HERN Press Release

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $718,308 to the University of Hawaii for the first year of a research project designed to explore the implementation and use of high speed networking to reform educational practice at multiple levels in Hawaii. During a three-year period NSF expects to provide over $2.1 million for the HERN: Hawaii Education and Research Network project. Hawaii is one of the first major testbeds funded under NSF's new Networking Infrastructure for Education Program.

The HERN project is an early outcome of the Hawaii Educational Networking Consortium, a collaborative relationship established in December 1993 among the University of Hawaii, Department of Education (DOE) and East-West Center to facilitate cooperative activities in the development and support of educational telecommunications.

HERN will build on the State's ongoing activities to link schools within the DOE and all campuses in the UH system to each other and with the Internet. The new NF funds will not build the physical network, but will help address many of the other infrastru cture and application issues that become more critical given the availability of a more sophisticated and ubiquitous network. HERN will consider appropriate management strategies, institutional structures, training systems, support systems and end-user in terface requirements needed to provide equitable access to a statewide educational community. HERN will also experiment with the use of network technology to facilitate and support educational reform. In particular, the project will develop models for col laborative curriculum development and delivery across multiple levels of education, from K-12 through community college.

Funds will be available to provide a limited number of Internet servers within the DOE and University, to provide a core project staff which will train and assist existing UH and DOE employees in learning to manage and support these systems, and to develo p and conduct workshops for teachers and faculty on the use of new networking technologies for educational transformation. A goal of the HERN project is to work itself out of existence; at the end of the three-year grant period it is expected that the HER N training and support functions will have been institutionalized by the University and DOE, both cooperatively and individually as is found to be appropriate.

Dr. Philip J. Bossert, former President of Hawaii Loa College and former DOE Assistant Superintendent of Education for Information and Telecommunications Services, is the HERN Project Director. The Principal Investigator is David Lassner, UH Director of I nformation Technology, and co-Investigators are Sharen Arakaki of the DOE Office of Information and Telecommunications Services and Jodi-Ann Ito of UH Information Technology Services. John Morton, Provost of Kapiolani Community College, will provide leade rship for HERN activities within the UH Community College System and the project will continue to be guided by the Hawaii Educational Networking Consortium.


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