Interim Vice Chancellor: “We’re the flagship.”

On Nov. 1, 2013, Brian Furuto was appointed KapCC’s interim Vice Chancellor for Administrative Affairs. He took some time out of his schedule to sit down with the Kapi‘o News over winter break and share about himself and his thoughts about community colleges and safety on campus.

Why did you decide to be a part of the KapCC ‘Ohana?
I guess the answer is a bit broader than why KCC, it’s why the community colleges? Largely because I believe in the community college system… We offer a broad of education, educational programs, career technical educations… And on top of that, we have programs throughout the community college system like PCATT (Pacific Center for Advanced Technology Training) over at Honolulu (Community College) or some of our OCET classes here, OCET is the Office of Continuing Education where (in) two weeks (people can) come in and get trained. We have a brand new Microsoft Operating System (here). Hilton Hawaiian Village is putting in on a thousand new machines with Windows 8 and nobody knows how to use it. We can offer that for business out there. At the same time for the people who just feel like, hey man, I don’t need two years of an education, I just need two weeks so I can understand how to get by programing C++ or whatever it may be… In any case, that’s why community colleges. Why KCC? We’re the flagship. We’re the largest and I believe we have the most opportunity to touch the community. I’m sure our sister campuses won’t necessarily appreciate me saying that, but being the largest affords you a lot of opportunities. When I say touch the community, we can make impacts. We can make an impact on the student who decided, you know Kaimuki High School wasn’t for me so I just have to drop out, all the way to someone who never had that opportunity to finish school because they had to go and work… You know now they’re done and their families have grown up so why not go back to school? … (There) are traditional college students such as yourself, where we can provide the opportunity too. We can touch so many portions of our community and being the largest campus gives us a much greater opportunity to do so.

What are your plans for the next semester?
We don’t have a set of procedures and one of the biggest tasks that I believe that lies in front of us right now, is a set of procedures. This campus actually runs very well. I think for the most part we have it all, well at least that’s what I noticed after being the outsider coming in. But for the most part the offices get along, the central offices get along with the field. It still would be better to have in place procedures and of course, developing policies in those areas where we don’t have any. The actual term is not exactly policies as much as it is guidelines. Because the Board of Regents passes policies to campuses, although we call them campus based polices, they are guidelines. But that’s a huge chunk. Putting to bed the Emergency Management Plan for our campus…The things we face nowadays as an institution, that customers such as yourself face when you’re here getting your education change every single day. A big part of it is making sure people are safe. Not just from a physical security perspective, but also in the event the power goes out. I have deep concern for folks who are on our campus and don’t feel comfortable. … But what I would like to do is to make sure every one feels comfortable because if you constantly worry about, geeze if I park there my car’s going to get broken into, how the heck are you going to sit in class? … What if you’d driven your dad’s car there that day or your mom’s car that day, or your sisters or brothers? It provides more of a worry to most people. That’s a big thing for me, making sure people feel safe. Putting to be the Emergency Management Plan, including the policies and procedures that are related to that plan. You know, my job is not necessarily HR, or the business office. My job is people, and it’s important to get to know people because everybody’s different. How do you plan to fix the current budget issues KapCC is having? For example, the Human Resources and Business Office being understaffed? A lot of it ties back to my answer to number two. If we have procedures in place, things become much easier. A lot of people don’t like procedures because, if you don’t follow this then you’re out, but they are important because it helps the organization operate. More importantly, without a set of procedures, there’s no business continuity… A lot of times it happens when people have been here for a long time. Everything’s up here (gesturing to head) or maybe on a Post-it and things run great because it’s a well oiled machine but it’s all up here or handwritten somewhere. Putting those procedures in place provides a lot of continuity for the organization because look, this place is much bigger than me and even you. This place should be able to continue to run over the next 200 years. If we don’t put procedures in place, number one: we can’t continue to get better because it gives us a gage and then we start looking at, oh well you know things are backing up here. Maybe it’s because we need to change this here… The second piece is if something does happen, continuity of the institution is easy for someone to come in and understand how paper flows, how things are approved. Putting those procedures in place helps people really understand where it is and why it is
things may be breaking down. Would that have prevented the prior situation? I’m not quite sure. But I do know it would have helped the transition for sure.

What are your current projects? What can students expect?
The current projects that would touch the students or impact the students the most, really are some of the construction projects that are ongoing. As most of you know…Kopiko was recently upgraded and is soon to be opening and will be having a grand opening on that phase. But there’s a phase two as well that includes a secure document storage as well as some minor renovations to the courtyard as well as building B of Kopiko. You know whenever you have construction, it can interrupt the flow of someone else’s education and for our customers, everyone all of the stakeholders including employees on our campus. You know constructions great because people know things are getting fixed. But at the same time it can get loud it can get dusty and dirty. We have some re-roofing projects in some buildings. Making sure the air condition in some buildings. These are all important projects, not any one of them larger than the other. That is currently one of the big things on my plate. As I mentioned earlier, the Emergency Management Plan. It’s good that in some ways we are a higher education campus we feel very sheltered. But making sure people understand what is going to happen in the event, there’s an earthquake… I mean we aren’t going to be prepared for every situation, but the idea here is to be prepared for those that we believe will have the highest probability of hitting us. So like fire things of that nature … We constantly have to make sure we’re prepared for things that happen. So that’s a big piece of it as well.

Is there anything else you want to share with Kapi‘o?
The advice I like to give to my kids or anyone who’s willing to listen is, do something that’s part of your life that you don’t mind being part of your life because that’s essentially what it turns out to be. And if you do something that you don’t mind being part of your life, then the happiness will come… Because if somebody said, do something that’s going to make you happy, I literally, my kids and this generation would be playing Xbox all day. That makes me happy. But you can’t do that. My boy would be playing soccer all day. Unless he’s going to be a pro, you can’t make a living doing that. And you need to choose something that you don’t mind, that you can accept as being part of your life. Then eventually the testing yourself everyday, you’re going to be uncomfortable a lot of times because that’s how you grow, that’s how you become better. Even now at 43 soon to be 44, I’m growing right? I got to keep putting myself into positions where I don’t feel comfortable, I don’t feel comfortable now that’s why I keep going on and on. But as you keep doing those things, you get better and then the happiness comes later. I think that it’s important for the campus to know I’m very much a family guy… I’m a father and a coach first. And then I’m an employee for the State of Hawai‘i, Kapi‘olani Community College. I’m involved in all of my kids sports, probably more than they want me to be. I think often times people think as administrators people think that we are here, or should be here 24 hours of the day. That does not happen because I’d go crazy.