OVERVIEW

On March 28, 2018, the Hawai‘i Language Roadmap, in partnership with and with funding from the State of Hawai‘i Office of Language Access (OLA) and in partnership with the Hawai‘i Department of Education (HIDOE), held the state’s first ever Multilingual Career Development Day on the campus of the University of Hawai‘i-Mānoa in the Campus Center Ballroom. The full-day event promoted the value of additional language skills in the state’s workforce through awareness raising, workshopping, and a multilingual career fair. Through the HIDOE, an invitation was extended to the 2017-2018 candidates for the Hawai‘i Seal of Biliteracy to participate. More than 60 bilingual students from 6 high schools participated in the event, and provided consistently high evaluations of all aspects of the event; their responses and comments also indicated that their engagement with the event provided valuable information, perspectives, and insights.

CAREER DAY AGENDA

March 28, 2018 (8:45am – 2:00pm) 

8:45am            Welcome and overview of the day

9:00am            Building a career with your language skills
Steven Silver, Silver Bridges LLC. 

 Steven Silver is the founder and principal of Silver Bridges Translations Int’l, LLC.For nearly 30 years, he has translated for many of the world’s leading multinational corporations and law firms as well as a host of U.S. and foreign government agencies.

Silver is certified by the American Translators Association to translate in Japanese, Spanish and French.  He also does document translation work in Mandarin, Korean, Russian, Italian, Portuguese and German.

He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Princeton University and a Master’s Degree from the University of Hawai‘i School of Business.

9:20am            Q&A

9:30am            Developing your language skills for the workplace

Kristen Keeno, Bilingual Pharmacy Technician

 9:50am            Q&A 

10:00am           Break (with snack)

10:15am           Multilingual opportunities in the workplace

Melody M. Kubo,
Court Interpreting Services Coordinator, Office on Equality & Access to the Courts

Melody Kubo joined the Hawai‘i State Judiciary’s Office on Equality and Access to the Courts in 2008. As Court Interpreting Services Coordinator, she oversees the Judiciary’s Court Interpreter Certification Program, which qualifies interpreters to work in the Hawai‘i State Courts through screening, training, and testing. In addition to securing grant funding to enhance the Judiciary’s language access services, she was highly involved in the design and development of the Judiciary’s award-winning multilingual website.

Prior to joining the Judiciary, Ms. Kubo worked with business and social service non-profit organizations in Hawai‘i and at the Hawai‘i State Legislature. Ms. Kubo is a graduate of the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Tufts University, and Iolani School.

10:30am          Reality check: Are your language skills workforce ready?
Angela Haeusler, Hawai‘i Language Roadmap

Angela H. Haeusler is the Hawaiʻi Language Roadmap’s Senior Research Assistant and finishing her PhD in Second Language Studies at UH Mānoa. She is a native speaker of German and an avid learner of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, English and several European languages. Having worked in journalism and public relations before, she is currently applying this background to the Roadmap’s mission of building a multilingual workforce. Angela’s research explores how language policies and multilingualism in Hawaiʻi can be (re-)envisioned through Hawaiian-centric values and worldviews. In her teaching, she is committed to preparing students for language advocacy and active citizenship which earned her the University of Hawaiʻi’s Frances Davis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2014.

10:45am           Career development activities (resume building, interviewing with employers)

12:00pm           Lunch

12:30pm           Review your plans for the Career Fair

12:45pm          Career Fair: Employers with multilingual job opportunities

1:50pm            Debrief and concluding remarks

 2:00pm            End of program

Mahalo nui for your participation!

Student Learning Outcomes

The program was designed to address the student learning outcomes (SLO) listed below.

Students will:
 Identify career opportunities and employers that value their language skills
 Assess their linguistic proficiency for areas of strength and growth
 Create a resume that highlights their language proficiency
 Present themselves to employers as language proficient job seekers

Student Participation Demographics

►Participating high schools:

• Campbell High School  
• Kapolei High School  
• Kaiser High School 
• Moanalua High School  
• Moloka‘i High School 
• Waipahu High School  

►Languages represented:

• Spanish
• Japanese
• Tagalog
• Ilokano
• Chinese (Mandarin) 

CONCLUSION

On the whole, such enhancement opportunities and learning resources are unavailable to the student who wishes to value and develop their language skills. This gap is not only an obstacle for the students, but is also clearly short-sighted.  The demand for language-skilled employees (with supplemental compensation for those skills) in the state, and, indeed, across the country, continues to grow. Studies reveal shortages of bilingual doctors and home health aides, of skilled interpreters (for all settings), and bilingual staff for everyday consumer needs (e.g., electricity, phone, cable television, life insurance, car insurance, etc.).  The need spans every sector of the workforce, and includes new sectors such as cybersecurity. Employers continue to struggle to fill multilingual positions, even as institutions of higher education decline to invest in robust foreign language program development, and, quite counterintuitively, reduce their foreign language graduation requirements.  

The multilingual student population that participated in the Hawai‘i Language Roadmap’s inaugural Multilingual Career Development Day have demonstrated that there is both interest in and engagement with World Languages among high school students.  In response, the Roadmap already has planning underway for a second Multilingual Career Development Day for the growing ranks of Seal of Biliteracy candidates in the state, and a commitment from OLA, our funding partner, has already been secured. The success of this event has strengthened the Roadmap’s commitment to these students, and to their passion for pursuing career pathways where their language proficiency will make a difference, for them and for the communities they serve.