Welcome to Second Semester!
Dear HAS Parents and Families,
Welcome to the second semester at Hsinchu American School! We’ve had quite a year so far and our students have so much to be proud of, both inside and outside of the classroom. We would like to take a few moments to congratulate our amazing students and look forward to all of the exciting events and clubs that will be taking place in second semester!
In the first semester, students have won awards and distinctions from various conferences and activities. Our students travelled to Singapore to serve in leadership positions at THIMUN and we also had some chairs and delegates participate in HSINMUN for the first time. In second semester, our Model United Nations will be co-hosting a conference in collaboration with Hsinchu International School and we will also be sending our students to TASMUN at Taipei American School! An exciting new opportunity also begins in second semester which is our World Scholars Cup team. Already, our teams of students are busy preparing for the WSC tournament which will take place in March at KAS. Please see the updated extracurricular schedules for meeting times and club leaders if you would like additional information!
In terms of athletics, our students have truly outdone themselves in the first semester. Our varsity boys’ basketball team coached by Mr. Lines and Mr. Maguire had an outstanding run, winning five games out of seven and played against schools such as HIS, TPCA and AST. Ricky Wu and Una Chou in ninth grade, as well as Takatoshi and Ikuno Sasaki, have participated in a number of golf tournaments all around Taiwan this year, and will continue to travel internationally to compete. Kevin Huang in eighth grade is also venturing off to Hong Kong this week to participate in a fencing tournament. Wen Chuang in tenth grade and our HAS swimming team continue to excel and place provincially and nationally at competitions. Musically, our students are very talented as well! Some of our top musicians, Spencer Yao and Justin Mao, have played piano and viola in concerts and national recitals We would like to acknowlege our amazing HAS Wolves for representing us so well!
Additionally, Student Council and Student Activities have hosted some memorable events this year including Lock-In, Homecoming Dance and Clubs Fair. They are very excited as they begin preparing for Sports Day, Spring Fair and Prom. In first semester, the Community Service branch also planned some wonderful events and raised over NT $71,000 for World Vision at their Halloween Charity Concert and organized off campus events with Eden Social Welfare Foundation. They will continue to host events in second semester to encourage students to participate in service learning.
Moreover, although still early in the acceptance season, we would like to give our congratulations to our seniors on some wonderful university acceptances to schools such as University of Toronto, University of Washington, Illinois State University, SUNY and University of Virginia. We are still excitedly waiting for acceptances as our students participate in second round interviews at Princeton University, Columbia University, Vanderbilt University, Columbia University and Yale University. Good luck seniors!
Lastly, our Parent-Teacher Association has been busy organizing events such as Parent Luncheons, Winter Performance and HAS Career Fairs and we would like to thank them for all of their hard work. Our next PTA meeting will be on February 1 at 2:00PM and we invite all parents to come and join!
To all families, thank you for all of your support over the past semester. It has been our pleasure working with such dedicated parents and talented students and we are looking forward to what second semester will bring.
Sincerely,
Mr. Donnelly, Ms. Chen, Ms. Reep and Mr. Maginn
HAS Administrative Team
Extra-curricular schedule: https://goo.gl/xncGhu
College Acceptance: https://goo.gl/1iCdKy
