The Pennington School held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new Kenneth Kai Tai Yen Humanities Building as part of the School’s annual Alumni Weekend celebration on May 17.
Expected to open in the fall of 2015, the Kenneth Kai Tai Yen Humanities Building is set to provide 25,000 square feet of new classroom, faculty, and meeting space, all flooded with natural light. A two-story atrium, the Joseph L. and Marion M. Wesley Forum, is designed to offer an impressive gathering space for larger meetings. The offices of Global Studies, Community Service, and Diversity will be found within the new building, as will the administration of the school’s Center for Learning program.
On May 16, Yen was presented with the school’s prestigious Order of the Tower award. Accepting the award from Taiwan via digital technology, Yen spoke about how much the time he spent at Pennington had meant to him as an international student living and studying far from home. He spent a total of 10 years living in the United States before returning to Taiwan, but said his years at Pennington were his happiest. Many of his classmates from the Class of 1984 were present for the award ceremony.
Yen is the chairman of the Yulon Group in Taiwan. His lead gift to this campaign is the single largest gift ever made to Pennington by an alumnus.
On Saturday, outgoing Head of School Penny Townsend, Headmaster Designate Dr. William S. Hawkey, and members of the Board of Trustees were joined onstage in the School’s Campus Center for the ceremonial groundbreaking by Pennington Mayor Anthony Persichilli, planning board chair Winn Thompson and borough council president Weed Tucker. Soil from the construction site filled a wood container built from floorboards from a building called The Lodge, which was demolished to make way for the new humanities building.
In addition to the new building, current construction plans include the complete renovation of the house formerly known as Lowellden to create the Wesley Alumni House, turning the campus’s Stainton Hall into a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics building, restoring Old Main as the historic center of the School, housing administrative offices for the headmaster, deans, and admission, and reshaping campus access and driveways to create a pedestrian-only campus.
More information is online at pennington.org.
Pictured at the Groundbreaking for the Kenneth Kai Tai Yen Humanities Building are trustees Jordan Gray, David Paragamian and Michael Jingoli, Headmaster designate William Hawkey, Marion Wesley and Joseph Wesley, whose names a forum in the new building will bear, Head of School Penny Townsend, Board of Trustees chair Peter Tucci, chief financial officer Graeme McWhirter and trustee Franklin Sanders. (Photo by Ira Casel Photography).,
