lives of students who are alumni tomorrow through collaborative efforts of the Office of Alumni Relations and the Residence Hall Association. What an evening to witness the spirit of the Chaminade community through this experience.  I can’t wait to build upon this for next year.”

At the recent 12th Annual Co-Curricular Awards, the Office of Alumni Relations and Residence Hall Association were presented the Father Stephen Tutas Program Award for Excellence for “The Reunion Street Festival – Food Truck Rally,” in recognition of valuable contributions to Chaminade University as the best event of the year.

2017 Alumni Reunion entertainmentMahalo to all, especially the Alumni Reunion Committee Volunteers: Alice Kaahanui BA ’86, Bernard Lum Hoy, BA ’59, Lolita Lum Hoy, BS ’61, Christy Aiwohi, BBA ’87, David Dinh, MBA ’15,  Heather Nakao, BS ’12, BA ’15,  Jeannie Pinpin, BA ’05, BA ’07, Lois Nakamura, BA ’85, Linda Tavares, BS ’63 Michael “Pika” Ahakuelo, BA ’02, MBA ’11, Scott Kishimori, BBA ’87, Shayne Iwamoto, AA ’12, BS ’13, Susan Frank Kama, BS ’61, Sweetie Pacarro, BA ’89, Terrence Kong, BS ’89, MSCP ’03.

Student-Mentor Presents at National Conference

Chaminade senior Erin Ah Sue and Chaminade accounting professor Wayne Tanna presented their collaborative research at the 24th annual conference of the American Society of Business and Behavioral Sciences (ASBBS) in Las Vegas this spring.

Titled “The Palolo (Elementary School) Stock Market Challenge,” their paper with an accompanying PowerPoint was accepted for competition under the educational leadership track for the “Classroom and Adjustment Issues at Home and Abroad” session. The competitive sessions were organized with an average of four papers presented. After each presentation, general discussion followed.

For the past 20-years, students at Chaminade have strengthened their neighboring community, Palolo Valley, through various service-learning projects, including the “Palolo Stock Market Challenge,” a fantasy investment simulation. Ah Sue, majoring in Nursing and Business Administration, was a recent student-mentor with the project. She and Tanna, her instructor, shared details and the results of the development and operation of the most recent project that assisted low-income students and families in the area. Ah Sue was the main presenter.

The project taught the participating Palolo students basic math concepts and developed financial literacy and an appreciation of the ethical and environmental impacts of business operations through the real-world contexts of saving and investing.

“The paper was more of an instructor’s manual for replicating the game at other universities and public schools around the country,” said Tanna, who has been involved in this project for many years.

Tanna and Ah Sue, who is also a Hogan Entrepreneur Program student, were able to attend other sessions during the March 23-25 conference, as well as the ASBBS awards luncheon with Virginia Gean of California Lutheran University as keynote speaker.  Gean spoke on “Success Stories of Women Leaders in Business and Education.”

Vita In Verbo Presentation Asks, “Why Teach Slave Narratives?”

Chaminade University associate professor of English Allison E. Paynter, Ph.D. was one of a select group of faculty members chosen nationwide by the Council of Independent Colleges and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History to participate in a special American history seminar on “Slave Narratives.” The multidisciplinary seminar for faculty members in history, English, and related fields used the slave narrative–as well as some other assigned secondary reading–to comprehend the lived experience of slaves in the transition from bondage to freedom. From a pool of 66 highly competitive nominations, 27 faculty members were selected to participate in the seminar held June 19-24, 2016 at Yale University.

The Gilder Lehrman Yale Fellow presented her findings to her Chaminade colleagues at the March 8 Vita in Verbo session. Her PowerPoint presentation titled “Why Teach Slave Narratives?” introduced different narrative forms: confessions, memoirs, and autobiography.  At Yale, she studied the slave narrative approach and its importance as a genre in studies, regardless of the discipline or field.

Paynter demonstrated that slave narrative was integral to pre- and post-Civil War American history and culture.  Rhetorical choices and stylistic techniques informed American literature during the post-Civil War through dialogue, American sensibility, and the psychology of escape and freedom.  American writers influenced by slave narratives included Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Todd, Harriet Wilson, Mark Twain, William Edward Burghardt “W. E. B.” Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Ralph Ellison. Contemporary films inspired by slave narratives included Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives (2003); Manderlay (2005); 12 Years a Slave (2013); Tula: The Revolt (2013); Birth of a Nation (2016); Free State of Jones (2016); 13th (2016); Roots and Underground miniseries (2016).

Paynter pointed out that slavery continues to inform popular culture in America, but stereotypes and fallacies abound. Students should have a foundation by which to analyze this “American institution” called slavery. She gave stereotype examples such as Uncle Tom, Aunt Jemima, Zip Coon, Sambo, and Pickaninny.

Paynter is currently writing an article on the powerful and disturbing book Kindred, which she teaches in her class. She also recommended the novel Underground Airlines: What Price Freedom? for additional reading. She noted that though the 13th amendment was created in 1865 to ensure slavery would never return to America, there was still in existence modern slavery in the form of sex trafficking.

Chaminade Professor Connects Education to the Greek Polis

The Faculty Center featured Chaminade professor of Historical and Political Studies Lilia Castle, Ph.D. as its guest presenter for its Vita in Verbo – Life in the Word series. In her presentation on Monday, Feb. 27, Dr. Castle explored the importance of paideia or education in ancient Greek philosophy.  She discussed the importance of education in relationship to the identity of the Greek polis by building on the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Polis, which literally means ‘city’ in Greek, can also mean a body of citizens.

