Photo Gallery: New Sullivan Center at ‘Iolani
The wonder and promise of the 21st century has landed big time on the tradition-rich campus of ‘Iolani School.
It’s called the Sullivan Center for Innovation and Leadership, a modern 40,000-square-foot building dedicated to high-tech innovation and hands-on learning using state-of-the-art technology and experts in cutting-edge fields as teachers.
"It’s amazing. It’s unbelievable," exclaimed Risa Beer, an award-winning director of documentaries who was hired to lead the center’s film production studio. "We’ve got world-class equipment — professional cameras and professional editing equipment. It’s pretty spectacular."
Named in honor of lead donor Joanna Lau Sullivan, the widow of Foodland co-founder Maurice "Sully" Sullivan, the $23 million building is equipped with $2 million or $3 million in newfangled machines and gadgets with more on the way, said Allison Blankenship, the center’s director.
The four-story complex opened at the beginning of the school year with a robotics lab, digital media center, modern science and fabrication labs and more. Newly hired iDepartment faculty members are working professionals with real-world knowledge about the latest in computers, media and engineering.
New classes include mobile app development and video game design, where teams of students will harness their collective power to come up with solutions, using the same kind of strategies employed by high-tech firms from Silicon Valley.
Head of School Timothy Cottrell said that while ‘Iolani still remains a hard-boiled institution of academic learning, the Sullivan Center aims to push students, from elementary to high school, beyond the boundaries of traditional disciplines and inspire them to discover, innovate and lead in an era of evolving technology.
"It’s pretty awesome," said Haley Miyaoka, a senior who is involved in a Sullivan "wet lab" science project in conjuction with a Tripler Army Medical Center physician. "I haven’t had a chance to work with the new equipment in the lab, but future students will really benefit."
A major focus of the Sullivan Center will be on the newest ways of making things.
"It’s what they used to call popular mechanics," Cottrell said. "Only instead of ham radios and cars, they’ll be working on microprocessors and game systems."
The center, to be dedicated in a ceremony tonight followed by an open house, is the vision of former longtime Headmaster Val Iwashita, who retired in 2012 after 17 years at the independent school founded in 1863.
Cottrell took over for Iwashita just before the building’s July 2012 groundbreaking. He was hired in part because of his background as a chemical engineer and the fact that he launched a similar effort at his former post at the Harley School in Rochester, N.Y.
But the Sullivan Center is four times the size of the Harley project, which has yet to open, and, in fact, is so large and so new, "We’re still figuring out ways to inhabit the building," Cottrell said.
Eventually, he said, the doors to the Sullivan Center will be thrown open for use by other schools and community members.
Those who tour the building tonight will find a spacious and modern second-floor library modeled after the one at Cornell University. It features all the latest infrastructure to support electronic research plus — no kidding — old-fashioned page-turning books.
Next to the library is the collaboration center, where student teams gather in "collaboration pods," and there are movable walls for learning flexibility. A large touch-screen smartboard allows viewing from all corners of the room. Scattered about are space age-looking "Node chairs." Comfortable and lightweight, these adjustable plastic desks have wheels that allow users to move in all directions with ease.
On the first floor is the iLab, a space for applied technology and engineering, and the fabrication lab, the modern equivalent of the shop class. This is where students are given the chance to design with computers and actually make what they dream with a 3-D printer and other high-tech fabricating tools, such as a water jet cutter, which uses a high-pressure stream of water to cut metal, glass, masonry and more.
"Students have the power to fabricate without the many years needed to become a machinist," said Carey Inouye, longtime ‘Iolani physics teacher and iDepartment leader.
Robotics instructor Martin Emde, a former Boeing engineer and 16-year physics teacher at Seabury Hall on Maui, was lured to the Sullivan Center for what he described as the unlimited possibilities. While he led lots of special hands-on engineering projects at Seabury Hall, he never had this array of tools to make the job easy.
How good is the new equipment?
Emde’s son is an engineering student at Gonzaga University in Washington state. After comparing notes, Emde concluded the new ‘Iolani equipment is better.
"It’s pretty exciting stuff," he said. "If a student can conceive it, they can pretty much make it."
The fourth floor is home to an impressive bank of high-tech science labs, a prototyping lab and education innovation lab for faculty professional development, while the third floor features the digital media center and communications centers, where former Honolulu Star-Advertiser columnist Lee Cataluna leads the new student newsroom.
Other Sullivan faculty members:
» Video game designer Gabe Yanagihara, a commercial artist who runs a local crowd-sourced animation company. His resume includes a stint helping to develop the video game "Assassin’s Creed: Revelations."
» Kyle and Cara Oba, software developers and designers with their own Honolulu firm, Pas de Chocolat, which mainly builds iOS apps.
Cottrell said these iDepartment instructors are being asked to teach only one or two courses rather than the four or five required of regular staff members.
"We have to allow time for them be engaged in innovation and involved in the process instead of working all the time," he said.
