Education briefs

Advertiser Staff

'Listening Project' aims to help UH

The "Listening Project" is expanding, hoping to pull a broad range of people in the community into the strategic planning process under way at the University of Hawai'i.

Yesterday, the Graduate Student Organization offered an open question and answer session with president Evan S. Dobelle and interim Vice Chancellor Karl Kim. A "Town and Gown Meeting of the Minds" is scheduled for Monday at 4 p.m. at the Campus Center Ballroom.

For Monday's forum, a panel of students, faculty, neighborhood board members and community representatives will offer individual perspectives on building a campus community at Manoa, followed by comments and questions from the audience.

Dobelle has repeatedly stressed that the planning process will be open and accessible — his word is "transparent" — and such meetings offer opportunities for testimony from students, faculty, staff, and interested outsiders. Written commentary may be submitted through the project survey available online at www.uhm.hawaii.edu/vision

UH, New Zealand school sign pact

The University of Hawai'i and Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, have signed a cooperative agreement that will allow joint research projects and curriculum development as well as the exchange of faculty and students between the two schools.

There are already more than 25 cooperative agreements in effect with institutions in more than 25 countries.

Research involving the two institutions likely would include areas of interest important to Hawaiian, Maori and Pacific nations peoples.

Host families sought for teens

The International Hospitality Center is looking for volunteer host families for high school exchange students from Argentina, Brazil, Germany and Russia.

Students will attend high schools in the district where the host families live during the spring semester, from mid-January until mid-June 2002.

Host families provide the exchange student with bed and board.

The students are sponsored by the Center for Cultural Interchange and have taken part in an extensive application and selection process, personal interviews and orientation. All are covered by health and accident insurance and have have their own spending money.

For more information, call Barbara Bancel, executive director of the International Hospitality Center, at 521-3554.