ON SCHOOLS

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Staff Writer

With the opening of Hawai'i Pacific University's new $1.2 million addition to its high-technology Frear Center yesterday, it's clear the private downtown college is on Fort Street Mall to stay.

The center, with three new high-tech labs offering everything from systems design to software programming, will let HPU boost enrollment in its information systems courses by 40 percent, or about 400 students, over the next few years.

And that doesn't include enrollment increases that will also be possible with the new capabilities in distance learning.

All of that is good news for the hundreds of downtown employees who want to beef up their skills in computers, no matter what their profession. Some classes have been designed to coincide with the lunch hour. Others are offered during the evening and on weekends, with classes starting at 9 a.m. and going through 8:30 p.m.

"We think it's tremendous when students can work on real problems," said Gordon Jones, HPU professor of information systems who designed the new laboratories that offer state-of-the-art equipment.

"People can walk over from the business community and take a class.

"Students will be building corporate networks, or building the physical part of big systems. Maybe they'll build an e-commerce system or an on-line shopping cart."

Jones said people already are working flex-hours so they can get a three-hour slot open on a Monday afternoon, for instance, to go back to school for a Master of Science in inform-ation systems. (But it's pricey, at $1,250 per three-credit course. It takes 42 credits, or 14 courses, for a master's degree.)

In just a year, HPU turned a $600,000 grant from the Frear Eleemosynary Trust into a renovated high-technology building that brings to 39 the total number of high-tech classrooms on the urban campus.

The renovations have added 4,500 square feet of instructional classrooms and laboratories, including a hardware and telecommunications lab, software engineering lab and systems lab. The result is a 12,500-square-foot facility at Frear with eight teaching and learning labs, including the Communication Video Laboratory, HECO Technology Laboratory, Information Systems Lab, and Multimedia Production Laboratory.

Because of the new interconnectivity, overhead screens allow professors to dip into innovative student work and share it with everyone in class. Generally classes have no more than 24 students.

In addition most areas have "wireless" computer access, which enables students to come to class with a laptop or sit on the mall with a cup of coffee and a laptop to work on an assignment.

At HPU all of the 9,000 students are required to take at least two computer literacy classes, Jones said, to prepare them for any field. In addition, the new labs and additional curriculum will cut across all disciplines. For instance, someone getting a nursing degree can also take a course in electronic commerce, or data warehousing, or systems analysis.

HPU President Chatt Wright expects the new high-tech additions will continue to attract students from Hawai'i and out of state. Currently HPU has students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries.

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser .com or 525-8013.