The Exeter Bulletin, fall 2024

Instructors at Exeter combine a love of teaching with a deep connection to their lifelong interests.

Debbie Kane

“I’ve

Exploring how nearly a century of Harkness has shaped the Academy and its students.

Sarah Pruitt ’95

Rebecca Greenawalt ’95 finds her voice in a career second act.

Miles Howard

Back cover:

tried in my pedagogy to set a high bar of traditional academic rigor but explore different possibilities for its delivery.”

Jason BreMiller, instructor in English, p 35

Avid outdoorsman and Instructor in English Jason BreMiller stokes the fire during ENG420.

Cover: An English class in Phillips Hall, 2023; Photography by Tom Kates

Bradford Herzog

5

Around the Table

Correspondence ∙ Principal’s letter

∙ The all-faculty summer reading ∙ Thoughts from new president of the Trustees Kristyn McLeod Van Ostern ’96 ∙ Quotable ∙ Ofce tour with Director of Athletics and Physical Education Jason Baseden ∙ Exeter’s first expedition to Morocco ∙ Archives

∙ Exonians in review ∙ Conversation with attorney and professor Bob Bauer ’70 ∙ Exoniana

21

The Academy

Opening of school ∙ Academy Life Day ∙ New dean of students named

∙ Olympic coach Aaron Gadson ’05

∙ Assembly speaker Seisei TatebeGoddu ’01 on media addiction ∙ Student internship ∙ Lamont Gallery fall exhibit ∙ Meet the staf

53

Connections

Dr. Cathy Han ’87 delivering hope ∙ Painter John Schmidtberger ’79 ∙ William Wreden ’58 and his life of letters ∙ Ayush Noori ’20 on empathy and AI ∙ Events around the world

62

Class News and Notes

104

Finis Origine Pendet

The Exeter Bulletin

Volume CXXIX, Issue no. 1

Principal

William K. Rawson ’71; P’08

Director of Communications

Robin Giampa

Editor in Chief

Jennifer Wagner P’24

Class Notes Editor

Cathy Webber

Contributing Editor

Patrick Garrity

Staff Writers

Adam Loyd, Sarah Pruitt ’95

Production Coordinator

Ben Harriton

Designers

Luke Hayman, Jenny Hung, Pentagram Jacqueline Trimmer

Photography Editor Christian Harrison

Communications

Advisory Committee

Daniel G. Brown ’82, Robert C. Burtman ’74, Dorinda Elliott ’76, Alison Freeland ’72, Keith Johnson ’52, Yvonne M. Lopez ’93

TRUSTEES

President

Kristyn A. McLeod Van Ostern ’96

Vice President

Suzi Kwon Cohen ’88

Bradford “Brad” Briner ’95, Samuel “Sam” Brown ’92, Elizabeth A. “Betsy” Fleming ’86, Scott S.W. Hahn ’90, Ira D. Helfand, M.D. ’67, Paulina L. Jerez ’91, Giles “Gil” Kemp ’68, Eric A. Logan ’92, Eugene “Gene” Lynch ’79, Cornelia “Cia” Buckley Marakovits ’83, William K. Rawson ’71, Christine M. Robson Weaver ’99, Genisha Saverimuthu ’02, Michael J. Schmidtberger ’78, Peter M. Scocimara ’82, Sanjay K. Shetty, M.D. ’92, Leroy Sims, M.D. ’97, Rhoda K. Tamakloe ’01, Belinda A. Tate ’90, Janney Wilson ’83

THE EXETER BULLETIN

(ISSN No. 0195-0207) is published four times each year: fall, winter, spring and summer, by Phillips Exeter Academy, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833-2460 Tel: 603-772-4311

Periodicals postage paid at Exeter, NH, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA by Cummings Printing.

The Exeter Bulletin is sent free of charge to alumni, parents, grandparents, friends and educational institutions by Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH.

Communications may be emailed to the editor at bulletin@exeter.edu.

Copyright 2024 by the Trustees of Phillips Exeter Academy. ISSN-0195-0207

Postmasters: Send address changes to: Phillips Exeter Academy, Records Office 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833-2460

Members of the class of 2028 connect during orientation. p. 22

Painter John Schmidtberger ’79. p. 55

Deep Dive

The Academy’s underwater robotics team MUREX went deep at the 2024 MATE ROV World Championship in June. Nine of the 12 students who worked together to engineer a remotely operated vehicle attended the competition in Tennessee.

This photo of the team’s interview in the broadcast zone was taken just after the robot completed its run. Its goal was to complete as many tasks as possible, scoring points based on difculty, during the allotted 15 minutes. Tasks included pulling out pins the size of pencils; constructing a precision buoyancy “float” that rises and falls by adjusting water intake; and rotating valves. The robot’s performance earned a sixthplace finish in the Ranger division for middle and high school students.

“We faced countless hardships along the way,” says team captain Byran Huang ’25. “Gaping leaks in the electronics enclosures, 3D-print structures cracking under load while underwater, half-decadeold bugs in code and more. Throughout all of this, we stayed true to Exeter’s values. Most important to us is non sibi. Everything we make is open source and free to the world. Our team comes from eight diferent countries, bringing in unique backgrounds and youth from every quarter. And, of course, by sharing our knowledge with everybody, we share the school’s belief in knowledge and goodness. Competition is important, but not as important as making the world a better place, a little bit at a time.” ●

Lamont Gallery – 2024-2025 Exhibitions

THROUGH LINE

September 5 – November 23, 2024

THROUGH LINE celebrates basic mark making as a foundation for the remarkable. Each of the six artists on view explores line through the lens of their distinct practices and mediums, ranging from marker to string, chalk and even dirt!

Patricia Rangel, Circuition, 2023, mixed and compacted dirt

Maker Fest

April 1 – May 3, 2025

The PEA Design Lab is proud to present works from makers in the Phillips Exeter community: students, sta ff and others. The selections in this exhibition o ffer both the aesthetic and practical and showcase our community’s ingenuity and imagination. Image courtesy of Sean Campbell

Societyof23’sConservatory

January 2 – March 7, 2025

Artist Jeff rey Songco explores a complicated relationship between his identity as an American of Filipino ethnicity and the colonial American behavior of conspicuously collecting “exotic” plants during the U.S. rule over the Philippines from 1898–1946.

Jeffery Songco, Flower Bouquet, 2024, digital image

Advanced Student Art Exhibition

May 16 – June 8, 2025

This annual exhibition features the hard work and creativity of Exeter’s visual arts students enrolled in advanced studio courses.

Nia Harris ’24, Prism Dreams, 2024, oil on canvas (from the 2024 Advanced Student Art Exhibition)

Lamont Gallery

Frederick R. Mayer ’45 Art Center

The Lamont Gallery is open to the public by appointment. Please visit our website to learn more and make a reservation.

Around the Table

Exeter Annotated Get to know Director of Athletics and Physical Education

Jason Baseden. p 12

Director of Athletics and Physical Education

Jason Baseden takes stock of some of his favorite footwear.

The Community Exchange

Letter to the Editor

Thanks for the recent biographical piece about Peter Hutt ’52, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I was a newspaper boy for The Des Moines Register and Tribune, living in Osceola, Iowa, when my parents and I learned about Exeter. Hammy Bissell was on a tour sizing up and recruiting scholarship boys for Exeter, so we went to Des Moines to meet him. He was willing to admit me for the summer session of 1953, but I said I wanted to go to the 1953 Scout Jamboree. He replied that I should go, and that Exeter would admit me in fall 1954. I later learned that his son Jack was also at that Jamboree, which was perhaps why he was so sympathetic.

I owe so much to Hammy and his faith in me, and Exeter has made all of the diference in my life. I returned to Iowa to attend Grinnell College (where I met my wife) and then on to the University of Wisconsin, where I earned a Ph.D. in African history. From Wisconsin, I went to the University of Florida, where I spent my entire teaching career. It has been a truly rewarding and satisfying life. My retrospective view of my life is why my favorite poem is Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” (and I heard him recite his poems from the stage at Exeter, something I never would have even thought possible in a small Iowa town), for I would have been on a very diferent road if not for Exeter.

Hunt Davis Jr. ’57

What’s the one thing you had to bring to Exeter on move-in day?

“A painting of my childhood dog, Jett”

Caspar

Bailey ’25, Vermont

“My Jordan slippers”

Layla Whitaker ’25, California

“My camera”

Bella Bueno ’25, Illinois

— posted on @phillipsexeter

Editor’s Note

The Exeter Bulletin was first published in March 1905 at the behest of the Trustees, “as a means of bringing the alumni into closer touch with the school and one another.” Since then, the Bulletin has strived to do just that, evolving over the past 119 years to reflect changes in the world, technology and the school itself.

You may notice that this edition of the magazine looks and feels diferent. Over the past year, the Communications Department looked closely at our flagship publication and asked questions: How are we producing this very important magazine? Are we managing our mailing list to save postage? What does our audience most want to read about? Are we furthering our mission to the fullest potential?

Asking questions is a great way to learn. So, we did a lot of research and asked a lot more questions! We pored over the 2024 Alumni Survey data and organized focus groups with school leaders, alumni, parents and grandparents to better understand who is reading the magazine and what does (and doesn’t) interest you. These conversations ofered insightful and quantitative information. We heard about what you love and also where we had opportunities for positive change.

One of our biggest takeaways: Our readers like to read — everything! You told us you like reading long stories along with the short ones. You said you are curious about the ideas being discussed among faculty, alumni and students. Guided by your feedback, we are bringing more voices into the magazine and bringing them to the forefront. Around the Table, the opening section of the magazine, features all types of stories in which people share a point of view.

Many of you also mentioned that the first section you flip to is Class Notes. We enhanced this section with a larger font and call-out boxes to entice you, we hope, to stop as you thumb to your class year and learn more about alumni from diferent decades. Cross-generational interaction has always been central to the Exeter experience.

Knowing how many of you are cover-to-cover readers, we wanted a design that maximizes legibility and accessibility. We partnered with global design firm Pentagram to bring our vision to life. They helped us look at how our design choices would allow us to showcase our storytelling in the most readable, flexible and compelling ways.

These are just a few high notes. We invite you to turn the page and start reading!

Jennifer Wagner P’24

We want to hear from you! The Exeter Bulletin welcomes story ideas and letters related to articles published in recent issues. Please send your remarks for consideration to bulletin@exeter.edu or Phillips Exeter Academy, The Exeter Bulletin, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833.

Seeking Complex Truths

Academic excellence is a defining strength of our school and one of the reasons students choose Exeter. Our core value of academic excellence states: “In every discipline and at every level within our curriculum we inspire students to develop critical thinking skills and seek complex truths.”

At Opening Assembly this year, I talked about what it means to seek complex truths, why that is important, and how we do it.

We grapple with complex truths because we understand that simple narratives often are false, and false narratives often are simple. We are not at Exeter to pursue simple truths when complex truths are required to understand the world. We are committed to helping students learn how to seek complex truths that take into consideration all relevant facts and respect the dignity and equal worth of all human beings.

