Thoughts on the University of Hawaii CBA
Vance Roley (UH CBA Dean) meeting
Karma
Transcript:
[00:00:00]
Okay, so today is Saturday, July 17 and I am sitting here, I am listening to an interview with Vance Roley and Rob Robinson from the university. They are talking about all the initiatives that the university is putting into place for entrepreneurship and the companies that are–I don’t know the companies that are pretty much coming out of it and I think it’s an excellent, excellent initiative. The thing that I think we should be focusing on though is, we should be focusing on developing better students, stronger leaders, people that are — have more skills and more confidence and more knowledge and in turn those students will take care of the next generation by producing companies that great jobs and so on. So, I am interested to hear a dialogue in regards to that. I had a talk with Vance Roley the other day and it was a really good talk. We talked about putting together student run businesses where students can actually get experience while they are doing it as well as the money coming in goes to the University and people from different schools meet each other, it was a really interesting concept.
[00:01:18]
Basically, I pitched him that if we get the student run restaurants let’s say, we start a restaurant from scratch and the MBA students can put together the business plan, the KCC culinary students can do the menu. You can also get accounting and legal involved, and marketing. If it’s student run, the students are going to be a lot more in tune with what they want to eat as well as how they want to have the decor and you know it could be a example for the rest of the nation. My wife had proposed that why don’t they shut it every four years so they can continue to the start-of-process. So when they get out of school they have gone through the entire process at least once. And once they get out into the real world, they can either do it themselves or they can — you know they have that hands-on experience.
[00:02:04]
One thing that’s interesting about that too is, it has a value of almost a game like situation. I was listening to another interview where they talked about edutainment and they said that in the classroom, I think he was at — I don’t know, one of the large Ivy League schools, they run a history class; and in the classroom they found out that the students were really, they get really frustrated if the work gets too hard in class. However, for video games that a lot of them play, if the video game was too easy they would get real frustrating and quit that. So, what they did was, they implemented civilization four into the classroom and what they found out was that the students were learning the terminology they understood the context of why things were happening and they were coming into class early to read their text books and asking the teacher questions so they could a hands up leading edge on the game. And that was really interesting I mean they started studying so that they could basically cheat, in other words.
[00:03:01]
So you know if we take that same example and put it into the student run businesses; as a student is running the business, let’s say they are an accounting student. They come up against accounting issue where everyone is depending on them, they have to do a good job because their peers are giving them peer pressure, and at that point they go to their text book, they talk to their professor, they talk to their advisors, they talk to the private sector people that are involved with the project and then they learn exactly why they need to do these things instead of just doing journal entries and things like that, that they learn in class, that they forget later on anyway, they learn why it needs to be done, how to do it and by the time they get out of school, they are years beyond any other student coming out of any top University because they have hands on knowledge and information. And then the money can go to the school and the school can pay for scholarships for other students to come through. And programs like this could be absolutely amazing. So that’s one thing that we were talking about with the Dean he seemed real optimistic. I think I wore him out because I was in there for a couple of hours and have a tendency to do that but, I think that’s where the future needs to be —
[00:04:18]
— Interactive programs bringing in revenue where the students can become better. Everybody wins in that situation and then we bridge the gap between the private sector leaders, the ones in the business community, pass that knowledge down, record it through Greater Good Radio and then archive it and make it available forever. And that’s something that is really pretty exciting for me.
[00:04:39]
So, that’s a thought for today. Another thing that’s going on that’s real, real interesting and it’s something I am trying to test is this whole social entrepreneurship thing, this whole social enterprise thing and how it is that, if you do good things for the community, how does it come back to you? Most of the time it doesn’t come back in a direct effect, it comes back in a, kind of a roundabout way but, I mean I am just seeing that happen now.
[00:05:12]
I’ll give you a really good example. Yesterday I met with a gentleman in town that owns several magazines as well as a radio station, huge pieces of real estate, shopping centers and even part of the San Francisco Giants and I would never have met him if I did not coach girls track Punahou School in 4-5 years ago, that’s when we had met because I was coaching track and just trying to do my part in the community and years down the line we built a relationship up and I was able to go in there and talk to him and they are looking at becoming a strategic portion of this Greater Good Radio, this movement that we are doing and that’s kind of–you know the benefit that I see out of that community service long time ago because if I looked at the direct benefit that I am getting from this community service, I mean if you are coaching, you get paid almost nothing. You are putting in a ton of hours, you get a lot of grief but, besides the benefits of seeing these kids really blossom and grow and develop confidence and succeed and be so happy you know these ancillary benefits of meeting people and they appreciate your work. So that’s one thing that was real evident to me today and that’s why I can’t sleep at night. I really can’t–I am having a tough time sleeping because I want to keep working on this project, this project is so exciting, it’s so exciting where it’s gone. In two months from when I got a B+ on my paper for entrepreneurship class at the University and that’s primarily because I turned in no financials which were a large part of it and to see what’s evolved already in roughly 60 days, where we were looking to launch and we have got interviews and I am seeing the–I mean it’s just unbelievable, it’s unbelievable.
[00:07:07]
So I am hoping that through these programs and through these podcasts and through these transcripts and whatever dialogue that we can create, I am hoping that you too can find exactly what it is that you are passionate about where you can make your contributions so you live that fulfilling life that we are all trying to live. And that’s the thought for today, it’s July 16 actually today is July 16, Saturday and we are about to start our weekend, my wife is telling me stop working, okay, bye.
[00:07:39]
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe:
