Month: April 2017

Professor Hiroe Iwamoto has been teaching Japanese at KCC for about four years. Originally from Okayama, Japan, Professor Iwamoto came to Hawaiʻi after marrying her husband, who is a local Japanese American. Before coming to Hawaiʻi, Professor Iwamoto had been teaching at the college level in Japan for about 15 years, and six years in Pennsylvania. She prefers teaching at colleges when there is an opportunity, which led to her decision to teach at KCC.

“I’m really enjoying teaching Japanese,” Professor Iwamoto said. “I hope I can inspire more students and I want to tell them that learning Japanese is fun.”

Professor Iwamoto said that she enjoys how the students and colleagues on campus are friendly and easy to be around. She also enjoys the KCC campus; although the campus has old buildings, she says that the nature that is seen throughout the campus is what fits her image of how she views Hawaiʻi.

Kara will be graduating this December from UH Mānoa with a degree in Molecular Cell Biology. Though she takes classes over at the Mānoa campus, you’ll find Kara working under KCC Microbiology Professor John Berestecky in a lab on KCC’s campus most days of the week. Kara hopes to continue her studies in either graduate-level biology research or by attending medical school.

Kara grew up in southern California and decided to attend UH Mānoa in part due to the stories she heard from her father about the islands. He was stationed on O’ahu in the Navy some years back. Over spring break, Kara traveled to Maui and enjoyed her trip immensely — especially the road to Hāna and waterfalls along the way — in spite of receiving a sunburn for the first time.