The learning that we seek at Exeter starts with being open to diferent points of view, and with being curious about why people from di ferent backgrounds and experiences, or maybe similar backgrounds and experiences, might see things differently. It requires listening to other perspectives with empathy, humility and respect, and with the understanding that learning at Exeter is a collaborative process.

This kind of learning requires a certain measure of resilience. It requires understanding the diference between being uncomfortable and being unsafe. At Exeter, we want students to learn to become comfortable with being uncomfortable, so they can engage with facts and perspectives that might not seem to fit their worldview, plumb the depths of an issue, and seek complex truths. This is what we mean by “rigorous inquiry and thoughtful discourse” in our core value statement of academic excellence.

As I said in Opening Assembly, the qualities that we seek to encourage in our students — listening with curiosity, empathy and humility; being resilient; being open to diferent viewpoints; and being comfortable engaging with facts that challenge their thinking — are skills that will provide a foundation for everything they will do and achieve in life. We

“We are not at Exeter to pursue simple truths when complex truths are required to understand the world.”

think of them as Harkness skills, or goodness and knowledge skills, but they also are life skills.

Our diversity at Exeter — our commitment to youth from every quarter — also is a defining strength of our school that propels our learning. We understand that the promise of our diverse community is realized fully only when we commit ourselves to rigorous inquiry and thoughtful discourse.

By contrast, anything that narrows our thinking, or closes our mind to diferent points of view, will inhibit our learning as individuals and as a community. When we stop being curious, we stop learning.

History Instructor Alexa Caldwell has a poster outside her classroom — a variation on the famous World War I-era U.S. Army recruiting poster — that shows Uncle Sam pointing his finger at the viewer and saying, “You Could Be Wrong.” Her colleague in the History Department, Bill Jordan, created the poster after reading the award-winning book The Political Classroom; in a similar spirit, he hands out stickers to his students that read, “I could be wrong.” And in the classroom next door to Bill’s, History Instructor Aykut Kilinc greets his students with a sign that quotes my remarks from Opening Assembly in 2022: “We should expect a diversity of viewpoints on almost every subject worth exploring.”

These are just some of the ways that we aim to teach students how to think, not what to think, and how we seek to inspire them at all levels to develop critical thinking skills and seek complex truths.

—Bill Rawson ’71; P’08

Principal Bill Rawson ’71 delivers his Opening Assembly remarks.

The famous World War I-era U.S. Army recruiting poster gets a new tag line.

Unearthing Joy

Instructor Tom Simpson on the all-faculty summer reading, what he read and what he’ll bring into the classroom

“In my own teaching over the last 25 years, a central motivation and commitment has been to make it clear to students right out of the gate that the best classrooms are spaces of love.”

than anxiety, deeper than loneliness. It’s alienation, caused by the profound moral injury and cognitive dissonance of knowing that the power brokers of the world see them as disposable — as worth something only insofar as they ofer labor that can be extracted and exploited, with no reliable guarantees of the most basic human rights, dignity and justice. How can we blame young people for looking at their world and concluding that normalized mass death — from COVID, from the climate emergency and from war — is simply the cost of doing business?

Schools, therefore, must be not only a refuge from the madness and cruelty of the world, but also a place where students can speak and hear the truth about the world. Only then can we imagine ethical and just alternative futures together. Muhammad has some beautiful words for the importance of navigating these troubled waters skillfully and with love. For the best teachers, she writes, “love [means] interrupting

the numbness and distance we feel when others are oppressed, hurt, or harmed.” She adds:

“[J]oy cannot be embraced fully if oppression is present … . This is why a balance of criticality and joy is essential. Joy also balances out the teaching of hard truths and histories, such as Indigenous boarding schools, Asian hate, Islamophobia, the Holocaust, and crimes against women and LGBTQ+ people (to name just a few of so many examples). Groups that experienced those truths and histories had joy before injustices were inflicted upon them. They often used the joy found in painting, music, fashion, and other artistic endeavors not to be overcome with pain.”

Authentic joy thus cannot be a matter of merely escaping what’s painful about the world. Joy comes through acknowledging our shared pain with

straightforward honesty and courage. But once that honesty, connection and trust are established between teachers and students, look out. Liberation ensues, with its attendant joy. Such joy is so much deeper and more beautiful than the quick little hits of happiness that are constantly packaged and sold to us. It’s the big-hearted, full-throated joy of reconnecting with one another in shared beauty, imagination and play. It’s the abiding joy we feel when we can be part of teaching and learning at their best.

Tom Simpson is chair of Exeter’s Religion, Ethics and Philosophy Department. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in religious studies with a specialization in modern U.S. religious history. He has been teaching at the Academy since 2008 and is the author of the book American Universities and the Birth of Modern Mormonism, 1867–1940 and multiple essays about postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Other Faculty Read

Exeter faculty had another choice for the common summer read: The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haidt. The book, which shot straight to the top of bestseller lists, looks at the impact that the rise of smartphones and overprotective parenting has had on children and teenagers, particularly in the realm of mental health. In the wake of the book’s success, at least 13 states have passed laws banning or restricting smartphone use in schools.

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

Have you read it? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Email us at bulletin @exeter.edu

Embracing Change

New president of the Trustees Kristyn McLeod Van Ostern ’96 on Exeter’s past and future

At a recent Exeter in Boston event, Principal Bill Rawson ’ 71 reiterated one of his most memorable phrases: “Exeter has never stayed strong by staying the same.” This mantra encapsulates our school’s enduring strength — a resilience rooted in a history of embracing change and adaptability. As we look forward to our 250th anniversary in 2031, this spirit will drive us forward, ensuring that we provide an excellent education while preparing our students to lead purposeful lives in a rapidly changing world.

My time at the Academy, from 1992 to 1996, difered significantly from Exeter in 1971, when Principal Rawson graduated, with meaningful changes in student, faculty and sta f demographics. Stepping into my role as a trustee in 2017 revealed further evolution: updates in the dress code, integration of technology in all facets of life, and a noteworthy increase in students receiving financial aid. When I attended as a financial aid student, approximately 30% of the student body received scholarships; today, that number approaches 50%.

“Inspired by our rich history, we are poised to embrace new ideas and innovations that will shape our trajectory in the coming decades.”

particularly by those whose thoughts or identities are diferent from our own.

As a trustee, and now in my new leadership role as president of the Trustees, I have learned firsthand that our commitment to change is not reactionary but proactive. Recent milestones, such as adopting need-blind admissions, implementing a comprehensive sustainability and climate action plan, and advancing a vision of diversity, equity and inclusivity, are integral to our Harkness pedagogy. The Trustees have been a driving force behind these initiatives, leading and supporting these crucial eforts. We are all better equipped to learn and lead when our thoughts are tested by others,

Since our founding, Exeter has continually adapted to meet the evolving needs of each generation. In 1818, we established an English Department within the existing traditional classical education. In 1868, we embraced modern languages. Our most transformative moment arrived in 1930 with Edward Harkness’ landmark gift, which revolutionized our approach to teaching, learning and collaborative engagement at Harkness tables and in integrated faculty-student living. In 1970, we introduced coeducation, furthering our dedication to inclusivity and diversity. Each pivotal decision mirrored our commitment to evolving educational philosophies.

As we anticipate the 250th anniversary of our founding and the centenary of the Harkness gift, we remain hopeful and confident about Exeter’s future. Our unwavering focus is to unite goodness and knowledge, inspiring students from diverse backgrounds to lead purposeful lives in an ever-changing world. Looking ahead, the Trustees are actively considering how we navigate challenges such as technological advancements impacting education and ensuring sustainability in all facets of our operations. Inspired by our rich history, we are poised to embrace new ideas and innovations that will shape our trajectory in the coming decades.

Join us in celebrating our achievements and preparing for the milestones ahead as we honor our legacy of tradition, innovation and enduring commitment to change. As friends and alumni of Exeter, your continued support is indispensable. Together, we pave the way for future generations.

Kristyn McLeod Van Ostern ’96 began her term as president of the Trustees on July 1. She also serves on the Executive and the Governance and Nominations committees as well as the Student Safety Committee. Outside of Exeter, Van Ostern serves as an outsourced chief financial officer and owns a small business, Wash Street, which she co-founded to make laundry easier for busy families.

Kristyn McLeod Van Ostern ’96, president of the Trustees

’22

QUOTABLE

“Joining the Army and attending West Point was the best decision I have ever made. I’ve had opportunities that have allowed me to grow my fitness, grit and leadership, which I will always be grateful for. I’m so lucky to be given the opportunity to commission upon graduation and become an ofcer in the United States Army. I just want students at Exeter to know that you don’t always have to take the traditional path. There are opportunities out there that you might not even expect. I certainly never thought I’d be where I am now at graduation. Persevere through adversity and keep doing hard things because it will lead you to the best places.”

— Sophie Fernandez ’22 (as shared on @phillipsexeter). Fernandez is in her third year at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. She recently graduated from Sachkhere Mountain Training School in the Republic of Georgia — the first female West Pointer to attend and complete the course.

Sophie Fernandez

Legacy and Leadership

A chronicle of excellence inside Director of Athletics and Physical Education Jason Baseden’s ofce

For a window into Director of Athletics and Physical Education Jason Baseden’s world, visit his ofce on the second floor of Love Gym. Tucked alongside the Ransome Room and just steps from the pool and squash and basketball courts, it holds a curated collection of items steeped in history, both his and Exeter’s.

“I want this room to represent who I am as a person, but I also want to make it comfortable for people to come in and have conversation,” he says. “Very important conversations happen here; I meet with prospective families, current families, students, coaches, alumni.”

Beyond comfort, he wants visitors to understand the history of the department. “I want people to feel like they are

in a unique space,” he says, picking up a silver cup from The American Silver Museum that was given to Exeter boxers in 1893. “I feel very fortunate to be in the role I am because high school athletics was born out of Exeter, and that history is important.”

Baseden, now in his fifth year at Exeter, gave us a tour just as the fall season ramped up. ●

↑

“This is my wall of people that have had a huge influence on my athletic life. Walter Payton, Clyde Drexler, Steve Prefontaine, Pelé, Sabrina Ionescu. I played football, basketball and track in high school, then I ran track in college. Payton represents hard work for me. He had this thing, anytime you get knocked down, you’ve got to get right back up. That’s something I’ve translated to sports and to life.”

→

“Those are my old shoes from high school. ... I grew up just outside Nike Town, in Beaverton, Oregon, and so Nike shoes and athletes played a huge part in my life. I had one of the first pairs of Air Jordans ever, before they came out, because my next-door neighbor worked at Nike under Phil Knight in 198384. I didn’t grow up with a lot of money, but my parents knew Nike sneakers were important to me.”

→

“George & Phillips in downtown Exeter was the first store that supplied Exeter with athletic attire, well over 100 years ago. A lot of these old photos, sweatshirts and banners came from them. One of the things I really like is this photograph of the 1904 football team. It means a lot when I see that we had an African American studentathlete, Benjamin Selden, back then.”

