Nicole Ng ’13, former managing editor, the Phillipian “What defines Mr. Maq—an incredible teacher who gives so much time, energy, and passion to his students—is the chemical phrase, The ∆G is always negative. The phrase means that when the value is negative, it creates the most favorable, spontaneous reaction in chemistry, and in life! That’s why we printed it in the corner of the Phillipian when his Groton appointment was announced.”
whatever he wanted to stay. UK went so far as to pay for a car, driver, and travel expenses to send them to Atlanta when it turned out that was the closest place to vote for Nelson Mandela for the South African presidency. It was a lesson for everybody, Vuvu remembers. “People here can go to the neighborhood town hall or across the street to vote, and we wanted to go to Atlanta. It was a huge deal.” The Kentucky offer to stay was tempting, but the answer was no. “We have to go back to Andover,” Temba told them. “That’s home.” He got a call from then Head of School Don McNemar: “Would you like to come back and be chair of the chemistry department?” Temba now says they always had planned to go back to South Africa once Mandela was released. “And when people ask me what happened, I say, Andover happened. And I don’t regret one bit having been here.” The family grew and matured on the Hill. After a few years, Temba took on the leadership of the outreach program (MS)2, a perfect union for the revolutionary who was all about inclusion. Vuvu began teaching fifth grade at nearby Pike School, and by 1999 Kanyi was ready for Andover. (All three sons would graduate from PA.) Temba gets emotional remembering the morning 16 years to the day after their arrival in the United States that Kanyi addressed the school in Cochran Chapel during the final campaign speeches. He went on to win—elected student president. “They believed in him,” Temba says. “That is evidence of the rightness of this journey and the good things that have happened here for us.” Several years later, Vuvu became an English instructor and track coach, joining her partner full time on the Hill.
Rebecca Sykes, associate head of school “Temba has a gift for being able to put ideas into action. Although he came from political struggle, he learned how to make change inside a system. And they are people of great conviction. Everything Temba and Vuvu have done has been informed by conscience and a sense of right.”
In 2004, Chase chose Temba as her dean of faculty and encouraged him to think big. It was a popular decision that would launch a period in Andover’s maturation unlike any other. “His integrity, his commitment to fairness and compassion, his excellence as a teacher have always resonated with this community,” she says. With that appointment came a host of outreach and global programming that Chase and Temba, along with coconspirator and Board President Oscar Tang ’56, cared deeply about. Temba created the summer program in the Colorado Rockies called ACE (Accelerate, Challenge, Excel) Scholars to give students facing a preparation gap a chance to catch up and then take advantage of the Academy’s highest level courses in math and science. “It goes beyond access to success,” Temba says with obvious pride. To date, 132 students have benefitted greatly from the program, as have the teaching fellows who have trained there. In 2006, Chase gave Temba an additional responsibility —assistant head of school for academics. One of his first moves was to establish the Global Perspectives Group (GPG), dedicated to taking Andover pedagogy far beyond its own borders and previous international efforts. Temba already had begun taking faculty to South Africa and other countries. Griffith went for the first time with the African Studies Institute. “It was an amazing experience,” she says with obvious emotion. “When you travel with the Maqubelas, you become part of the family, period, welcomed into the homes of brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins—an amazing sense of warmth.” But in 2007, GPG put the global initiative in high gear—at least until the financial crash of 2008. Russian and German instructor Peter Andover | Spring 2013
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