West Hawaiʻi Explorations Academy: Learning by Doing at HOST Park

‍Erik Swenson
Associate Director of WHEA‍

We have students who arrive here early, and they get here before school starts. And before school starts, I watch them, they put down their bags, they get settled, they go to their project area. They start finding me and asking me questions out of excitement, out of curiosity.

I'm Eric Swenson, Associate Director of West Hawaii Explorations Academy, and we are in our STEM lab where most of our magic occurs. West Hawaii Explorations Academy presents NELHA, its HOST Park, its environment to students through project-based learning, through the scientific experimental design, through the engineering design process. And we expose our students to questions connecting our community, our culture, our environmental issues, and we access them to make those connections through experimental design and say, "Hey guys, what would you like to test? What problems would you like to figure out? What questions do you have?"

Safiya
8th Grade Student

I'm working on a hypothesis to see the effects of boat pollution on our coral reef and our our ecosystem around the coast. So, we're going to test the pH of the water near the pier and the harbor, and then go somewhere where there's much less boat pollution and test the pH there.

Neil Simms
Founder and CEO of Ocean Era

The level of excitement and innovation that the potential, the possibilities that open up here that I have seen over the last 35 years, it's just there's boundless opportunity. Particularly, I think for folks that have entrepreneurial ambitions that might want to start their own business and pursue their own ideas.

Erik Swenson 

We like to connect them and expose them to our community, bringing mentors in and having them learn and ask questions and condense that into a school year, allowing them to get their learn on.

Being located in the HOST Park, we've been able to take advantage of the natural environment with the deep sea water coming in and the surface sea water coming in, all of the sunlight, this environment that it provides, and taking advantage of not just the deep sea water and the surface sea water, but the connections we've made through our NELHA community.

Neil Simms

We have a 12 folks on on staff in Ocean Era. Most of them, the majority, seven, have undergraduate degrees from UH Hilo. That's a four-year degree, uh, either in marine science or aquaculture. And that's tremendous for what you need to do in in this industry because most of the skill sets that you need, you will learn on the job.

WHEA Student

People should come here because they want to learn. Because this is a very independent school where you have to be passionate. Uh, outdoorsy people, you know, if you want to learn about animal husbandry, it's the number one reason why a lot of the students are here. And then having a good connection with your teachers and just learning mentorship type type stuff and how to get out to the community. I think that's the biggest part here is, you know, you learn life skills rather than just sitting in the classroom, like with textbook type. My personal dream would be marine sciences and like teaching math and incorporating that at WHEA. I want to come back here to teach. Yeah.

Erik Swenson 

So, I would love for our students and all of HOST Park to work together and retain our local talent. I would like to excite our students through what's next door, what's down the road. In that way, they would go off to college, you know, allow them to come back and and eventually give back to to this community.

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