→

“I created this wall because I feel like these are our educational instruments — we use balls, rackets, sticks to educate. I tried to have a representation of each of our sports. Some of them were my own and a couple were given to me. The javelin was used in the 1956 Olympics.”

Live to Learn

Exeter’s first expedition to Morocco

For many Exonians, the weeks between terms — think summer and spring break! — are the best times to spread their wings and dive deeply into subjects that are more easily understood outside the traditional classroom. In fact, during the 202324 academic year, 162 students and 28 adults traveled around the world to continue learning together in of-campus programs during school breaks.

“A break program begins with an idea, with a vision, with a goal,” says Patty Burke Hickey, director of Global Initiatives. “It arises from faculty members, students, alums and visiting scholars. The genesis for the new summer trip to Morocco began in the fall of 2022, when Instructor in History Khalid Madhi came to the Ofce of Global Initiatives with a question: What would it take to develop a program in Morocco for students to learn about the history and culture of the country firsthand?”

Twenty months later — after much research, permissions and discussion — 12 students and two faculty members (Madhi included) were on a flight from Boston to Tangier.

Here’s the story of that 12-day trip as the students told it on social media.

itinerary

DAY 1: First day in Morocco guys!!

DAY 2: A busy day sightseeing in Tangier!! We saw the Casbah, Medina and the American Legation, followed by a delightful (though freezing) rooftop dinner at sunset.

DAY 3: We got to visit the pillars of Hercules and ride some awesome camels at the beach!! We also had a speaker talk to us about the health system and history of Morocco.

“One of my favorite experiences was the home stay. It was very educating, being able to see their home inside the Old Medina and their culture towards guests. Every culture has a diferent way it approaches guests and special occasions, so it was very nice to be able to learn the Moroccan approach and see it as a gateway into the rest of the Arab and North African world.”

—Victor Angeline ’27

DAY 4: Tangier ———> Rabat

DAY 5: First day in Rabat. We visited the Salé gardening school and met with a college professor to discuss what it is like to be a woman in Morocco. For lunch we had a really good couscous.

DAY 6: We traveled in the morning to Fondation Orient–Occident, a center that helps refugees and migrants coming into Morocco that’s connected to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. After, we returned to the hotel and participated in an engaging discussion with Imad, our guest speaker, about tourism in Morocco. For lunch, we were welcomed by local families to experience a meal in their homes and get to know each other. Finally, we played card games.

DAY 7: One week in Morocco!!! Today we traveled from Rabat to Marrakech, where we visited the Medina and the Dar el Bacha. Afterwards, we had some small group dinners in the Jemaa-elFnaa square.

DAY 8: Today we had a wonderful time visiting @projectsoar, an organization dedicated to providing girls the skills necessary to advance in life. Afterwards, we had a bargaining competition in the Medina, followed by a dinner featuring camel burgers.

DAY 9: Today we learned how to cook a traditional Moroccan meal: tajine. We learned the process that went into making them, and even took turns pumping heat into the pots that they are made in. While they cooked, we picked herbs to make tea and had a traditional Moroccan tea ceremony. We also went to a hammam, a Moroccan spa.

“In Marrakech, we met with Project Soar, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering girls to be leaders in their communities and preventing child marriage. We met 20 girls enrolled in the program. During lunch, I sat next to a 10-yearold girl. Through Google Translate, I got to know her. I learned Hakimi was her favorite football player, and she liked Ronaldo more than Messi. Her favorite subject is math, and she wants to be a doctor when she grows up. Our afternoon ended with a chant: ‘I am strong, I am a feminist, I am a leader.’ Throughout the trip, I witnessed people’s unwavering commitment to helping others, which reminded me of the kind of person I want to be.”

—Camilla Lopez ’25

DAY 10: Today we traveled from Marrakech to the small town of Imlil, where we hiked around the High Atlas Mountains, and enjoyed a slow day of exploring, bonding and mint tea.

DAY 11: We’re staying with a local family in Imlil, and today we took a sixhour hike in the High Atlas Mountains. After we hiked uphill for two hours, we enjoyed a meal brought up the mountain by mule (which are commonly used here!), soaked in the sunny weather, and basked by a small stream. We then hiked back down and took a quick trip to town (would recommend paprika chips & pommes). We had dinner as a group and a few of us ended the evening with a nighttime chat on the terrace.

DAY 12: LAST DAY IN MOROCCO!

We started the day by visiting Hassan II Mosque. Then we had lunch by the beach and listened to two speakers about education in Morocco. We drove to the Medina of Casablanca and did

Where in the world?

our final Medina shopping. The day ended with a nice dinner and dance party in the bus!

“Over the course of the program, I experienced an eye-opening sense of unity with the people in Morocco. Not in the sense of actual cultural assimilation, but a realization of shared humanity. I saw in each person I met the same happiness and sadness that I saw at home and in myself. I saw with my own eyes how nationalities and ethnicities were of no significance at a dinner table — and how diferences become irrelevant in heart-to-heart conversations. I see now why mutual human understanding is so important.”

—Forrest Zeng ’26

During the last academic year, 162 students and 28 adults traveled around the world to continue learning together during school breaks. Here’s where they went.

Morro Bay, California

Yellowstone National Park, Montana

Hurricane Island, Maine

Montgomery, Alabama

Phoenix, Arizona

New Orleans, Louisiana

Miami, Florida

Paraiso, Costa Rica

Berlin, Germany

Tokyo, Japan

New Delhi, India

Singapore

Morocco

Clipped from The Exonian

How did a VW Beetle end up on the Academy stage?

Do you know the details of any famous Exeter pranks? Write to us at bulletin@ exeter.edu

Maligned or lauded, pranks are part of Exeter’s history and lore. Over the years, the pranks have ranged from simple to elaborate, and many have involved cars. That was the case in 1957, when a Volkswagen Beetle was parked on the Academy Building stage.

We asked Bob McManus ’57 about the car choice. He guessed, “It was likely the only car in sight that could be carried up stairs and through doorways.” To be clear, McManus was not involved in the prank. But he was a stafer at The Exonian at the time and shared the following article “Students and Faculty Counter-Prank,” the original 8-by-10 photo and the name

of the credited Phantom Photog, intrepid photo editor Dick Rudick ’57.

“nocturnal guest and unusual pose on chapel stage  The Volkswagen was hoisted on the shoulders of a semi-spontaneous crew of some 75 upper-classmen, and carried from beside Soule Hall around in back of Abbot, up the path by the Academy Building, through the front door, and up the left-hand stairs leading to Chapel about 9 o’clock Wednesday evening. The advent on the scene of a chance faculty wife, the presence in the building of an evening German class, and the necessity of removing one of the front chapel doors did little to delay the gleeful progress. Over-zealous students

hungry for publicity alerted the Boston Herald, which, to confirm the telephone calls, sent its local reporter to investigate the scene. He spoke to the night watchmen, who in turn reported the event to Business Manager Barry, who conferred with Dean Kesler. In less than three hours, a task force of faculty members and wives happily hauled the car back down the right-hand stairs, without removing a door. Evidence of the exodus can still be seen. Mr. Bosetto, owner of the car currently on display in the Maintenance Building, where it is undergoing minor repairs, reported ‘mixed feelings’ Thursday afternoon.”

—From the April 20, 1957, issue of The Exonian student newspaper

Some 75 students carried a Volkswagen Beetle to the Academy Building stage in 1957. Photograph by Dick Rudick ’57.

WORKS

Exonians in Review

The latest publications, recordings and films by Exeter alumni and faculty

Numbers and the World: Essays on Math and Beyond

David Mumford ’53

The American Mathematical Society, 2023

The Tavern of Awakening: Poems for Meditation

Fred LaMotte ’66

Saint Julian Press, 2024

Willful Wanderer: A Memoir

Nelson Graves ’72

Self-published, 2024

Playing Games at CNN: How a Softball Team Captured the Spirit of a News Network

Jim Barnett ’75 5editorial, 2024

El museo como Templo (y otros disparates)

Lorena Casas Pessino ’87 Editorial La Huerta Grande, S.L., 2024

“Does the Stigma Around Substance Use in Jewish Populations Impact Access to Treatment: A Scoping Review”

Hilary Krosney Rediker ’88 Journal of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment, 2024

Slapshot Sisters: The Comeback, Book 2

Slapshot Sisters: Tough as Nails, Book 3

Dan Pasternack ’00 Self-published, 2024

Tiling billards on triangle tilings, and interval exchange transformations

Diana Davis ’03, Instructor in Mathematics

with Paul Baird-Smith, Elijah Fromm and Sumun Iyer; Journal of the London Mathematical Society, January 2024

“The Thirty-Two Fouettes,” short story

Dwight Curtis ’06

The Wrath-Bearing Tree, September 2024

RETROSPECTIVE Professor and Public Intellectual: A biography of John H. Finley ’21

New Hampshire native John H. Finley, Exeter class of 1921, became one of the defining figures of Harvard in the 20th century, both as a charismatic professor and a public intellectual. Named master of Eliot House at Harvard in 1942, Finley saw the dormitories (gifted by Edward Harkness) as an extension of learning beyond the classroom, and carefully selected residents with this in mind — Exonian writers Donald Hall ’47 and George Plimpton ’44 were among them.

Submit your work Alumni are encouraged to advise the Bulletin editor (bulletin@exeter.edu) of their own publications, recordings, films, etc., in any field, and those of their classmates, for inclusion in future Exonians in Review columns. Please send a review copy of your published work to the editor to be considered for an extended profile in future issues. Works can be sent to: Phillips Exeter Academy, The Exeter Bulletin, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833

During World War II, Finley was the force behind the Committee on General Education, with the goal of creating a shared national narrative to connect Americans to each other, and to inoculate them against the rise of authoritarianism. Humanities students needed scientific exposure, the committee determined, while “technologists” needed a humanistic and moral grounding.

The Master of Eliot House: John H. Finley Jr. and His Humanistic Vision for Harvard, by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr. and Constantine Archimedes Valhouli

The Ethics of American Politics

A conversation with attorney and professor Bob Bauer ’70

Bob Bauer ’70 is no stranger to political partisanship and controversy. During his 46-year career as an attorney, he has served in various legal roles for Democratic Party organizations and candidates: advising House and Senate Democratic leaders during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment; acting as Barack Obama’s campaign lawyer and White House counsel; and as senior adviser to the Joe Biden presidential campaign on voting rights and election protection. He is a scholar-in-residence at New York University School of Law.

In his latest book, The Unraveling: Reflections on Politics Without Ethics and Democracy in Crisis,

Bauer assesses today’s American politics through the lens of his own conflicts and compromises as a political lawyer. He candidly shares moments when he stumbled, contributing to intensifying partisanship, and others when he succeeded in bipartisan conversation, such as with the 2022 Electoral Count Reform Act and recommendation for changes to the Insurrection Act. The Unraveling ofers a timely reflection on ways to restore respect and decency to the political arena and strengthen democracy.

