Richard recently spoke to 16 students in the Hawai‘i Island Akamai Observatory Internship program.

It’s an eight-week, paid summer internship funded mostly by the Center for Adaptive Optics (out of the University of California at Santa Cruz), though this year the Thirty Meter Telescope also contributed financially to the program by covering a budget shortfall.

Sarah Anderson is the program’s on-island coordinator and she explains the program’s three goals.

“One is to open pathways into astronomy, engineering and technology careers for local students. The second goal is the development of a work force for astronomy and technology, and the third is to continue to develop collaboration among the observatories themselves.”

The program starts with a weeklong preparatory course, and then there’s a seven-week internship at one of the Mauna Kea observatories. “They work on a single project under a mentor or mentor team for the seven weeks,” says Anderson. “And at the end of the seven weeks, they do an oral presentation at our symposium.”

Sarah says that during the first week’s “short course,” the goal is to prepare the students for their internship. “We do a bunch of science activities,” she says. “Hands-on, inquiry-based activities that are designed to help the students think on their own and develop their critical thinking, and their ability to start and get through projects.

“In addition, we try to get them thinking about their place in society as scientists, engineers and technicians,” she says.

“We asked Richard to come in to talk about business, sustainability and astronomy. They were very interested.”

photo by Sarah Anderson

Most of the interns either attend college at the University of Hawai‘i or one of Hawai‘i’s community colleges; four are local kids attending college on the mainland. Three are Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students.

Richard says it made him think of Paul Coleman, the first native Hawaiian astrophysicist, who now worked for the Institute for Astronomy. “He was really lucky,” says Richard. “When he was following his dream to study astronomy, there were no opportunities here and no programs available like this Akamai program. He had to leave Hawai‘i and he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to get back home. It was only because of a really unusual set of circumstances that he was able to find his way back to work in Hawai‘i in astronomy.

“I remembered Paul telling his story to the OHA board, and here were these students going through a program that did not exist for Paul when he was starting out. I looked at those kids teaming up with mentors and it just kind of took my breath away.”