Sky is the limit for Akamai Workforce Initiative

Times are a-changin’, and the Akamai Workforce Initiative (AWI) is looking to the future.

The AWI is a partnership between the University of Hawai‘i Institute of Astronomy, UH Maui College and the University of California Center for Adaptive Optics.

“It’s a strength in numbers, and different elements of that partnership have its own strengths, and we brought them all together in something that should work magic in helping to educate the technologists in electro-optics that are going to come from Maui and everywhere in Hawai‘i,” Kuhn said.

The goal of the AWI is to “train and advance local students for science and technology careers through a new electro-options curriculum, internships and professional development of faculty members and graduate students,” according to federal stimulus project data.

“Electro-optics is mostly about how we can detect and record and produce light in a controlled way,” Kuhn said. “Electro-optics is all about using electronic detectors and electronic sources for light that works in this careful set of instrumentations, so it requires a knowledge of things like mirrors and lenses and optics.”

Hunter said that the Mauna Kea and the Haleakalā telescopes on the Big Island and Maui are “incredible sites for the telescopes,” which “involve a great deal of electro-optics; all of their inner workings are both optics and electronics that hold it together.”

The AWI received a $2.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation through the federal stimulus project awards and $625,000 from Air Force Office of Scientific Research last year. UH supports the AWI with $160,000 a year, and the Thirty Meter Telescope Corporation chips in $35,000 a year, according to AWI Director Lisa Hunter.

‘A Local Workforce’

Hunter said that the AWI is best known for its internship program, in which about 150 students – 37 of which attended or are currently attending UH Mānoa – have participated.

“One of our biggest accomplishments is that we’ve been able to give students a summer experience in the tech workforce and then get them jobs or keep them in school,” Hunter said.

Since the goal of the program is to create a local workforce, Hunter said AWI interns must be attending a university or college in Hawai‘i, or if they are attending college on the mainland they must be from Hawai‘i, and studying a technical field such as science, engineering or technology.

Hunter said the AWI has kept track of most of its students, and about 80 percent have gotten jobs in or are currently pursuing degrees in science or engineering.

The AWI program aims to increase the number of women, Native Hawaiians and other minority groups to study engineering technology and work in Hawai‘i.

“We have a particular interest in getting students who haven’t historically pursued science and technology careers into the program,” Hunter said.

After “a very careful placement process,” AWI interns are placed at a company or one of the observatories to focus on a project, according to Hunter. Interns must then take a 40-hour short course before beginning their seven-week work internship. The program concludes with a symposium in which AWI interns give presentations about their experience.

“(AWI interns) get technical skills, workplace skills, communication skills,” Hunter said. “They get a network of people that can be mentors and help guide them in the future.”

Besides the internship program, the AWI also trains graduate students, many of whom attend UH Mānoa, who are interested in teaching science and engineering.

“The program is there to both help advanced graduate students learn how to teach and give the information they learned to advanced undergraduate students who will go off and have jobs in the area,” Kuhn said. “So the AWI program links what we would call the ‘academic environment’ with the ‘technical environment’ that is much closer associated with the technology and the jobs over on Maui.”

Kuhn said one of the AWI initiative’s biggest accomplishments was the establishment of a four-year electrical engineering program at the UH Maui College, formerly known as Maui Community College. Kuhn said that the establishment of the program played a significant role in Maui’s transition from a community college to a university, calling the program “a link to the summit of Haleakala.”