What motivated you to write this book? I wanted to write about politics as I saw it, addressing as fairly and vitally as I could the state of

contemporary American politics. I thought that one way to do that — and also potentially to speak across the aisle at a time that it’s hard to do so — was to review the issues from the perspective of my career and acknowledge my role in the accelerating pull of polarization — the drive to win and the costs of what I term the ‘warrior’ mentality. I wanted to write about ethics as part of participation in the political process. I teach a course at NYU Law about the role of the lawyer in public life. It’s about lawyering and ethics in positions of public responsibility, mostly in government, but some in private life and political campaigns. That’s what shaped my approach to the book.

You describe your work on the Electoral Count Reform Act as one of the most rewarding experiences of your career. Why?

I continue to be very active in Democratic Party politics, but I have tried to create and preserve a space for bipartisan reform work. In the last cycle, working on the Electoral Count Reform Act, an issue that was fraught with partisan tensions, what I found is that there is a way to mark out common ground. I continue to believe that every now and then you can get Democrats and Republicans together, and a conversation that is properly structured can take place, because there is a set of common commitments to the democratic process that you can ultimately appeal to.

You write about your father, an immigrant to this country. How does he inspire you?

He came to the United States embracing the country as a Roosevelt Democrat, but nonetheless, he wanted to hear what other people had to say. He had tremendous faith in dialogue, and in democratic institutions — and he recognized when they could be dangerously under siege. I write in the book that he was a lifelong, fierce antagonist of Richard Nixon. But at the same time, if he had an opportunity to talk to Republicans, hear what they had to say, understand their arguments, he thought that was all a part of what made politics exciting and rewarding, and so extraordinarily valuable. He inculcated that in me, and I wrote about that because both his life experience and also the way he talked about politics brought that home to me very, very forcefully.

You take readers behind the scenes of some of recent history’s most consequential political battles in some wonderful anecdotes. Do you have a favorite?

With some of the stories about Presidents Obama and Biden, I wanted to give some flavor of how organizational integrity ultimately depends on not just rules or even ethical norms. It depends on, if you will, vibes: the culture that leaders establish, and how they handle these issues. There’s only so much you can do to make ethical prescriptions have the bite that you would like them to have. They have some guidance value, but beyond that, what you really want are people in positions of responsibility who are communicating their commitment to ethical politics by their actions, by how they speak, by their

“We have to adopt an ethic that puts us at the table with people we strongly disagree with, and learn both how to listen and also how to persuade.”

fidelity to truthfulness in the communications and interactions with other people. They set the tone, and that tone is what’s so powerful. If you have people at the top who want you to think hard about these issues and make the right calls, that is going to spread throughout the entire organization. It’s going to afect the younger lawyers; it’s tremendous training for younger lawyers.

You’ve served clients in the highest ofces in America. How did your time at Exeter serve you in those roles?

I benefited enormously from having Jack Herney as a history instructor. Another significant influence was English Instructor Charles Terry, whom I just thought the world of. When we talked about responses that we had to works of literature, we wound up talking about fundamental moral issues — how we might think about the moral implications of choices that the authors made, or the choices the authors depicted that the characters made. It was a deeply unique, ethically rich mode of instruction. There’s no question that those early experiences, more subsequently than the ones I had in college and law school, had a really significant efect on how I think about issues of common concern.

What’s the most important lesson you’d like your book to impart?

A couple of years ago, I spoke to the assembly at Exeter about my years of politics, and one of the things that I talked about was the importance of, under these kinds of pressures — and they are enormous pressures and strains on the society, strains on the democracy — the importance of still embracing a degree of humility and an openness to conversation. We have to adopt an ethic that puts us at the table with people we strongly disagree with, and learn both how to listen and also how to persuade. A very good friend of mine, also class of ’70, who lived down the hall from me at Exeter, Bob Gerrard, once said: “Don’t argue. Persuade.” And I mentioned that to the assembly: “Don’t argue. Persuade. Listen — and then try to be persuasive.” When I do my nonprofit work around the country on elections and I sit in the room with Republicans and election ofcials, those conversations are conversations in which it is really important for me to hear what they have to say, with the understanding that they will also listen to what I have to say. What is needed is a conversation and not a confrontation.

— Daneet Steffens ’82 is a books-focused journalist. She has contributed to the Bulletin since 2013.

The Unraveling: Reflections on Politics Without Ethics and Democracy in Crisis, by

Bob Bauer ’70

The Lion Rampant

What are the origins of the lion rampant’s use as a symbol of PEA?

When I was there it was a Grifn, NOT A LION.

Priscilla Marshall Lukens ’94

Isn’t the Lion from the Phillips family crest or something? And it used to be in chains or smth but it broke free??

Maureena Murphy ’20

Do You Remember?

Exeter decided to take the “chains” of of the mid basketball court lion rampant logo in 2016. Does anyone know why?

Perry DeLorenzo ’16

Freedom always better than chains — let that lion be truly rampant.

Barbara Rita Jenny ’84

Honestly, IDK but I’m pumped about the addition. Jonathan Bradbury ’20

The Love Gym is one of the most important and iconic buildings of its time. ... The building was designed to evoke the activities inside, as it is a very physical structure.

The central circulation “spine” is just that, holding all the parts and spaces together.

Its structure is muscular and skeletal, and holds up the more delicate steel trusses from which the roofs over the large spaces are suspended, in order to keep them free of obstructions.

The circulation spine is carefully organized in layers, with the athletes at the ground level and direct access to the courts/rinks.

The fantastic now gone ramp gently brought all up to the main level together, to the central hub and Piranesi stair, where the players could descend to the lockers and playing spaces, and the spectators could ascend to the viewing galleries.

It is an elegant and powerful diagram that was powerfully and beautifully executed in strong and muscular concrete, in keeping with the expression

of the physical exertion and prowess that was being displayed in the structure by the athletes.

In 1970, with the Long Step Forward, no other prep school had a structure that so powerfully and profoundly looked to the ancient past and the future of the 21st century.

Scott Finn ’73

— all responses originally posted on social media

From the Editor

The use of the lion rampant as a symbol for the Academy almost certainly has its origins in the Phillips family crest and specifically a bookplate designed for John Phillips in 1775. At some point, the name of John Phillips was removed from the plate and the inscription “In usum Academia Phillipsiae Exoniensis” (“for the use of Phillips Exeter Academy”) was put in its place, and the motto “Pia mente Studeatur” (“Let studies find a reverent mind”) was added at the top.

Today, the lion rampant — shed of the other trappings of the crest — adorns myriad elements of the Academy, from the weathervane atop Amen Hall to the jerseys of soccer teams. ●

Who remembers this nonsensical but inspired headline from The Exonian and the circumstances that prompted it? Email your answers and/or reminiscences to bulletin@exeter.edu. Responses will be published in the next issue of the Bulletin

A glowing lion rampant was added to Love Gym’s facade this summer.

The Academy

Return to School Exeter begins its 244th year with a warm student welcome. p 22

Uppers share a laugh outside Jeremiah Smith Hall during September's Class Activity Day.

Opening of School

A look at what it takes to welcome 1,106 students to the new academic year!

YOU’VE GOT MAIL! Before the first students step on campus, packages begin arriving at the mailroom. From mid-August to early September, the mailroom received an average of more than 800 packages per week, many of which were transported by Academy staf to dorms around campus on move-in day.

AUGUST 29

FIRST ARRIVALS Dozens of dorm proctors, fall athletes and other student leaders settled into campus almost a week ahead of ofcial move-in day. Will Barney ’25 claimed bragging rights as the first student to register for the 2024–25 academic year.

PRESEASON SPORTS A total of 187 student athletes in football, field hockey, soccer, cross country, girls volleyball and boys water polo spent a week building camaraderie and Big Red spirit. In addition to doubling up on practice sessions, athletes met with the school dietitian to learn about how to fuel their bodies and with the strength and conditioning staf for baseline testing.

STUDENT ORIENTATION PROGRAMS Sixty-six students attended Exeter Equitable Experience (E3), a three-day orientation program for new minority and LGBTQ+ students and students with high financial need. Sixty-four students from nearly 30 countries participated in the International Student Orientation. Both programs pair new Exonians with returning student mentors, lending them support from a peer group and enabling them to find belonging as soon as they step foot on campus.

SEPTEMBER 4

MOVE-IN DAY On the ofcial move-in day, nearly 70 members of the facilities staf helped greet students and families, loading, unloading and driving four golf carts, several utility vehicles and a box truck around campus to deliver suitcases, boxes and other belongings.

DORM SPIRIT Dorm proctors clad in red T-shirts printed with the friendly directive “I’m a Leader. Follow me” welcomed boarding students to their new homes. By the end of o f cial move-in day, dorms across campus had opened their doors to 895 boarding students and 211 afliated day students.

$26 Million Financial assistance awarded for the 2024–25 academic year

$1 M Amount disbursed for nontuition support, including laptops, lessons and travel home

45% Proportion of students receiving financial assistance

Will Barney ’25, first student to register this year

Football preseason reps

International Student Orientation

Move-in day at Dunbar Hall

SEPTEMBER 5

CLASS ACTIVITY DAY Let class bonding commence! Each class gathered for a slate of team-building activities, problem-solving tasks and games designed to help them connect (or reconnect) and incorporate new students into the community.

SEPTEMBER 6

OPENING ASSEMBLY New and emeriti faculty joined Principal Bill Rawson ’71 and Dean of Faculty Eimer Page onstage for Opening Assembly, the ofcial start of the school year. “I want you to find joy in knowing that you belong here,” Rawson said in his welcome remarks to students. “Having fun does not mean you will not work hard… . As you rise to the challenges that come your way, you will begin to understand your capacity to meet those challenges.”

PRINCIPAL’S GIFT Rawson presented students with their now traditional start-of-school gift: Exeter red T-shirts with their class years on the back. Staf members handed out just over 1,100 T-shirts before students headed to their first class meetings of the fall term. ●

42

Number of countries students hail from

66

Number of attendees at the E3 orientation

800

Packages delivered weekly to campus

1K+ T-shirts gifted to students by Principal Rawson

Opening Assembly

Uppers reconnect with a high five

Preps learn the ropes on Class Activity Day

How to Win at Dodgeball

Tips direct from Wentworth champions

For the past three decades, Academy Life Day has been a staple of the opening weeks of school. Classes are paused as students, grouped by dorms, scatter around campus and throughout the Seacoast for those all-important moments of bonding. While some dorms opt for apple picking or the serenity of a beach walk, the 70 boys of Wentworth Hall split into eight teams for a knock-down, drag-out dodgeball tournament. When the balls — and sweat — started flying, the Bulletin was there to see just what it took to be crowned dorm champions.

