Leeward’s Robert Hochstein
From TV to UH
by Ari Katz, External Affairs and University Relations student writer

Robert W. Hochstein could have been working in a steel mill or coal mine today. He could have been acting in a play or musical. He even could have been broadcasting this evening's news. Instead, he spends his time teaching or preparing lessons for his classes.

The Leeward CC professor and TV production program coordinator hails from a small mining community outside Pittsburgh. The dangerous, sometimes lethal life of steel workers and miners convinced him it would be best to seek employment elsewhere. He was inspired by Michael Davis, who taught Hochstein’s high school class on world interpretation of literature. Davis encouraged the junior to go into radio after participating in a production of Our Town. Hochstein went to work at local radio station, eventually going on the air. One day classmates discovered the real identity of announcer Bob Wayne. "I had been a shy person and still inside my shell at the time, and all of a sudden everybody started coming up and giving me all this attention. I liked it," recalls Hochstein.

After high school, he acted in or worked as crew on 2,300 stage productions. The money he earned paid for college, and he received a dual BS in education and communications and MS in administration from Central Michigan University. Working as a local news anchor, he discovered the downside of public attention. "I would be in the middle of dinner at a restaurant trying to have a conversation and strangers would come up and talk to me as if we were long time friends," he explains. "There’s something about being on television every evening in people’s living room that gives them a strong feeling of familiarity toward you." He moved into the technical, production side of television, included a job as program director for Dick Clark productions.

Despite the financially successful life he was leading, Hochstein felt "an enormous need to give something back." He moved into education, from creating video-based training programs to teaching high school. Fifteen years ago, he joined the faculty at Leeward CC as curriculum designer, program coordinator and professor for the new Televison Production Program. He received the 1995 Regent’s Medal for Excellence in Teaching from UH and the Outstanding Postsecondary Vocational Education Program award from the state’s Commission on Employment and Human Resources and the State Council on Vocational Education. In 1996 he received the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development Excellence Award for his contributions in teaching, curriculum design and learning.

During fall 2003, Hochstein taught a class on film and television production process under Manoa’s Department of Theatre and Dance. Long and advocate for creating a UH film school, he hopes to contribute what he can to the Academy of Creative Media system-wide initiative led by Chris Lee and Glenn Cannon. He won’t neglect Leeward, however, insisting, "I couldn’t trust this program in the hands of anybody else. I mean, I literally gave birth to it."