1 American Pacific University Launches Seminar
2 Austronesian Migratory Dispersal
3 American Samoa's Tough Corals
4 Environmental Education in American Samoa
5 Le Tausagi Environmental Sunmer Camp
6 The Samoan Story of Creation
7 Fisherman Casts Into The Sea
8 Preserving Indigenous Equity
9 Environment Education Begins Early
10 American Samoa Bans Shark Fishing
11 EPA LEEDs Building
12 NOAA Ocean Center
13 American Samoa Global Leader in MPA's
14 Christina Hammock, Astronaut in American Samoa
American Pacific University
BusyCorner Launches American Pacific University
The APU experiential seminar is a one day learning event designed primarily to serve passengers aboard visiting luxury cruise ships. Every year about twenty ships call Pago Pago Harbor with approximately 50,000 visitors.
Education themed offshore activities is the fastest growing segment of cruise ship passenger activities.
The APU seminar explores rich themes of ancient culture, voyaging and history. The lessons of ancient Polynesians and their sustainable relationship with nature is a guidepost for modern civilization to preserve and protect our fragile global ecosystem.
1: American Pacific University is a private, for profit, institution of higher learning located in the Territory of American Samoa.
Academic
2: The primary goal of American Pacific University is to deliver high quality experiencial and classroom higher education utilizing American Samoa’s natural, human and infrastructure resources.
3: American Pacific University students are globally diverse and originate from many countries around the world.
Academic
4: The American Pacific University curriculum of environmental sciences, core academic courses and English Second Language serves a broad range of international students. offered courses are short term, compact courses for visiting student groups and semester term based, full academic load, for full time international students.
5: American Samoa’s abundant and quality natural resources are the base for American Pacific University’s core academic environmental curriculum and academic integrity. These include rainforest, reef, marine and ocean resources
6: American Samoa’s human and infrastructure resources compliment American Pacific University. These include fully accredited masters and doctoral degree instructors and professors. Physical infrastructure assets include high speed broadband communication networks, US standard public and personal health services, global transportation links, secure international banking and high quality lodging facilities.
7: American Samoa’s cultural assets include her rich Polynesian culture, historical roots of the Austronesian Migratory Dispersal and her daily life integration of the American experience.
Classroom studies include rain forest ecology, coral reef and marine science, ethnobotany, tropical agriculture, environmental sustainability, geology, Pacific archeology, Austronesian history and Polynesian culture.
Guided trips to the Samoan Archipelago include overnight stays on one or more islands. Educational groups experience a wide and diversified range of cultural immersion; from indigenous village stays to rainforest and reef field excursions.
Groups may provide personal academic instructors and supplement the learning experience with local experts and qualified instructors in the related fields of academic expertise. Modern global communications enable long distance instruction in any language provided by broadband video classroom conferencing.
Accommodations vary from dormitory type hostels, village stays or luxury hotels depending on groups preferences and budget. Educational travel services include itineraries, housing, ground transportation, classroom reservations, instructors and guided site trips.
LESSON I
Ten thousand years ago, beginning in Southeast Asia and Taiwan, an Austronesian culture spread eastward.
Then, unlike now, global sea water levels enabled nomadic travelers to coastal navigate through the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. Beginning with Lapita culture, long distance settlement voyages ventured into the Pacific. The organization, discipline, special skills of boat building and navigation created a Polynesian society of rank and status that remains intact today.
The Polynesian voyaging discoveries should be ranked as the ancient equivalent of modern space travel.
Watch the two minute video to follow the graphic illustrations of this unprecedented era of discovery and social development.
Austronesia today unites more than a billion indigenous human beings under a single cultural umbrella joined by ancient cosmic beliefs, cultural and linguistic similarities and genetic markings.
Use this map to learn the boundaries of the Austronesian Migratory Dispersal
Learn more about Austronesia by visiting the Austronesia links on the right hand lower column.
Lesson Two: American Samoa's Tough Corals
The world's reefs are severely threatened by climate change. The difference of only a few degrees of water temperature can lead to coral bleaching and death of the reef.
Several years ago American Samoa National Park marine biologist, Peter Craig, discovered that tides pools on the island of Ofu in American Samoa's Manu'a group greatly varied in temperature difference, yet the coral survived; a scientific anomaly.
Since then, University of Stanford marine biologist, Steve Palumbi, has recorded even more scientific examples of this unusual phenomenon.
Since then Steve has been awarded one of seven prestigious Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University Environmental Venture Projects (EVP) grants for interdisciplinary research aimed at finding practical solutions promoting global sustainability.
Steve's grant enables further study and the development of a small on site laboratory on Ofu.
Read more about Steve's work here in an article by Michael Fox at the Center For Ocean Solutions.
"Super Corals" Lend Hope for Reef Survival in Warmer Oceans
BusyCorner will continue to update followers about this breakthrough research.
Interested in visiting the research site? Please respond by comment on the home page and BC can help on travel and accommodation logistics for solos or groups.
ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION IN AMERICAN SAMOA
Polynesian culture avows stewardship of the land, wildlife and oceans.
For today's young students, environmental scientific and traditional knowledge recounts this long generational history.
These students are learning the science of the coral reef environment and the modern ecological threats of global warning and the extinction of threatened species. Classroom teaching, laboratory dissection and experiential field trips combine to prepare a new generation of American Samoans to preserve and protect the environment around them.
Students from around the world are invited to join in this wealth of ecological learning here in American Samoa.
LE TAUSAGI ENVIRONMENTAL CAMP
Le Tausagi is a collaborative group of professional environmentalists in American Samoa. They are energized to protect the environment through teaching and public activities.
Protecting the environment starts at the earliest years of a young person's life. And in an indigenous society such as the Samoan archipelago, environmental stewardship is intrinsically linked to the community's cultural attributes.