FACULTY NEWS

Meet the New Dean of Students

Ashley Taylor hired in leadership role

If the stacked boxes and unhung framed photos lining the perimeter of Ashley Taylor’s Jeremiah Smith Hall ofce this fall are any indication, Exeter’s new dean of students has been just a little busy since arriving in July.

The Washington, D.C., area native spent the summer, she says, settling in to her New Hampshire home with her husband and two young children and learning as much as she could about the Academy before the school year began.

“In a large pool of highly qualified candidates, Ashley stood out for her ability to inspire students and build meaningful collaborative relationships.”

A few months into her first term, Taylor is focusing on getting to know the “engaging and interesting” student body, including her eight advisees in Webster Hall. “Our students seem to seek really big challenges in one way or another,” she says. “They’re here with a sense of purpose and a sense of ‘What can I make of this opportunity?’”

Taylor arrives at Exeter after 14 years at Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia, where she spent the past nine years as the coed boarding school’s dean of students. Prior to that role, she had been a teacher, coach, dorm head, student adviser, senior leadership team member, member of the student life and student health review committees, and chair of strategic planning and scheduling committees and a diversity task force, among other responsibilities. She received numerous awards and recognition during her time there.

Taylor earned her undergraduate degree from Brown University, where she was a member of the varsity women’s lacrosse team. She earned a Master of Liberal Arts with extension studies in Biology from Harvard University.

In an email to students and staf announcing Taylor’s appointment Principal Bill Rawson ’71 wrote: “In a large pool of highly qualified candidates, Ashley stood out for her ability to inspire students and build meaningful collaborative relationships across the community, and for her commitment to challenging and supporting all students in an environment where they are deeply known and encouraged to develop character, self-awareness, resilience, and a sense of purpose.”

Taylor says she was drawn to Exeter for its values, as well as its commitment to diversity, need-blind admissions and Harkness pedagogy. “Exeter is so committed to making this opportunity accessible to students regardless of financial means,” Taylor says. “The fabric of this place is about conversation and diversity of perspectives and being comfortable being challenged and asking respectful, challenging questions.”

For perspective on her new role, Taylor relies on her professional experience, as well as the memories she has from her days as a high schooler at an all-girls independent school in D.C. “Similar to my experience,” Taylor says, “there is an emphasis here on academic excellence, but there’s also an importance of high school being a time of fun, where kids are forming lifelong friendships, trying new things, finding real success in something that they feel good about. I'm impressed by how students seek challenge, and I'm interested in continuing to see how they balance that with fun and joy.”

Taylor says she didn’t come in with a rigid action plan to implement and is instead using the conversations she’s having with students, faculty and staf in her first term on campus to help shape her vision for the future.

“What I have found success in is being able to ask questions, identify where we could be even better in serving the student experience and then help create a process that helps us find the right answer.” ●

Toto Papathanasopoulos ’27 and Dean of Students Ashley Taylor

Jumps Coach

Aaron Gadson ’05 helps his wife win Olympic gold

Aaron Gadson ’05 took a humble and somewhat unexpected route to becoming a jumps coach. A star on the track team during his time at Exeter, Gadson enjoyed continued success at Cornell University. After graduation, he still had the itch to train but quickly found that coaching was the

ASSEMBLY SPEAKER

only way to gain consistent access to a training facility.

“I fell into coaching by necessity,” Gadson says. “But I quickly realized that there were a lot of kids who were not able to fully hone their talent because they did not have anyone around with the expertise. I felt like I could fill that gap.”

Gadson landed his first coaching position at the high school level, where skilled instructors in the long jump and triple jump are often hard to find. His quantitative and technical approach helped develop young athletes who took state, regional and national honors. Eventually he began working with more advanced athletes with big dreams.

A former Cornell teammate recommended Gadson to Thea LaFond, a rising star in the triple jump who qualified for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro but did not reach the finals. She was looking to push herself even further. As Gadson paid meticulous attention to technique and tailored her workouts, he

Seisei Tatebe-Goddu ’01 sheds light on crisis afecting teens

Comparison is the thief of joy.” Seisei Tatebe-Goddu’s pointed words rippled through a captivated assembly audience in September. The founder of Lights on Labs, which builds and directs public demand for responsible technology, discussed the consequences of media addiction with the exact audience that so many companies target — teenagers.

Tatebe-Goddu noted that the daily average amount of screen time for children in the United States is seven hours. She then extrapolated to show that by the time a student graduates, they will

have spent more than a full year of high school looking at a screen. She went on to explain the efects of teens seeking positive a f rmations on social media through features such as “likes.”

“You know what seven hours of nonstop dopamine hits leads to?” she asked. “Unsurprisingly, it is not healthy teens. Tragically, it is higher rates of suicide among 10–14-year-olds and other illness like depression and ADHD.”

Throughout the presentation TatebeGoddu used the term “big” to describe the warped sense of self-worth, productivity and success outlets present to impressionable young people. Equally

and LaFond developed a strong foundation, professionally and personally. Their collaboration yielded increasingly impressive results. Over time, their partnership deepened and they married in 2022.

“When we first started working out,” Gadson says, “it was something that I took as an extreme honor and something that I wanted to make sure went well. There wasn’t any intention for anything to blossom outside of a good coaching relationship. We immediately developed a relationship of trust and good communication. The rest is kind of history.”

Their shared dedication and work ethic culminated in a historic moment at the Paris Olympics this summer, when LaFond won gold in the triple jump, earning the first Olympic medal for her home country, Dominica.

Following the Games, they traveled to Dominica, where they were welcomed as heroes.

“The celebration was like something out of a movie,” Gadson says. “Thousands of people filled the streets, the prime minister gave a speech and showered us with gifts. It was like something you would see after winning the Super Bowl.”

A journey which was ignited through passion and a means to an end, transformed into a legacy that includes the ultimate prize in the sport.

—Brian Muldoon

damaging to what’s being consumed by teens online, she argued, is what is being minimized or replaced by kids’ pursuit of “big.” She turned to the crowd for suggestions, hearing examples like “family,” “friends” and “sleep.”

Tatebe-Goddu, part of the executive committee of Exeter’s General Alumni Association, was on hand as part of Exeter Leadership Weekend. Her campaign, Mothers Against Media Addiction, was launched in February and has quickly grown. There are now 17 chapters across the country. ●

Aaron Gadson ’05 and Thea LaFond

Seisei Tatebe-Goddu ’01

INTERNSHIP

Five Questions With an Equine Vet in Training

What Danixza Pinto ’25 learned in and out of the saddle

Danixza Pinto ’25 spent three weeks in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, this summer shadowing equine veterinarian Dr. Celia Goodall P’24 as part of Exeter’s mentor-based internship program that pairs students with alumni and parents eager to provide meaningful opportunities. Spearheaded by Instructor in Science Anne Rankin ’92, the program supported 22 students this year in 14 internships in such varied fields as engineering, plastic surgery, ocean health systems science and distressed real estate asset management.

Do you remember your first experience with a horse?

All my life I have been surrounded by horses. My parents grew up on farms. My maternal grandfather was a breeder and trainer for Paso Fino horses. My mom attended several horse shows and competed with her own horse, Jabón. The first time I got on a horse, it was for therapeutic reasons. I was a few months old and rode bareback with only the padding of my diaper, but it was purposeful for the hippotherapy to improve my mobility, motor and cognitive skills. Not only did horses make my first steps and words possible, but they also introduced me to one of my favorite sports.

What drew you to this internship?

Out of appreciation for these outstanding and amorous animals, I’ve always believed it important to learn how to care for them so that I could return the favor. Alongside volunteering for ESSO Equine, a club dedicated to working at an animal rescue, back home in Brooklyn, New York, I have enjoyed working with my local stables to rehabilitate abused horses and provide them emotional comfort. However, I had never had the opportunity to learn how to care for horses’ health. I was thrilled by the opportunity to learn how to properly care for horses’ health and be able to identify and address their needs.

Were the days all work and no play?

Outside of working with Dr. Goodall, I would help her feed the three horses on her property and muck their stalls. During my free time, I had access to ride outside and even had a schooling lesson, so it was very much an immersive and fun experience!

What were your biggest takeaways from the internship?

My initial preconception was that equine vets were primarily for routine or sick visits, similar to that of any health practitioner; however, from the very start, I realized that Dr. Goodall’s job was not as simple as people may think. Notably, most horses we treated were seen for lameness, but the health care did not stop at treating the condition; it continued by improving the quality of life and making the horse more comfortable. It was a very enriching experience to see the impact of regenerative medicine on horses. Horses who were once ill-mannered and demonstrated difculty at the walk/trot became elated, athletic horses who could finally run free of pain — and the best part is that that was made possible through science!

Did the experience also change how you think?

The other most impactful takeaway from the internship was becoming more open-minded, especially about euthanasia. I had always thought that every horse could be saved or that at least every horse had the right to. Dr. Goodall’s bravery and professionalism taught me a new perspective. Sometimes, the kindest option is also the option that may be very difcult to do, but regardless, quality of life, especially for horses, is of utmost importance. ●

Danixza Pinto ’25 cares for Strider, a Friesian horse, during her summer internship.

Lamont Gallery Fall Exhibit

Artists transform space, celebrate the humble line

Making your mark takes on new meaning at the Lamont Gallery with this fall’s exhibition

“Through Line.” In it, five of the six artists visited the Academy to create temporary installations on site — at times marking directly on the surface of the gallery’s walls. The materials included markers, snap chalk, string, streamers and even 80 bags of dirt shoveled from the campus grounds.

“While their mediums are vast and divergent,” Lamont Gallery Director and Curator Pam Meadows says, “each artist enters the conversation through painstakingly repetitious, modest and slow gestures. They amass into vibrant works that arrest the viewer just as quickly as they entice them to slow down and look more closely.”

Behind the scene of the performative drawing I am Alewife by August Ventimiglia.

Inspiration August Ventimiglia took inspiration for his large wall mural from the Gulf of Maine — its coastal shape, sea life and ocean water data, like wave height, over time. “Those silhouettes of fish are the alewives schooling, and they’re all pointed radially to Portsmouth Harbor, which is the ocean entrance to the Exeter River,” Ventimiglia says. “The great dam on the Exeter River was taken down in 2016 and the alewives started to come back.” Alewives are small fish that migrate between fresh and saltwater.

Execution The 20-foot-long drawing is made with a snap line and a chalk reel, which is used in construction sites to lay a straight line over a long distance. “There's one person at one side of the string and one person at the other side of the string, and the string is pulled taut,” Ventimiglia says. “Then you pluck it like a string of a big double bass, and it snaps the line against the wall. … The process of creating it really is a

ARTISTS

August Ventimiglia

Lynne Harlow

Carly Glovinski

Rachel Perry

Katherine Mitchell

DiRico

Patricia Rangel

conversation between the two people. The process unfolds over days. I have to trust the other person on the end of the line. It's like having a dance partner. [Exhibitions and Collections Manager Dustin Schuetz] and I started snapping on Monday. It took maybe 16 hours, just the snapping.”

