HLTA | ClimbHI
Educators Award

Congratulations to our 1st cohort winners:

Alyssa Alcos

Alyssa Alcos is a homegrown educator at Waianae High School with 6 years of experience with the DOE. Currently, she advises her school’s DECA Club that aims to prepare emerging leaders and entrepreneurs in the areas of marketing, finance, hospitality and management. For the past two years, Alyssa has sat on the Hawaii Association of Career and Technical Education board which seeks to promote career readiness among the different pathways. Alyssa hopes to continue to promote career readiness among her CTE students so that more job vacancies can be filled with outstanding qualified candidates who love their career. In her spare time, Alyssa enjoys playing volleyball and finding new restaurants to explore with her two daughters.

Fern White

Currently, Fern is a full time West Hawaii District Resource Teacher for the Career & Technical Education programs; it is her second year in this position.

White earned National Board Certified English Language Arts Teacher in 2003; she was honored as Hawaii’s 2005 Character Educator of the Year, and Hawaii Speech League Coach/Communicator of the Year 2008. She was the lead teacher for Kohala High School’s successful electric vehicle program where students built alternative energy vehicles for competition that won back to back Best of Show awards.
White served as the Program coordinator for the Kohala Kowbotics VEX robotics program that has qualified to the VEX World Championships 9 of 10 years. She has taken her robotics teams to compete in China, Japan and across the United States.
A lover of innovation and problem based discovery learning, White has taught guidance, health, Physics, leadership as Student Activities Coordinator, and Computer Science Principles and Engineering Design. In her last two years in the classroom she created a STEM-ELA course for students to earn their core English or Advanced Placement English requirements where students did STEM things to complete English Language Arts learning.

Born on Kauai,Raised on Ulupalakua Ranch on Maui, White is perhaps first known for her many years of serving the Hawaiʻi’s equine world and beyond. Fern, Hawaii’s Leading Lady Rider, and true Hawaiian Cowgirl, has won championships in rodeo, showing, reining and multiple All Around High Point titles. She has trained many other riders who have gone on successfully to ride in competitions or for recreation. Fern has trained horses for showing Western or English for herself and countless others. Her accomplishments include many American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) Register of Merit horses and Youth Ridersʻ Registers of Merit. She remains the only person from Hawaii to have taken her own horse trained and traveled from Hawaii to the AQHA World Championships in Oklahoma where in 2000 Fern won Top Ten title on Royal Merrimaid in the Open division of AQHA Barrel Racing!

Fern is dual certified riding instructor: American Riding Instructor Assn. (ARIA) and Professional Association of Therapeutic Riding, International (PATH,intl). She shares her riding instruction and clinics to develop and improve horsemanship. She enjoys helping youth and helping animals. She continues to ride, ranch, and garden when she is not teaching teachers or youth.

HLTA | ClimbHI Educators Award 2021

Program Components:
LEI Educator Kick-off Meeting (industry and cultural focus)

ClimbHI Service Excellence Certificate (9 hrs)- If they have not completed it yet

Industry Overview:

• Hawai‘i Lodging & Tourism Association Briefing – overview from HLTA on the importance of Hawai‘i’s tourism industry and what they do as the state’s largest, private sector visitor industry organization
• Hawai‘i Tourism Authority Briefing- what do they do? What resources do they provide for the visitor industry and for education? Additionally, teach the educators how to source tourism data for their classes.
• Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau/Island Visitor Bureau Briefing (meeting with relevant island chapter)-Understand the role of the visitor bureaus.
• Job Shadowing/On-site learning: Educator will spend 1-2 days with a lodging partner and will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in other aspects of the travel industry.

The two scholarship awardees will be paired with members from HLTA’s Women In Lodging & Tourism’s committee.

With prior HLTA and ClimbHI approval, awardees may use their award monies to experience different aspects of the local tourism industry

Educator Requirement for LEI Certificate of Completion:

• Op-Ed that can be submitted for Public Relations
• Not a requirement for the certificate but the educators will be asked to promote the hospitality pathway to their schools and track how many students they had enrolled in hospitality before the program and those that enrolled in the following semester.