UH PR campaign wins national acclaim
The University of Hawaii’s "15 to Finish" campaign, encouraging students to take 15 credits per semester to graduate on time, was highlighted as a national model at the Complete College America conference in Denver on Tuesday.
CCA is a nonprofit national alliance of 33 states seeking to boost the number of Americans graduating with postsecondary degrees.
Linda Johnsrud, UH executive vice president for academic affairs and provost, said it was a "real tribute to our 10-campus effort" to be recognized at the conference.
"To think that what we’ve done in Hawaii is going to inform these states — we should all be so proud," Johnsrud said in a news release.
The 15 to Finish campaign was launched last year, encouraging students to take 15 credits a semester to earn an associate’s degree in two years or an undergraduate degree in four.
In the fall of 2012, 24 percent of UH freshmen across the system opted to take 15 credits, up from 15 percent a year earlier.
At UH-Manoa, 56 percent of freshmen took 15 credits last fall, up from 38 percent a year earlier.
"It’s always hard to get large numbers of students to do something different," CCA President Stan Jones said in a news release. "So that makes it even more significant what the University of Hawaii has done."
Worker accidentally slides down ridge
A construction worker on a Hawaiian Electric Co. project in the Koolau Mountains above Temple Valley fell Tuesday morning and slid about 200 feet, fire officials said.
Capt. Terry Seelig, Honolulu Fire Department spokesman, said the worker slid down a ridge from the job site and suffered only minor injury to his leg.
Seelig said the department’s helicopter was dispatched just after 10 a.m. after getting the distress call.
The helicopter airlifted the worker to Kaneohe District Park for a medical examination.
Darren Pai, Hawaiian Electric spokesman, said the injured worker was part of a crew working on the support structures that hold a HECO transmission line.
NEIGHBOR ISLANDS
Iron posts, cable valued at $6,200 stolen from farm
Fifty galvanized angle iron posts and six spools of galvanized cable, valued at $6,200, were stolen from a farm in North Kohala over a five-week period beginning in February.
Hawaii County police are asking for the public’s help in identifying the person or persons responsible for stealing the iron materials or for information about the location of the stolen goods.
Police said between the beginning of February and the second week in March, the items were stolen from a farm in Kohala Estates. Taken were 50 18-foot-long pieces of galvanized angle iron, weighing roughly 200 pounds each, and six spools of quarter-inch galvanized cable.
Anyone with information about this case is asked to call officer Julie Edmondson at 889-6540 or the police department’s nonemergency line at 935-3311.
Washington man dies on Maui while swimming
A 50-year-old Washington man died Tuesday morning in an apparent drowning off Kihei, Maui.
The man and his wife, visiting from Vancouver, Wash., were swimming at Kamaole Beach Park III.
When the wife turned around, she found her husband floating face down in the water, the Maui Fire Department said. She pulled her husband to shore, and beachgoers helped bring him onto the beach.
The Fire Department was alerted at 11:20 a.m.
Beachgoers began cardiopulmonary resuscitation until the arrival of lifeguards and fire personnel, who continued CPR. American Medical Response arrived and resumed patient care, but the man could not be revived. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