Contradictions “The idea of using a dry medium to represent a liquid form is one of those contradictions I’m interested in,” Ventimiglia says. “And then playing

with the idea of a construction tool to evoke a natural phenomenon is also a contradiction. The contradiction isn't a bad thing. It's something to ponder.”

Teaching Moment “I think of this [mural] not just as a teaching tool in the Art Department, but it can also be used as a backdrop for a conversation about ecology, science, about social and environmental responsibility. It's more than just an abstract art form; it tells a story, in a broader critique of human activity.” ●

August Ventimiglia creates the chalk drawing I am Alewife on the Lamont Gallery’s walls.

Scan this QR code to watch August Ventimiglia at work.

→ Drawing, sculpture, light and sound elements combine in

Katherine Mitchell DiRico's multimedia installation.

↓ Patricia Rangel (left) and her assistant pour dirt gathered from Academy grounds to form abstract landscapes of compacted earth.

←

An

Alumni Benefactor

This type of site-specific exhibition was made possible in part through the generous gift of Mary and Jon Orszag '91. Their gift supported the gallery’s renovations this summer, including the removal of linen from the walls and its replacement with white sheetrock. “It is a huge facilities upgrade for us and opens a ton of doors in terms of the kind of work we can show,” Meadows says. “It will also be huge for our team of workstudy students who can now learn how to install artwork at museum standards and patchpaint walls after a show comes down. It’s very similar to what a gallery team would do at a college-university level.”

in-process picture of the string piece New Hampshire-based artist Carly Glovinski installed on the Lamont Gallery walls as part of her Landsline Stack series.

→ Interdisciplinary artist Lynne Harlow hangs a yellow vinyl curtain from the skylights outside Lamont Gallery.

Keeping the Flame Burning

Dick Dollof and Bill Lavertue have each worked in Exeter’s heating plant for more than half a century. Where do they get their energy?

Stocking grocery shelves as a newlywed in his early 20s, Dick Dollof knew he needed a better job. What he didn’t know is that his next place of employment would probably be his last. Now in his 60th year at Exeter, Dollof has spent the last five decades maintaining the Academy’s sizable central heating plant systems.

Sitting in an easy chair framed by a picture window at his Exeter residence, Dollof, 82, jokes about the anonymity of the position — at least most of the time.

“On those cold days,” he says, “if things don’t go right, you hear from people before too long.”

Dollof arrived in the heating plant in 1974 after stints in the campus laundry room and with the Grounds Department.

“All my learning was on the job,” he says. “In those days, you didn’t necessarily need the sheepskins to make a career; they found a person they had some confidence in.”

He credits the veteran boiler operators, known as firemen, for their guidance, which included a warning about the notoriously finicky No. 6 boiler: “The firemen that were breaking me in said, ‘When you go by that thing at night, sneak; don’t let it see you.’”

One of those vets, Bill Lavertue, has logged 55 years in the central heating plant. He remembers Dollof as an eager and capable trainee. “I said to Dick, ‘Don’t blow it up’ — and it’s still here,” Lavertue, 91, says with a smile. Together Lavertue

“I said to Dick, ‘Don’t blow it up’ — and it’s still here,” Lavertue, 91, says with a smile.

and Dollof have combined for over 115 years of service to the Academy.

The men have seen several modern advancements over the years, including the transition to natural gas and upgrades in the equipment and technology it takes to keep the plant running at peak efciency. Dollo f talks about the decades gone by, when a fireman would have to rely on intuition, rather than a computer, to know if a machine

was working correctly. “Once you’d been in there for a while, you’d become very sensitive to what’s humming right,” he says. “If you’ve got a bearing going bad, it’s going to jump right out at you.”

As for what has kept them at the Academy for so long, Dollof cites the great benefits and the opportunity for his son, John Dollof ’81, to attend. Lavertue says, “The people … and the job security is pretty good too.” ●

Dick Dolloff (left) and Bill Lavertue in front of Exeter's cantankerous No. 6 boiler.

Instructors

at Exeter combine a love of teaching with a deep connection to their lifelong interests

BY DEBBIE KANE

Faculty Passions

Math Instructor Jeff Ibbotson peers through a dodecahedron.

With wideranging interests and experiences, each Academy faculty member brings a unique set of talents and insight to the classroom. This personal lens is a superpower, adding nuance and passion to the curriculum, often leading to exciting new courses that both reflect the adaptability of Exeter’s course oferings and the instructor’s academic excellence and personality.

Meet five of the 247 faculty members who bring their full selves to the table — and the classes they have inspired.

Genetics of Cancer

SUMMER MORRILL ’11 Instructor in Science

Summer Morrill ’11 fell in love with studying biology and genetics while a student at Exeter. But it was her family history of breast cancer that inspired her to study genetics at Tufts, then in graduate school at MIT. “I’ve had the experience of meeting with a genetic counselor to try to understand what’s going on,” she says. “The things I’ve researched and discovered may not make a conscious impact during my lifetime, but there’s something empowering about studying it.”

While Morrill considered becoming a genetic counselor, she decided she was more suited to the academic side of science, especially after gaining teaching experience during graduate school. She teaches a course in cancer biology,

BIO586: Molecular Genetics . She proposed it as a special course based on several students’ initial interest, but when she ofered it, 25 students signed up. “So many students approached me asking for this course,” Morrill says.

Why so much interest? “Cancer research is a huge field with really interesting biology happening now,” she says. “Also, students personally are interested in learning more about cancer research. The disease touches a lot of families, friends and, at this point in their lives, they probably know someone who has cancer.”

Students in Morrill’s course read current research on cancer genetics and do lab work focused on learning techniques of DNA isolation, analysis and manipulation. Morrill also organizes a panel of biologists — representing organizations including Boston Children’s Hospital, the National Institutes of Health, and Merck — to meet students and answer questions. “The questions the students ask are what researchers are currently

asking in the field, which is amazing,” she says.

Morrill is creating further iterations of the course, giving students more opportunities to tie together diferent elements they have learned, such as thinking how gene mutation works and what the human body can and can’t do in response. “If they understand a problem at multiple levels, that’s going to benefit their problem-solving ability when it comes to thinking about human disease and how we’re treating patients,” she says.

“A course like this can teach students that science is more than just memorizing a set of facts. It’s about being comfortable with the unknown and asking the right questions to further your understanding of the field. I think there’s huge value in that for students — even one who doesn’t want to go into cancer biology — to have the experience of connecting pieces together and doing research of your own to figure out what’s going on in such a new field.”

Wild About Nature

JASON BREMILLER Instructor in English

Jason BreMiller is as passionate about the outdoors as he is about literature. Last winter, to illustrate concepts discussed in his ENG420 course, he led students on a walk through the woods to build a fire, cook, then taste a deer heart from an animal he had humanely harvested.

At di ferent points in his teaching career — before and after arriving at Exeter in 2012 — BreMiller has guided students through ice caves in Iceland, up Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro and through the Serengeti because he believes place-based education helps students learn. “I’ve tried in my pedagogy to set a high bar of traditional academic rigor but explore diferent possibilities for its delivery,” BreMiller says.

His ENG572: Literature and the Land course is centered around weekly field trips — hikes through forests, visits to local orchards, explorations of the New Hampshire Seacoast — connected to the stories students read and discuss in class. “Literature and the Land is really built around deepening students’ awareness of and connection to place, and relying on the body of literature that’s conducive to that,” BreMiller says. “It’s perfect for seniors who are poised to reflect about transition. We visit places designed to prompt them to think about what it means to have a relationship to place that’s both good for human and biological communities.”

BreMiller spent much of his childhood exploring the outdoors, observing animals and learning to bow hunt with

the help of his father, a wildlife enthusiast who often brought animals into the house. “My childhood was unusual in the sense that you’d go get ice cream and all these bird specimens would just spill out of the freezer,” he says. “I also remember we glued a turtle back together that had cracked its shell on the road. I grew up with a deep afnity for natural spaces and a comfort with being outdoors.”

After pursuing studies in environmental humanities in college and graduate school, BreMiller gravitated to mountaineering and backpacking, completing a NOLS outdoor educator mountaineering course and becoming a field instructor. “These pieces fit in my teaching career, where I saw the value of being outdoors with students and observing firsthand the magic that is both intellectual and deeply internal by teaching in wild places,” he says.

BreMiller is the founder and director of Exeter's Environmental Literature Institute, a weeklong conference for teachers, and established INT519: Green Umbrella Learning Lab, an integrated studies course which gives students an opportunity to dig into sustainability projects on and of campus. Among its successes were the introduction of RedBikes, a campus bike share program, and an initiative to raise the awareness of local drinking water quality. “The kids are developing the skills to execute highstakes, complex projects with real outcomes for the community, which in my mind is the logical extension of Harkness pedagogy,” he says.

One idea BreMiller is contemplating is a field-based, interdisciplinary course on the philosophy and ethics of hunting. It invites many complex questions but, most important to BreMiller, it takes those conversations outdoors.

Instructor in English Jason BreMiller teaching in the Academy woodlands.

Instructor in Science Summer Morrill ’11

Serving Up History

TROY SAMUELS Instructor in History

Troy Samuels is known for making learning history a whole-body experience. Students in his HIS568: History Through Food course, for example, examine the relationship between cultures and food around the world through readings, then prepare a meal based on the concepts they’re discussing. “We have Harkness in the classroom, then we have Harkness in the kitchen,” Samuels says.

The course was inspired by a student project in one of Samuels’ 300-level European history classes. “A student from Venezuela researched the creation of Venezuelan food at the intersection of European and South American culture, which I thought was really cool,” Samuels says. “There are so many rich intersections between how food and the everyday lives of people interact with history.”

Based on themes provided by Samuels, each week two student “chefs” create a menu around a recipe they select and join Samuels in the basement of the Elizabeth Phillips Academy Center to cook a three-course meal. Exploring various themes such as food and economy, or food and empire, students prepare a variety of dishes — for example, lamb stew using ingredients adapted from a

Babylonian cuneiform tablet or lobster rolls after discussing food and social status. They’re urged to taste everything (barring dietary restrictions or allergies). And, under Samuels’s supervision, they’re learning real cooking skills.

“One of the broader trends we explore is how interconnected our world is,” he says. The class becomes a community event, especially on cooking days. “People invite their friends to help cook, to try things, to understand what they’re doing, and it becomes a little party,” he says.

In addition to cooking, Samuels encourages his students to engage with the active work of historians: digging. He is an archaeologist and a specialist in the material culture of understudied people in the ancient world. As a senior staf member on the Gabii Project, an international archaeological initiative in Italy, he has ofered Exeter students the opportunity to work with him at the site outside Rome for the past two summers. “They’re the only high school students there, and they really distinguish themselves because they’re so insightful and energized,” Samuels says. “It’s also a great opportunity for them to experience a different side of being a historian.”

Samuels jokes that, “with a name like Troy, I was doomed to be an ancient historian,” but his hope is for students to find joy in learning history. “It’s about finding engagement with the past and that search for complexity and understanding and how that can be really rewarding,” he says.

