When Oceanit’s Patrick Sullivan was invited to submit an essay to Honolulu Civil Beat’s IDEAS section, he wanted to share a positive message during this chaotic year. He decided to talk about Oceanit’s summer intern program and how with we can choose to do more than tourism for the future economy in Hawaii.
IDEAS is a space created by the Civil Beat news organization dedicated to essays, analysis, and opinion pieces that forward the paper’s mission of cultivating an informed body of citizens, all striving to make Hawaii a better place to live.
2020 has been an incredibly difficult year for many people around the world and in our home of Hawai’i. This year has given us many valid reasons to be pessimistic, including Hawaii’s deflated tourist economy, incomplete or absent government policies, outmigration, and of course the global coronavirus pandemic.
Despite all this, Dr. Sullivan shared our optimism for the future that stems from experiences in working with over 700 bright student interns throughout the years. He discussed how he still has optimism for the future version of Hawaii. Instead of the present approach where we spend resources to import goods and “experts”, we will create solutions “from Hawai’i to the world” and will be able to keep our most precious resource: our kids.
Click here to see Dr. Sullivan’s full essay on the Oceanit intern program, our mindset of our students being the key to our future, and how education and imagination should be nurtured and supported, not exported.
Here are some past articles from recent Oceanit summer intern program classes:
