9360484 Hun This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will simultaneously stimulate entrepreneurship among Native Hawaiians, a community with a history of underrepresentation in the business sector, and teach Native Hawaiian students the culturing of snails/fish/and hydrophonics via the efficient use of effluent water. Students will be exposed to many areas of the biological sciences in an appropriate learning context predicated on an understanding of Hawaiian culture and will be offered hands-on experience in hydroponic experimentation. From the beginning of the project, they will be able to participate in and contribute to scientific research that involves actual commercialization. Native Hawaiian students will be shown how their indigenous technology combines with scientific principles to produce ecologically sound and environmentally benign outcomes, and they will be stimulated to be creative--to expand the concept of a closed hydroponic system to other plants and beyond. The major educational product of this project will be the cultivation of human resources. ***
