Three residents of Plainsboro and West Windsor — Stuart Chen-Hayes, Bob Eng, and Yu Miao — are co-founders of the Princeton International Academy Charter (PIAC) School, and give reasons as diverse as their backgrounds for supporting the creation of the school.
Chen-Hayes, a resident of Plainsboro, is associate professor and program coordinator at City University of New York/Lehman College. He has written and co-authored 40 refereed journal and book chapter publications, and two DVDs on counseling in school and family settings for equity and social justice.
He and his partner, Lance Chen-Hayes, a physical therapy supervisor at Vorhees Pediatric hospital, are the parents of a six-year-old who is equally fluent in spoken English and Mandarin, reading and writing fluently in English, and is developing Chinese reading and writing skills.
“Our public schools do an outstanding job of educating students but they are not equipped to provide dual language immersion instruction in Mandarin Chinese,” said Chen-Hayes in his founder’s statement of interest posted on the PIAC website.
“As a person who struggled through years of high school and college French, and who has taken years of local adult school Mandarin classes, I am far from fluent in either language. Yet, had I been an immersion school student at the elementary level, I would have gained fluency early in life at the time that my brain was most likely to develop and retain fluency — early childhood,” Chen-Hayes said.
Eng, of West Windsor, has worked as both an educator and investment professional. He holds a master’s degree in bilingual childhood education from Brooklyn College at the City University of New York and a doctorate in human development and psychology from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.
In addition to New York City public schools, Eng has taught in the education department at Colgate University, and graduate education courses at the New School and New York University.
“For youngsters growing up now, the opportunities are vast and indeed global,” said Eng in his founder’s statement. “Just today, a U.S. college student with an Italian surname left a voice message that was spoken partly in perfect Mandarin Chinese. That young person has a bright future. But so can millions of Americans more.”
Miao, a resident of West Windsor, is a math teacher at YingHua International School, a Chinese-English bilingual school, and holds a master’s degree in special education from Auburn University. As a special education teacher, she taught remedial reading in a public middle school in Alabama.
“As globalization becomes increasingly prevalent and China has stepped front and center into 21st century business and commerce, China’s political and economic prowess is persuading more Americans to learn Chinese,” said Miao in her Founder’s statement. “It definitely reflects a shift from the assumption that learning a language was a formality, to partner with the rest of the world.”