“Paideia in ancient Greece referred to education (nurturing, training, cultivating, refinement). An idea of paideia covered the same semantic field today as the culture discerned as natural and cultural. Education was seen as the cultivation and development of the natural abilities of a man who will then participate in governing of his own state,” noted Dr. Castle. “Greeks saw education to be essential for those who prefer freedom and democracy. But if other states do not see the value of education for their citizens and do not invest in education, it simply means that such a state does not want to give it citizens either freedom or democracy.”

Dr. Castle argued that in the end “the divisions created by the city-states have become global, and it is our education in the divine that ultimately unifies humanity,” said Brian Richardson, Ph.D., Chaminade’s director of the Center for Teaching and Learning (a.k.a. the Faculty Center). “Education should focus on the spirit, establishing a local identification with the polis’ ancestors and a vertical identification the gods, and in this way it can promote political involvement and the cultivation of a rational soul.”

The presentation was thought-provoking. Free and open to faculty and staff, the Faculty Center regularly holds the Vita in Verbo — Life in the Word series as opportunities for collegiate sharing of scholarship between the disciplines.

Chaminade Professor Demonstrates Concepts of Heaven and Earth through Ikebana

When Fine Arts professor Yukio Ozaki creates art, it is as if he is in a sacred space.  A space of silence electrified by thought. Patient anticipation precipitates into a decisive idea that acts, causing material elements to move, form and change.

“Every art form started as a gift to God,” he said as he shook a banyan branch taller than himself during a recent demonstration of Ikebana for the Marianist Educational Associates (MEAs).

Ozaki paused. Despite the crowded room, he connected with a hidden quietness in himself. Decisively he stepped towards the large ceramic vase, held the branch to the ceiling and with a loud, cleansing breath, suddenly slammed the branch into the prepared vase. Stepping back, he determined that it was good.  “A gift to God,” he proclaimed and named it.

Keeping in mind the requested “heaven and earth” theme, Ozaki created three unique floral arrangements.

Early that morning before the demonstration, he completed his first arrangement. Using flowers from the field tied to the tip of a bamboo branch, he fastened the bamboo to a palm tree near Henry Hall. The arrangement presented itself to the heavens like a banner. It heralded creation without fanfare or need for human approval.

The second arrangement was the banyan branch placed into the vase with a robust spirit.

During the third arrangement, Ozaki interacted with the audience, answering questions and sharing his method.  Discussion ensued on the differences between Western and Japanese perspectives made evident through decisions in the creation process. As he taught, he sorted through his collection of yard cuttings and scrutinized with a hidden agenda.  Chosen pieces were pruned for structure and line. Ozaki navigated his way through light and space, creating balance with placement. He deliberately ordered along dark branch lines intermittent moments of orange seed pods, green teardrop leaves and gray lichen grasping at banyan bark.

When he was young and still living in Japan, Ozaki considered teaching Ikebana as a possible career choice but found that was not the right fit for him. “When I quit lessons from my teacher in Ohara School of Flower Arrangement system in 1966, I thought I wasted more than five years of my life trying to become a flower-arrangement teacher to make a living. But the intensive training gave me an incredibly comprehensive foundation in aesthetics, material, design, history and culture,” recalled Ozaki. “The most profound philosophy I learned from my teacher was: ‘don’t arrange with your hands; arrange with your feet.’ By that, she meant: ‘Know where you can get the right material at any time when you need it’.”

Working with Ikebana taught him something else.  It revealed how he did not want to teach.  Consider it part of the pruning process.  His early career experience and what he thought of as failure shaped his style of teaching.

“Now, in education, I don’t teach. This is very different from the way I learned flower arrangement. It was always very painful to see my teacher take apart my arrangement in lessons and change my work so completely to her arrangement,” he shared.

Later in a sculpture class at the University of Hawaii, he felt validated when his professor said, “There is nothing more awful than seeing an instructor in the students’ work.”

The beloved teacher shared on his calling as a teacher. “I am convinced that God gave me a second chance in life through becoming an educator at Chaminade. I’m so blessed that there was a purpose for someone like myself,” said Ozaki modestly.   “It has been my educational motto that I facilitate my students’ learning, not teaching.”

His teaching manner connected with faculty in the room. “As I watched you carefully and thoughtfully prune the branches and leaves and flowers during the Ikebana demonstration, I realized this is how you teach,” wrote Joan Riggs, director of the Environmental + Interior Design program, in a thank-you email. “You meticulously examine your students’ work and guide them to discover and to discern what is relevant and meaningful and what can be discarded or re-used in a different way. I see all of this as an effort to seek the beauty and wonder of God in all things and circumstances. Your resulting arrangement was unique, interesting and thought-provoking. I see this in you and in the work your students produce.”

Ozaki joined Chaminade’s faculty in the fall of 1986 and continues to teach ceramics and 3D-design. Since 1973 he established himself as an artist mainly in the medium of ceramics and wood. His artwork has been exhibited in museums and in prestigious art exhibitions nationally and internationally, as well as in Hawaii.

Named as a Living Treasure of Hawaiʻi by Honpa Hongwanji of Hawaiʻi, Ozaki is not only a renowned artist, he is a renowned teacher. He was the first recipient of the Fr. Bolin Faculty Scholarship Award and recognized nationally by the Carnegie Foundation as Professor of the Year. He received the Chaminade Award for Commitment to Marianist Values as well as the Outstanding Tenured Faculty Award.  In 2005, he inspired the addition of the Jean E. Rolles and Kiki Tidwell Ceramics Studio and Sculpture Garden between Eiben Hall and the Sullivan Family Library.

For Ozaki, creating art and teaching are sacred spaces. Each is done as an offering to God.