Waipahu High School GEER Final Report

One of our business partners raises and sells turmeric (Olena).  They challenged our Culinary students to find different ways to use the Olena   The Culinary students created various recipes that utilized Olena in their dishes.  Among the dishes created were ravioli, macaron, cookies, and even a cake.  In addition to the Culinary team’s participation, the Academy of Natural Resources students experimented with the leftover turmeric pieces to determine the best conditions to grow the Olena in.  

1. Students could be actively engaged in a project that had value to industry partners.  
2. Students gained practice in collaborating with each other on their projects.  
3. Students were able to utilize their creativity and Design Thinking skills to design their projects.

1. Time (or lack thereof) always seems to be a hindrance.
2. The timing of things seemed to not sync up as we had hoped.  In our ideal world, the Culinary and Natural Resource students would have participated in the Early College course and the Design Thinking workshops.  Unfortunately, because of the timing of course and the training, that did not happen.  A separate group of students participated in the college course.  We had hoped the Culinary, Early College, and Natural Resource students would be able to work collaboratively, sharing their expertise as they went through the DT process together, solving industry problems together (to give different perspectives). In actuality, much of the work happened in silos.  

Pooling resources is a great idea; it shows good stewardship of the resources   However, I think when we are planning for several groups (especially different schools) to work together; we need to provide as much lead time as possible (preferably a minimum of 3-4 months in advance) to allow for maximum participation from the students.