TANG INSTITUTE AT ANDOVER | May 2021

Dear Friends of the Tang Institute,

Last week, nearly 500 PA students went to Lawrence General Hospital to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. It was a collective effort on campus, with various campus adults coordinating this process with LGH, organizing and chaperoning buses, supporting students at the hospital to ensure they had the proper documentation and forms, and checking in on students in dorms and classrooms as they dealt with sore shoulders and other side effects. Throughout, our community has been sustained by the superlative leadership and efforts of Drs. Amy Patel and Raynard Kington, as well as the entire Sykes Wellness team.

I have been discussing the vaccine with my students in The Workshop and an elective I picked up this spring, Ethics of Technology. In each setting, we have marveled at the power of collaborative and focused scientific inquiry to bring about such rapid solutions to the central public health challenge of our lives. And, at the same time, we have wondered about the role of intellectual property law and patents in allowing certain people to get access to the vaccine more readily than others. We’ve also spent time reflecting on the misinformation and disinformation that surrounds vaccines in general, and serves as a fraught backdrop for current efforts to reach herd immunity.

I’ve been struck by how thoughtfully our students have approached these complex questions, and how well-prepared they are to think through these vital social and moral questions. This is our fundamental work at Phillips Academy and the Tang Institute: to prepare students to become ethical and engaged citizens, able to think in interdisciplinary ways about complex societal problems — in other words, to bring knowledge and goodness with them into their daily lives.

Sincerely,

Andy Housiaux
Currie Family Director, Tang Institute

A Glimpse into The Workshop

The Workshop, Andover's interdisciplinary, term-long program for seniors, is an opportunity for students to collaboratively investigate one topic from a variety of lenses. This year, the focus is a timely one: Democracy and Dissent. In this video, Workshop student Katherine '21 shares more about the importance of this topic and the work that she's most proud of thus far.

Teaching (and learning) in the age of Big Data

Ellen Greenberg, instructor in mathematics, statistics, and computer science and Tang Institute fellow with the Opportunity Insights project, reflects on teaching and learning alongside her students and how working with big data is having a big impact on her classroom.

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ethi{CS} and Robotics: Guiding Principles

Ethics and robotics? Why, yes! In her second post, robotics instructor and Tang Institute fellow Carol Artacho shares her guiding principles to embed ethical analysis into her curriculum and how she scaffolds these lessons to help her students succeed.

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Counteracting "Blursday"

Have the days, weeks, and months of the past year felt like one big blur? Mindfulness educator Alison Cohen has a name for this phenomenon: "Blursday". In her post, Cohen shares ways we can counteract "Blursday" and be more fully present and aware for the moments of our lives.

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Upcoming Events

We hope you will join us for the following upcoming events:

Mindful Educators Series, Session IV: Wednesday, May 12, 7 p.m. ET
Humanities Workshop Student Summit: Friday, May 21; contact cmartin@andover.edu to register.

What We're Reading (and Watching)

Here are four links that have recently caught our eye that we hope you find interesting, too:

In a recent article, EdSurge makes the case for why there needs to be more teacher-researcher partnerships.
William Tong ’91, P’24, co-chair of Andover's Anti-Racism Task Force’s Cultural Competency subcommittee, recently shared an update on the group's important work.
As we all reflect on the past year+ of schooling during a pandemic, this Forbes article argues that school communities need to be clear on their purpose and priorities in order to build back better.
Lastly, no school year at Phillips Academy is complete without a Head of School Day. On April 12 it happened(!)

We inspire teachers.

We inspire learning.

Phillips Academy
180 Main St
Andover, MA 01810