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Solomon Wong Tech Cube
Solomon Wong Tech Cube Opens at TAS
By Sara Riggsby, Communications Officer
In January 2019, Taipei American School formally opened its newest facility, the Solomon Wong Tech Cube. The Solomon Wong Tech Cube broke ground on March 2, 2017, and is a six-story, openplanned facility on campus dedicated to STEAM education with a focus on design, technology, and robotics. The Solomon Wong Tech Cube is inspired by a facility at MIT and contains 4,380 square meters of usable space where students and faculty can work side-by-side and engage in design-thinking challenges. Upper school students will learn in an electrical engineering lab and design in a fabrication hub. The middle school floor houses a VEX arena and robotic design lab, as well as vast open areas for art and innovation. The floor dedicated to lower school students is designed to include “tinker and maker” spaces. This allows students to work on exciting projects in designated spaces over the course of a class, semester, or school year. This facility is the next step for 21st-century education and will allow the School to serve as a center for STEAM-related professional development in Asia. At the dedication on November 5, 2018, Board members, administrators, major donors, faculty, staff, students, parents, and members of the wider community united in marking this celebratory occasion. Head of School Dr. Sharon Hennessy welcomed special guests from the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Overseas Schools and AIT. TAS Tech Cube Task Force Chair, Ms. Elizabeth Wang, addressed the crowd thanking numerous people who contributed to turning this vision into reality. Those mentioned include TAS administrators Dr. Sharon Hennessy, Dr. Hartzell, and Cathy Hsu; STEAM faculty across all divisions, many of whom were in attendance; along with Solomon Wong Tech Cube Task Force Members Frank Chen, Gayle Tsien, Felix Ho, and Board Chair Tina Koo. Ms. Wang also thanked the companies working on this project: Parsons Brinkerhoff construction managers Alex Lai and Alex Huang; KHL Architects’ Simon Kao, Abei Ding, and Yu-Hao Huang; and I-Cheng Construction & Development Corp’s C.Y. Wang and Edward Wang. Additionally, the donors who made this building possible were recognized for their generosity: lead donor Winston Wong; early donors Nate and Ming Rich and Chris Yin; and Corning Display Technologies represented by John Zhang of the Corning Center for Scientific Research.
The Solomon Wong Tech Cube serves a growing need at TAS for STEAM education. This year in the Upper School, over 39 percent of students elected to take additional robotics and computer science courses, and nearly 100% of graduates take physics by graduation. In the Upper School, more than 320 students are currently enrolled in 18 different courses across 29 sections in the Robotics and Computer Science department. Lower and middle school students program simple machines, blend arts and science with the use of 3D printers, creatively engineer prosthetic hand prototypes, and undertake many other designfocused projects. In addition, students partake in competitive robotics clubs such as FRC, VEX, and ROV that compete in tournaments around the world. The new Solomon Wong Tech Cube will help to continue a growing legacy of success in robotics competitions and even provide a new competition training ground for all robotics teams.
Straight Talk on Parenting with Dr. Lisa Damour
By Sara Riggsby, Communications Officer
Renowned adolescent psychologist, CBS News contributor, New York Times bestseller, and columnist Dr. Lisa Damour spoke with TAS faculty, parents, and middle and upper school students during her visit to TAS in September 2018. Her book Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions Into Adulthood explains normal adolescent behavior and provides strategies for maintaining a healthy relationship between parent and child during this stage of life. In an upbeat and positive way, she talked through the “totally expected challenges in development” during the teenage years with TAS faculty and parents, while also providing students with tools to manage stress and difficult situations on the path to adulthood. As a mother of two daughters, Dr. Damour fully understands the challenges for parents of adolescents outlined in the book. When asked to name the most concerning thing facing young people today, Dr. Damour shared, “I worry that we are at a time when stress and anxiety are treated as entirely pathological when in fact psychologists have long agreed that stress and anxiety are perfectly normal functions that occasionally reach pathological proportions. In the big book of psychological diagnostic concerns, stress and anxiety are things that we are actually very good at taking care of at diagnosable levels. The problem is that when cultures treat anxiety and stress as inherently pathological, kids become stressed about becoming stressed and anxious about being anxious. It makes it worse and it does increase the likelihood of kids moving into a pathological range. “Young people are much better off when adults normalize anxiety as an alarm function that protects all of us from frightening things, alerts all of us when something is not quite right, like if we did not study for the test we are about to take, anxiety under those conditions is a really helpful and normal and important response. My advice to parents would be to help kids keep things in proportion, be containing and responsive, but don’t join them in the sense that everything is a crisis. There are real crises, but most of what teenagers are panicking about is not. You can offer containment and reassurance and support while cueing to the teenager that this is very manageable.”
