2023-03-24 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board March 24, 2023 Q&A session, with top business leaders in the community. Todd expressed—he shared information related to COVID-19 and some of the trends with regard to enrollment at UHH. And within—more specifically, with the College of Business and Economics—overall Todd and his team shared that enrollment overall has been declining in the UHH-HCC systems. But, fortunately, for the College of Business and Economics, they've seen a pretty steady enrollment number. He also shared—which was very interesting to me and why we're probably part of the reason why we're seeing a lot of vacancies here in the County they've seen a significant shift from students taking interest in the fields of finance, accounting, engineering to healthcare management, hospitality, and data analytics. And their analysis is because COVID-19 affected these three industries—had a huge impact on these three industries—more and more students took interest in switching to these careers in these fields. So, they're seeing a huge trend in that direction and that makes sense as to why we're not seeing a lot of interest in engineers, accounting, financea lot of our business management -type positions here in the County. So, that was interesting. I connected with their UHH's Internship Coordinator, which ironically his name is also Andrey—Andrey Siminov is his name. I say that because HCC's CVE Coordinator's name is Andrey. So, Andrey isI'm going to work closely with Andrey to develop a robust internship program to include a lot of accounting students and other management students to develop that pipeline because we could, definitely, use the help. And he's hopeful that they have candidates that would be interested. So, I'm excited to enter into that partnership with Andrey. I also connected with Ms. Helen Tien. She's the External Affairs Chairperson for UHH Academic and Career Advisor, and she's a resource for us to participate in career fairs, speaking engagements, and presentations, and also curriculum development. They—UHH may be interested in a human resources -type course curriculum. So, I'd be really excited to engage with them on that. So, that's my involvement so far with UHH's advisory board for the COBE group. Next, HCC—anybody have any questions with that? Okay. Next, HCC has invited me to do a presentation to their business students about job opportunities and applying to work for the County and also some interviewing tips. So, Ms. Ann Chung invited me and Michelle Simmons to attend and do a quick presentation. So, we'll be doing that. I was invited to attend the Good Jobs Hawaii I don't know if anybody's heard of that, but it's, basically, a coalition of businesses, educators, and community partners creating they created this program to help build—do skills development for Hawaii students in the UH -HCC system at no cost to these employers to seek gainful employment. I'll be attending their presentation on Friday, March 31" in Kona. It's a half-day presentation. They are focused on high demand industries to include healthcare, technology, skilled trades, and creative industriesoh, and clean energy as well. Page 5