HCC gets long-overdue face-lift
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
Broken and buckled concrete on the campus' central mall. Settling in one building, creating gaps where walls meet floors in two bathrooms. A water fountain that doesn't drain. Sidewalks broken by tree roots.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
They've all been practically the norm at Honolulu Community College, but all that is changing.
Ken Kato, director of administrative services, points to a hole in the men's bathroom in the Science Building.
Since fall, the campus has been undergoing a long-needed face-lift that's replacing the sidewalk-splitting shower trees, redoing almost a block of cracked pipes, and replacing dangerous concrete along the central mall. Come summer, the bathrooms will be demolished and rebuilt.
"The mall was cracking and the roots were lifting up the concrete and making it a little dangerous for our students," said Ken Kato, director of administrative services for the community college in lower Kalihi.
"But the water pipe was done during the evenings so there'd be a minimum of disruption of classes."
Work on the pipe is almost complete and so is one section of the mall concrete, said Kato. Contracts for the bathroom repairs are about to be put out for bid so work can be done over the summer. During the week of spring break, which starts March 24, demolition begins on the rest of the mall areas damaged by tree roots.
"Everything's planned around the breaks," said Kato, "because it's very noisy."
There's still one sticking point: Campus officials haven't settled on what kind of tree should replace the shower trees that were pulled out. Kato is leaning toward tulipwood trees because they offer a shady canopy and the roots grow down and not out, but other people complain that those trees drop troublesome black pods.
"It has a tiny little black berry," said Kato. "It drops during certain times of the year.
"But it doesn't squish. I tried it."
With campus offcials not completely convinced that tulipwood trees are perfect, a final decision hasn't yet been made, said Kato.
"We spent so much money on this project," he said, "that 50 years from now we don't want it doing the same thing. The tree roots were doing most of the damage."
The outside improvements are being paid for by budgeted money that's in place, so they aren't being affected by the current budget shortfall.
But they aren't the only improvements at HCC. During the past year a growing number of classrooms have been completely "Web-connected" so professors can display Web sites on a large screen, with the capability of showing streaming video, practice exams and a vast array of other visual aids.
"It's a dream come true for a teacher who wants to lecture at the same time as using visual media," said philosophy professor Ron Pine.
Not only that, but at the end of his lectures Pine can push a button and send all of his notes by e-mail to his students.
"They've given us a nice setup over here," said Pine.
"We're probably ahead of Manoa in terms of how many instructors have access to it. Some of my colleagues at Manoa don't have computers in their classes."
HCC student Victoria Wallace likes the way the new technology speeds up her learning and her studying. In sociology professor David Cleveland's class, he'll display discussion topics in Power Point, she says, and then send them to everyone via e-mail.
"That was wonderful," said Wallace.
"In turn I would take the e-mails and make them into study guides for my tests. How great that was instead of poring through all the notes. That cut down on a tremendous amount of time."
As the university system's technology teaching center, HCC has been pushing hard to move ahead by offering high-tech classrooms to its staff and students.
"They're doing as much as they can to keep everybody moving in this direction," said Pine.
Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.
