PUHI — Jolynne Uyesono, manager of the Kaua‘i Community College bookstore, was busy overseeing two registers and monitoring a line of customers that snaked down one aisle Monday morning. “You should have been here last week,” Uyesono said. “We started
PUHI — Jolynne Uyesono, manager of the Kaua‘i Community College bookstore, was busy overseeing two registers and monitoring a line of customers that snaked down one aisle Monday morning.
“You should have been here last week,” Uyesono said. “We started getting busy from Wednesday and Thursday. We were even open on Saturday, so that helped.”
KCC students reported for their first day of class Monday.
“I took care of most of the stuff I needed last week so I wouldn’t have to go through this line,” one student said, adding a date minder to his collection of books.
Earl Nishiguchi, the KCC dean of students, said when classes opened Monday, there were over a thousand students registered.
“This is not as busy as how it used to be,” Nishiguchi said. “Over the past two weeks, we’ve had several programs to help students” register early.
One of those programs included the One Stop Day, co-hosted by KQNG Radio Group and Bank of Hawai‘i. During that event two weeks ago, Nishiguchi said students could take care of their skin test, the KCC Business Office was open to accept payments for registration and the KCC Bookstore was open so students could get a head-start on book purchases.
“We had about 64 students for that event,” Nishiguchi said. “That’s about double of what it used to draw.”
On Monday, Nishiguchi said the office was still accepting late registration and will continue to accept students until Friday afternoon, pending availability of classes.
“Last year we ended up with 1,059 students,” Nishiguchi said. “We’re at that level right now and hopefully we’ll get another 50 students or so this week. We should have about 1,100 students by the end of the week.”
The Okinawa Christian College of Nursing exchange students should also be arriving on campus starting next week.
“They wanted more student interaction so this year, they rescheduled their visit to coincide with the opening of school,” Nishiguchi said.
Under the direction of KCC instructor Brian Yamamoto, the Okinawa students do classroom work at KCC and supplement their curriculum with field trips into the community.
One of these field trips includes working with the staff of the Samuel Mahelona Memorial Hospital Long Term Care Unit at the hospital’s final beach outing for the summer at Lydgate Park.
Nishiguchi said one of the new features they started this year is a coffee hour for students during the first two weeks of school.
“This is a way to welcome the students and kind of give them a jump-start on the new semester,” he said.
• Dennis Fujimoto, photographer and staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 253) or dfujimoto@kauaipubco.com.