Drawing on Experience

TARA LEWIS Instructor in Art and the Clowes Teaching Chair in Art

Tara Lewis believes all students are artists, whether they have been sketching for years or have not picked up a paintbrush since elementary school. A painter who often shows her work in New York City galleries, Lewis has taught painting, drawing, 3D design, printmaking and photography at all levels around a Harkness table in the Frederick R. Mayer Art Center. She draws on her dual passions in contemporary art (especially pop art) and portraiture to inspire students. “I love to weave the contemporary art world into my course content in a very impactful and tangible way,” she says.

Lewis regularly invites working artists to meet and work alongside students. American artist William Wegman visited campus to discuss the whimsical compositions he creates featuring dogs — mostly his Weimaraners in various costumes. Casey Cadwallader ’97, creative director for the fashion brand Mugler, made a guest appearance. Portrait artist Nicolas Coleman ’16 set up a mini studio in Lewis’s classroom and painted in tandem with students.

Some of these visits lead to further inspiration and connection. After hosting

Clara Peng ’24 and Instructor in History

Troy Samuels explore artifacts.

painter Will Cotton, several of Lewis’s former students went on to become studio assistants and interns. “The students gain technical inspiration that enhances their own studio practice,” Lewis says. “But it’s great when alumni come into the art classroom because I have them talk about what they were creating in high school or simply what they were like then. I want the students to realize that artists were actually 16 once too.”

Lewis enthusiastically shares personal experiences and insight in her ART408: Advanced Projects: Painting Portraits course. “My own studio practice is rooted in portraiture, and I love collaborations due to the unexpected and rewarding outcomes that can occur,” Lewis says. “I can’t help but let who I am spill into the classroom!” Early in the course, Lewis introduces possible portrait subjects through music videos, photography, literature, other artists’ work and more. Students develop a concept for the portrait they want to create, find a model, then create a portrait throughout the term.

Last spring in New York, a chance collaboration with model Brooke Shields led to an exhibition of Lewis’s pop culture-infused portraits of her and her daughters. She uses that example to motivate students.

“I love to share tips about the portrait process,” Lewis says. “I tell students to

Instructor in Art Tara Lewis with her painting “Batman” in her home studio.

of cooperation to show how hermit crabs trade shells, writing and illustrating a picture book to explain their findings.

Ibbotson aspires to teach mathematics beyond theorems and formulas, and attract a broad range of students, some who enjoy math and others who feel they should give math another try. Maybe because Ibbotson didn’t always know mathematics would be his route to happiness.

“When I was in college, I was a physics major and I wound up completing a physics program,” he says. “I took English classes, but eventually the style of arguments got to me. I was like I want something where there’s a provable answer. Not that I didn’t enjoy arguing, I do. … but it was when I was in real analysis that I fell in love with the mathematics of infinity.”

be present in the moment — know your concept, idea and subject you wish to portray. Make a documentary on canvas!”

Calculated Fun

JEFF IBBOTSON Instructor in Mathematics

Learning advanced mathematics concepts isn’t necessarily fun and games — except in Instructor Jef Ibbotson’s MAT690: Selected Topics in Mathematics course, where games are the point. In it, students explore how game theory — the study of strategic interactions whose outcome for each participant depends on choices of all involved — is an efective way to apply mathematical calculations to strategic thinking.

“Game theory allows students to see applications of mathematics in a diferent way because the concept is based on the idea of agents playing a game against one another or as part of a group,” Ibbotson says. “Games like the Prisoner’s Dilemma have aspects of conflict and cooperation, and can apply to situations in politics and economics.” Two of his students applied the game theory model

Drawing on his vast interests in art, religion and history, he uses spherical paintings on a globe to illustrate sixpoint perspective or passes around a graspable dodecahedron to help students visualize complex ideas. In another course he developed, MAT40H: History of Mathematics, students study numbering systems from ancient Egypt, Babylon, China, India and other non-Western cultures — and have an opportunity to build their own. “They invent their own symbols and the stories behind the symbols,” Ibbotson says.

Ibbotson has been able to share his fondness for physics in an integrated studies course about the intersection of mathematics and sound. Using content based on his research into distribution theory and partial diferential equations, students use trigonometric functions like sine and cosine to model complex sound waves (which correspond to musical concepts like pitch and volume). An avid Marvel and DC comic book fan, Ibbotson hasn’t integrated comics into his math courses, but he plans to.

In everything he teaches, Ibbotson strives to impart that learning mathematics is an efective way to learn to think, especially around the Harkness table. “That pedagogy feels right to me,” he says. “We want students engaged as soon as possible in doing mathematics. We have all sorts of problems that can go in various directions and sometimes the students find original ways to solve them. We celebrate that.”

Debbie Kane is a longtime contributor to The Exeter Bulletin. Her work has also appeared in AIA NH Forum, New Hampshire Home and New Hampshire Magazine

Exploring the Evolution of Harkness at the Academy

By Sarah Pruitt ’95

A quiet moment in Instructor in History Alexa Caldwell’s classroom in the Academy Building.

the

exeter classroom, then and now

IN THE FALL OF 1973, a photo essay in this magazine explored “The Exeter Classroom,” three years after the advent of coeducation and 43 years after the philanthropist Edward S. Harkness challenged Principal Lewis Perry to come up with a “radical” new approach to secondary school education. That radical new approach was Harkness: small, seminar-style classes conducted around an oblong wooden table, with the teacher a participant in and guide of the discussion rather than the sole leader. The photo essay, edited by Paul Sadler Jr. ’45, featured images by Bradford Herzog, an instructor and photographer, and text by another longtime instructor, Colin F. Irving ’41. “The Exeter community is now wedded to the conference table,” Irving wrote. “It is extolled in Academy propaganda, visitors cry to see it, other schools inquire about it.”

Although much has changed at Exeter since that essay was published more than 50 years ago, much has stayed the same. At the start of the Academy’s 244th school year, we invite you to revisit the Exeter classroom and see how nearly a century of Harkness has shaped the school we know and love.

Paul Molloy, a faculty member in the English Department, teaching an English class in fall 1965.

then/now

Harkness for All Subjects In 1973, the Harkness philosophy — or at least the oval conference table — had not yet been fully incorporated into all of the academic subjects taught at Exeter. Science, music, art and theater classes were still conducted in the more traditional classroom environment. Today, the Harkness table is not only at the center of nearly every Exeter classroom, but also extends into all aspects of life on campus, from the playing field to the dining hall to the dorm.

Gender Balance at the Table The first 39 female students enrolled at Exeter in the fall of 1970, representing just 4% of the total student population of 891. By December 1973, the Academy reported a slightly more balanced boy-girl ratio of 3 to 1. The campus looks dramatically diferent today. Girls account for half of the student population (546 for the 2024–25 school year, or 49.4% of a total enrollment of 1,106).

Curriculum What students are learning around the table has expanded exponentially over the years. The catalog of course oferings for the 1973–74 school year listed just over 170 courses. Today, students can choose from more than 450 courses across 12 major departments.

The World as the Classroom Exeter began ofering of-campus educational programming for its students in the 1960s through the School Year Abroad program (chartered by Exeter, Phillips Academy and St. Paul’s School in 1964) and the Washington Intern Program (started in 1966). These oferings have multiplied, especially since the creation of the Global Initiatives program in 2012. Today, the Harkness classroom extends outside and around the world, with more than 400 students participating in over two dozen travel and learning opportunities each year.

harkness timeline

The transformation of the Exeter classroom didn’t happen all at once. This timeline explores some key moments in the evolution of Harkness at the Academy.

1930 Edward S. Harkness gives Exeter $5.8 million — the equivalent of more than $109 million today — to implement what Principal Lewis Perry calls the “conference method of instruction.”

1931 Exeter students in classics and mathematics participate in the first Harkness-style classes, which replace traditional recitation-style classes of 25 to 35 students. At the time, those are the only two subjects taught in the Academy Building, the only building with renovated rooms available for the start of the school year.

1932 The smaller class size and conference-style format of Harkness learning expand to English, history and modern languages classes with the completion of Phillips Hall.

1970 In a unanimous decision, the Trustees vote to make Exeter a coed institution, and the first 39 girls, all day students, enroll at Exeter for the 1970–71 school year. It is a significant moment for ensuring diverse voices at the table.

An outdoor Harkness class.

Janet Kehl, a faculty member in the Modern Languages Department, teaching a French class in 1971.

1998 A prototype Harkness lab-classroom is built in Room 207 of Thompson Science Building, outfitted with a temporary Harkness table and networked laptop computers at each lab table. The prototype helps science teachers determine the necessary placement and equipment adjustments for classrooms in a new science building, then in the planning

2001 The Phelps Science Center is dedicated. Designed in accordance with Harkness principles, its 22 classroom-labs feature oblong tables and lab benches where groups of two to four students can work together on hands-on activities and experiments.

2015 Ground is broken on an expansion of ForrestalBowld Music Center. When complete, students fill the first Harkness music

a harkness glossary Warriors, wallflowers and everything in between

ou may be familiar with “Harkness Warriors,” who boldly dominate discussions around the table as their more reticent peers, the “Harkness Wallflowers,” hang back. Yet these two opposites don’t begin to cover the full, dynamic spectrum of Harkness classroom styles. Here, with help from The Exonian, is a selection of the “Harkness flora and fauna” that have been spotted at the table over the years.

YHarkness Clarifier Has probably said, or will say, “Just to be clear, Gatsby is dead, right?”

Harkness

Warrior Takes up space (sometimes too much) in the discussion. Wields a carefully chosen citation like a sword and loves nothing more than a challenge. Intellectually ferocious but able to be tamed by a skilled instructor.

Harkness Wallflower hangs back and lets others take the lead. skills. When coaxed (typically by instructor) to contribute, can often produce an insight no one else has thought of.

Harkness Honest Abe Unable to lie about any failure to complete the reading when confronted by the instructor. Extremely rare.

Harkness Flow Killer Brings the conversation to an abrupt end by asking a long-winded, closedended question which pretty much sums up what the whole class has said.

Harkness

Psychic Cites evidence invisible to normal students.

Harkness Rembrandt Draws exceptionally realistic portraits of the teacher in a notebook.

Thanks to Nick Singer ’98, Adam Sadler ’98 and James Moore ’98, who published “Harkness Flora and Fauna Revealed” in the January 30, 1998, issue of The Exonian, and Fiona Madrid ’20, who updated the list in the November 1, 2018, issue.

What was your Harkness style? Write to us at bulletin@exeter.edu

Instructor in Science A.J. Cosgrove and his science class around the Harkness table in spring 1998.

Students seated in a circle in a music classroom in October 1995.