Dr. Aaron Kyle Brings Bioelectric Potential to TAS
By Sara Riggsby, Communications Officer
The 2019 Joanna Nichols Visiting Scholar, Dr. Aaron Kyle, auspiciously spent January 2019 at TAS during the unveiling and opening of the new Solomon Wong Tech Cube facility. Dr. Kyle serves as Senior Lecturer in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University which has grown to incorporate bioinstrumentation, biomechanics, and tissue engineering. Dr. Kyle was named a recipient of Columbia University’s Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels for his lasting influence on the intellectual development of Columbia students. Dr. Kyle’s stay at TAS represents the eighth installment of the Joanna Nichols Visiting Scholar program, which is the result of the continuing, extraordinary generosity and vision of former TAS parent Mr. Kenny Cheng. While at TAS, Dr. Kyle assisted with the design process and taught students about basic instrumentation, a combination of basic electrical circuit theory with passive elements like resistors and capacitors, electrical filtering, and how to use these things to pick up biological signals. His classes became a larger endeavor with integration from the extended science department and inclusion of more advanced engineering students, allowing them hands-on access and developing the important skill of identifying when something is going wrong, why it is going wrong. While the work certainly challenged the students, they also had a good time. “Working with Dr.Kyle was a very interesting experience,” says Raji R. ‘22, who had no previous experience in micro-controller electronics. “He was a very cool guy and an awesome teacher.” Eli K. ‘22 also described Dr. Kyle warmly. “He will help you with anything from the smallest circuit to the most complicated equations with the same enthusiasm and attention.” Dr. Kyle expressed the importance of a design mindset in any specialization – whether you are a dancer or a mathematician – during lunch assemblies for the Upper School. “Just having an appreciation for it even if you don’t go into sciences and mathematics, having a baseline of technological literacy, is important and should be maintained and fostered.” He believes that when you recognize and define a problem you can then work to understand the needs of actual people and develop solutions. He advised students to stay flexible in their thinking and use creativity as a pathway to develop innovative concepts. Failure is part of the process, and “getting stuck is not a roadblock but a detour.” His parting advice to TAS students is, “Whatever spark you have now, don’t let anything take that away from you. Wherever that passion lies, let that be your bedrock.”
A Musical Legacy
Beloved Joanna Nichols Performing Artist in Residence from 2014-2018, Richard Gill, died peacefully at his home in Sydney on October 28, 2018. His contributions to TAS were immeasurable, and in the words of Stephen Abernethy, TAS K-12 Performing Arts Department Chair and friend of Richard Gill, “The world has lost an incredible man who represented all that is good in humankind. His grace, kindness, and spirit will be long remembered.” TAS welcomed Richard Gill as the 2017-2018 Joanna Nichols Performing Artist in Residence for the fifth and final time in April 2018. Richard Gill, AO, Founding Music Director and Conductor Emeritus of Victorian Opera, was one of Australia’s pre-eminent and most admired conductors specializing in opera, musical theatre, and vocal and choral training. Richard’s time at TAS was spent teaching classes, participating in the TAS-hosted IASAS Music Cultural Convention, speaking at the Arts Recognition Ceremony, and leading as Guest Conductor at the culminating concert of the TAS Upper School Arts Festival. His extensive resume covered a spectrum of musical honors, but as for his biggest passion, he said, “I have been teaching for 55 years. I had my first class when I was 16 years old, practice teaching 5th grade in 1958. That was when I fell in love with teaching; I have done lots of other things, I have conducted ballet and symphony, and I love doing all of that, but I find teaching irresistible.” Richard’s love of music education was evident to everyone around him as he approached every day with a combination of humility, determination, and enthusiasm. Stephen Abernethy, Performing Arts Department Chair at TAS, believes that, “He enjoys learning for the sake of learning and views teaching as an art.” Andrea Blough, Upper School Performing Arts teacher, reflects, “He is a really special person. Not only is he famous for being a conductor of orchestras and choirs but he is an amazing educator and that’s what made his visits with us so impactful.” Several students who worked with Richard Gill over the years eagerly
A Musical Legacy: Joanna Nichols Performing Artist in Residence Richard Gill
By Sara Riggsby, Communications Officer
and thoughtfully shared their reflections on his impact to the TAS community. Rachel G. ‘19 muses, “I was astonished at his incredible talent for remembering names. It seems so insignificant at the time, but after a year or so, when he still knows who you are, a small act like that really means a lot and makes you feel empowered, important, inspired to work on your music knowing that
someone remembered you for it. Mr. Gill encourages us to pursue music, inspires us to really spend time on it, and he shows us how beneficial it is for our mental health.” Keanne C. ‘19 says, “He has always been a major inspiration for everyone to strive for more. Each time he visits, he pushes every single person to do the best that they can possibly do, and I think it is safe to say that everyone that has had the privilege of working with Mr. Gill, even if it was for one afternoon, has been inspired greatly.”
