An initial concern of the Multilingual Multicultural Strategic Initiative is to enhance the visibility of the multilingual and multicultural nature of our own immediate environment, the UHM campus. We are pleased to be able to report that our first project, the Signage Project, under the direction of Professor Christina Higgins, and implemented through the efforts of Department of Second Language Studies MA student Kapua Adams, has made possible immediate access to historical language and cultural features of the campus, starting with important aspects of the land itself as originally divided into ‘ili. The campus has layers of cultural and language-related significance that are unfortunately as yet almost invisible to ordinary students, faculty members, and members of the public. However, through the research conducted by Adams and Higgins, a new “walking tour” of the campus that exposes these details to visitors has been initiated. We expect digital resources, such as a multilayered and interactive campus map to be developed that will showcase these findings, with further initiatives to come. (We thank UHM cartographer, Julius Paolo, of the UH Planning Office, for advising on this.)
A substantial report has been prepared by Higgins and Adams.
We hope that UHM administration will push forward with multilingual signage for UHM. Meanwhile, we are on the lookout for indications of multilingual signage here in general, starting with UHM and looking outwards within and beyond Honolulu. Our Instagram feed may show some examples in due course….