Wednesday, December 27, 2006

A Goshen College - University of Hawaii connection

The chancellor of the Manoa UH campus got her undergrad degree at Goshen College. She was in a one-hour live chat today hosted by the Honolulu Advertiser, and I was able to get in a question about how attending a Mennonite liberal arts college influences her approach to UH. Her answer is toward the end. Most people were asking about boring things like parking and dorm space :)

Here's more Goshen College trivia. Henry D. Weaver, professor emeritus of Chemistry, former provost, and former interim president, was hired by the University of California system to direct the study abroad programs for the system. He was able to do this from an office at UC Santa Barbara, which is where I met him.

What does this have to do with today's chat? The connection is in her answer to my question.

Bonus points: As you might suspect, Henry is an amateur radio operator (W9BHX). The radio world was recently rocked by what FCC action? Hint: /-. ---/-- --- .-. ./-.-. --- -.. . / You can figure that out by looking here (left is . and right is -), and you might want to ponder why the letters ETIAN are near the root (top) of the tree.

Further hint: It's the same reason that simple substitution ciphers are so easy to crack.

Here is the answer.