The Samoan Story of Creation
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| Near Saua on Ta'u in the Manu'a group, TaiSamasama holds significance as a sacred place of Tagaloa and TuiManua. |
Polynesian voyagers conquered 10 million square miles of the Pacific in small double hulled sailing canoes.
They were motivated and guided by a spiritual belief that space and infinity were religious and physical precepts based on the notion of cosmic balance. Achieving balance through belief, offerings, knowledge and experience enabled Polynesians to venture far beyond the horizon, something their western counterparts didn't achieve until centuries later.
Polynesians humanized that sophisticated cosmology by creating a pantheon of gods and demi-gods who ruled nine levels of the universe. The creator god, Tagaloa, reigns as father of his children, all of whom represent cosmic elements such as immensity, space and intelligence.
In the Samoan story of creation, Tagaloa first created land at Saua, on the island of Ta'u in the Manu'a group at the eastern end of the Samoan archipelago. It is at this still spiritual land of Saua that the first kava ceremony was performed.
Read the Samoan Creation Story in the 1892 edition of The Journal Polynesian Studies.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/pac/jpolys/ssc.htm
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Fisherman Casts Into The Sea
At low tide, at the edge of the reef, a fisherman casts into a breaking reef in search of bounty from the sea. He practices the art of the ages; humankind sustaining life from life.
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Indigenous Equity Through Social Investing
The families build the facility, operate it according to traditional norms of hospitality, and reap 100% of the profits.
At the same time, large corporate hotel management firms and developers, seeing the potential for profit, jump into the business by offering large up front one time cash payments to land owners for long time leases.
Once the lease is secured, the families are forever relegated to the rent line; never again able to reap profits from their land.
One solution is social investing; Companies who improve their global presence by keeping equity interests with indigenous peoples while providing financial and management expertise to assure successful business practices during critical start up and break in business cycles.
This model defines a visitor experience of Rainforest and Reef exposure on family owned lands aided in development by corporations vested in becoming socially conscious partners with indigenous peoples.
A lifetime of environmental preservation begins at an early age in American Samoa.
Volunteers, professional environmentalists and dedicated parents are the keys to teaching our young people their intrinsic connection to rainforests, coral reefs and the oceans around them.
What it means, for example, to learn the cultural ways and wants of a life surrounded by the natural resources of sustainable provision.
At American Pacific University, day seminars and 3 to 6 week credit environmental and cultural courses provide advanced high school and college level academic travel study offerings.
American Samoa Bans Shark Fishing
The American Samoa Government has responded to a joint study conducted in part by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration citing the probability of extinction of four endangered fish species in her territorial waters.
A 100% ban on shark fishing has been enacted into legislation by the office of the Governor in cooperation with the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources. The legislation does not allow fishing, bycatch or accidental taking of the four species including all species of sharks.
Watch the four minute video and learn about American Samoa's determined effort to save the world shark population.
American Samoa's legislation is a model for countries around the world to protect sharks and other endangered fish species.
EPA LEEDS Building
In the southern hemisphere (you read that right ) there are only two LEEDS certified platinum buildings
One is in American samoa
The new American Samoa Environmental Protection Agency office building and laboratory is net zero energy efficient. The building's photovoltaic solar panels generate more electrical energy than the building consumes; and its air conditioned.
Other energy saving features include a grass roof which keeps the rooftop temperature more than 50 degrees F cooler than adjacent buildings. Indoor sensors that control lights, temperature and climate. Air is recycled and filtered for a healthy environment.
The building was designed to be a learning environment.
Learn how American Samoa has become an instant global example for green. Watch the video.
Students, adults and visitors can learn about ocean resources, coral reefs and the ocean fish and mammals at the new Tauese P.F. Sunia Ocean Center.
The Ocean Center has a 360 degree globe video projection system, educational kiosks, interactive diasporas and a gift shop.
The Center is most popular with elementary and high school students. In American Samoa students learn, from an early age, to respect and preserve the marine resources in the oceans and coral reefs surrounding their island home.
Protecting the environment and her abundance of resources requires commitment, care and perseverance.
American Samoa has all three.
The American Pacific Territory uses traditional, sustainable knowledge of village elders to preserve oceans and coral reef for future generations.
Traditional knowledge: A human resource guiding a future generation.
One is in American samoa
The new American Samoa Environmental Protection Agency office building and laboratory is net zero energy efficient. The building's photovoltaic solar panels generate more electrical energy than the building consumes; and its air conditioned.
The building was designed to be a learning environment.
Learn how American Samoa has become an instant global example for green. Watch the video.
NOAA Ocean Center
Students, adults and visitors can learn about ocean resources, coral reefs and the ocean fish and mammals at the new Tauese P.F. Sunia Ocean Center.
The Ocean Center has a 360 degree globe video projection system, educational kiosks, interactive diasporas and a gift shop.
The Center is most popular with elementary and high school students. In American Samoa students learn, from an early age, to respect and preserve the marine resources in the oceans and coral reefs surrounding their island home.
American Samoa Global Leader in MPA's
Protecting the environment and her abundance of resources requires commitment, care and perseverance.
The American Pacific Territory uses traditional, sustainable knowledge of village elders to preserve oceans and coral reef for future generations.
Traditional knowledge: A human resource guiding a future generation.
Christina Hammock, Astronaut in American Samoa
She manages the NOAA observation station in Tula, American Samoa. And her career path has taken Tina to Greenland, Antarctica and the South Pole.
Tina was one of eight candidates selected from 6,300 applicants to be a NASA astronaut. Destination: an astroid or, perhaps even planet mars. She shares her story with young students at the NOAA Ocean Center in American Samoa.
Watch and listen to Christina's science adventure journey here.
And Tina's journey to an astroid here!
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