Building on what [insert colleague/family member/ friend’s name] said …

Adding on to that …

Another thing that was interesting to me was …

To that point …

I have a question about …

table talk

What do you guys think about …

Would it be all right if we switch gears for a minute?

harkness tips Ten Phrases to Keep the Conversation Going

AI want to go back to …

Something I was wondering was …

A look at the oblong structure at the center of every Harkness classroom

It made me curious that …

In the years following the Harkness gift, Colin Irving wrote, the Academy experimented with the shape of the conference tables. Some were round, measuring 10 feet in diameter; some were more elongated, about 12.5 feet long and 4.5 feet wide.

Finally, the administration settled on a third design: a “pregnant oval” 6 feet, 11 inches wide, sized to fit through a 7-foot-high door. Twelve wooden slides were nested inside each table, ready to be pulled out for tests or whenever students needed to work independently. The design for this basic Harkness table, with the ingenious arrangement of test slides, has been credited to Corning Benton ’16 (Hon.); P’51, a skilled woodworker who was treasurer of the Academy from 1922–51.

Benton’s original design, now more than 90 years old, serves as the model for the newest Harkness tables, which are constructed by the family-owned Huston & Company in Arundel, Maine. Owner Saer Huston says that he and his employees put together some 250 to 300 pieces of wood — the most common types used are cherry and maple — for each table, consisting of a veneer top banded with solid wood and a wooden base.

As the fame of the Harkness method has spread, the cost of the tables has gone up accordingly. In the early 1930s the price for a Harkness table was $165; by 1963, a replacement was estimated at more than $1,300. Today, an 11-foot table seating 12 students runs around $16,000, while a larger table — up to 20 feet, which seats 18 students — can top $28,000.

t the start of each school year, all ninth graders and new students attend a demonstration of a Harkness discussion, meant to introduce them to the distinctive brand of teaching and learning that goes on in Exeter classroom. This September, 12 seniors joined Instructor in English Duncan Holcomb on the main stage of The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance to discuss the poem “M. Degas Teaches Art and Science at Durfee Intermediate School,” by Philip Levine. Here are 10 phrases from their discussion to inspire collaborative discussion at your next business meeting, family gathering and beyond.

A Harkness table under construction at Huston & Company in Maine.

classrooms in the Class of 1959 Music Center, which also houses additional practice rooms, a Music Media and Technology Suite, and a 250-seat performance space, “the Bowld.”

2018 The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance welcomes students to its two Harkness classrooms — the first for theater and dance classes at the Academy — as well as a 350-seat main stage theater, a 140-seat thrust stage, dance venues and practice spaces.

2020 Exeter celebrates 50 years of coeducation — and confronts the momentous challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the Harkness classroom adapted to include remote students and virtual learning.

2031 Exeter will celebrate its 250th anniversary — and a century of Harkness learning.

visualizing voices

A Conversation Diagram of an English class

Every class, to some extent, is seeking balance,” says Tyler Caldwell, English instructor and Exeter Humanities Institute director. “That’s always the goal, and it’s never fully accomplished, because it changes day to day.”

Caldwell made this diagram of the conversation in one of his English classes this fall to better understand the dynamics at the table. On the blank oval, Caldwell drew a line from one speaker to the next, creating a web-like illustration of the conversation in real time. The letter notations track specific textual references (TR), questions (Q), usage of students’ names (NR) and more general mentions of the text (T). The final picture shows who is speaking, how often, and what they are adding to the discussion.

Developed for the Exeter Humanities Institute — which trains educators in the student-centered, discussion-based Harkness pedagogy — this tracking tool is now well known to Exeter students as well. While diferent teachers use it diferently, it’s often employed as a collaborative tool, where students are given a chance to reflect on where they could adjust or improve their participation at the table.

The Goel Center features the first Harkness classrooms for theater and dance.

Science Instructor Shimaa Ghazal teaching at the Harkness table.

what harkness means to me

xeter alumni across the generations have shared that their experiences around the table — and practicing the Harkness ethos in all aspects of life at the Academy — had a lasting efect on the way they operate in the world.

E“It’s through the experience that I had at the Harkness table that I always have the confidence to speak up in a room and to know that my voice matters. … That can be daunting when you’re oftentimes the only woman or maybe the only person of color.”

Verónica Juárez ’00, venture capitalist, founder of Arturo Advisory and managing partner of Dahlia VC

“The Harkness table was really the most important educational and intellectual experience for me. I learned that education is not about imparting a lot of information, but it’s forcing you to think about what you read, what you hear, ask questions [and] develop your understanding.”

Bob Mundheim ’50, attorney and legal scholar, winner of the 2013 Phillips Award

“One of the benefits of the Harkness method is that it causes you to prepare. You know you’re going to be exposed if you don’t.”

Gerard Grifn ’86, investor, co-founder and chief investment ofcer of Palekana Ltd.

Harkness “makes you unafraid to go deep and ask the hard questions. I find that people are really receptive to that; once you give them a platform, they have so much to say.”

Athena Stenor ’18, research technician at the Imielinski Lab, NYU Langone Health

“I thought I was smart, but when I arrived at Exeter, I realized that there were many, many young men who were much smarter than I was, and I could learn by being involved with them in classes and discussions. It was really an intellectual atmosphere that could open your mind.”

Robert Keefe ’64, attorney, senior counsel at WilmerHale

“Exeter taught me to speak my mind: I didn’t understand the degree to which the Harkness method was unusual, how everyone participates, but that has absolutely been my approach to my career, and what I now take into my own classes.”

Heather Cox Richardson ’80, historian, author, professor of history at Boston College

“There are a lot of contexts where we can harness this power of conversation — at the holiday dinner table, in a company boardroom or during a city policy meeting. If you talk to your neighbor, your relative … if you can let go of righteousness … we can tackle the big social issues of the day.”

Jason Jay ’95, senior lecturer and director of the Sustainability Initiative at MIT Sloan School of Management

“Sitting around that Harkness table, I learned to not be satisfied with the first best answer. As a writer, I always have an immediate idea for this sentence, this character, this description, but Exeter was the first place that really trained me to be open to other answers or responses.”

Chang-Rae Lee ’83, novelist, professor of creative writing at Stanford University

Sarah Pruitt ’95 is a staff writer for The Exeter Bulletin and a longtime contributor to History.com, the website of the History Channel.

songs of Myself

Rebecca Greenawalt ’95 Finds Her Voice in a Career Second Act

by miles howard photography by paul miller

The concert was happening inside a crypt, underneath a cathedral in the central Italian region of Lazio. The audience was assembled. And Rebecca Greenawalt ’95 was on vocal duty — part of an ensemble choir, gathered in the candlelit stone chamber of Duomo di Acquapendente. As the group performed a Sergei Rachmanino f piece beneath a towering altar, the resonance of the song and the centuries-old space were electrifying. “It was like the moment in The Wizard of Oz when everything goes from black-and-white to Technicolor,” Greenawalt says.

Just a few weeks earlier, she had been weathering the sale of the dental implant company to which she had given six years of sweat equity. Greenawalt had planned to continue in her role with the company under the new owners. But an invite from a high school friend changed everything.

“Out of the blue, my Exeter choir director, Stephen Kushner, reached out,” Greenawalt recalls, speaking from her home in Denver. “He was putting together a festival choir to sing in Italy.”

When Kushner asked Greenawalt if she would join the choir, echoes of an earlier life and a long-dormant passion beckoned. “I really hadn’t done anything with

music in such a long time,” Greenawalt says. Building a successful executive-level career in operations while raising a family had created distance from her childhood and early adulthood, when she went from playing the violin to discovering the vocal arts at the Academy. But when Greenawalt learned that Kushner had persuaded one of her best friends from Exeter to join the choir, she said yes.

She didn’t realize it yet, but in taking this sojourn to Italy, Greenawalt had embarked on a new, adventurous chapter of her life and career. She had begun her second act.

what is a second act?

We tend to think of our careers as single-track rides: You discover a calling, you find a job that allows you to pursue it, and you build from there with hard work and determination. Architects, doctors, authors and artists are among the many who dedicate themselves to one discipline and achieve success and fulfillment.

But stories of bold, surprising reinventions, or second acts, abound. Long before serving as U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland was a counselor working with adults with developmental disabilities. Alan Rickman ran a graphic design firm before taking up acting and landing his first film role as Hans Gruber in Die Hard. Although these pivots can appear to spring out of nowhere, the tracks have often been laid for years, intentionally or subconsciously. Joanne Lipman, a journalist and a lecturer at Yale, spent months speaking with people who have undertaken second acts for her 2023 book, Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work. What she heard surprised her. “I would ask each person to walk me through how they reinvented themselves,” Lipman says. “What they would say is, ‘It’s not a reinvention: It’s a natural, organic expression. A fuller expression of who I am.’”

One of her interview subjects, a former J.P. Morgan economist, swapped spreadsheets for cattle farming. “He had this house in the country; he started learning about farming on weekends, and over time, he got drawn into it,” Lipman says. “He eventually told me, ‘Now that I’m actually a farmer, I’m able to use all my skills as an economist, because I’m essentially running a small business.’”

So perhaps it’s fitting that in the years since 2020 — when the earliest, deadliest months of the COVID-19 pandemic underscored life’s fragility and impermanence — a lot of people have been reevaluating their careers and crafting their second acts. The Bureau of Labor

Statistics reported that in 2021, an average of nearly 4 million American workers resigned each month. It is the highest monthly average the bureau has observed since it began tracking the statistic in 2000. Anthony C. Klotz, then a professor of management at Texas A&M University, called it The Great Resignation.

But the wave of resignations was merely the opening scene of a more complex and less appreciated story. “I think people are reinventing themselves in a way that the time and energy they put into their days pays them back at a higher rate, psychologically speaking, than it did in their prior job or whatever they were doing before the pandemic,”

Klotz said in a 2022 interview with NPR.

The statistics paint a startling and inspiring picture. A survey conducted by PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist College suggested that nearly one-third of Americans had switched jobs in 2021 and 2022. From April 2020 to March 2021, the Pew Research Center found, 51% of workers who had changed jobs were earning higher wages than they had over the same months the previous year

But the Great Reshufing — a term used by U.S. Census Bureau economist Hubert Janicki — can’t be attributed solely to a desire for bigger paychecks. Because it’s not just midcareer workers who are pursuing second acts. This spring,

researchers with T. Rowe Price found that 20% of retirees are staying in the workforce. Of those surveyed, 48% cited financial pressure as their main reason for continuing to work, but another 45% were more interested in the emotional and social benefits of working. For seniors, staying in the workforce may be a path to a second act, or a third act, or more.

“There are many impetuses for second acts,” Lipman says. “For some people, it’s a clear ‘aha!’ moment. Others might have experienced a failure that they’re learning from. Or you could have this gut feeling; a feeling that’s often correct and worth listening to. But in most cases, wherever someone pivots, it’s toward someplace where there’s history; a place they’ve been to before.”

the road not (yet) taken

Idon’t have memories of life before music,” Greenawalt says with a laugh. Growing up in Exeter, Greenawalt started taking violin lessons at the age of 4. A few performances in theater productions during middle school made her realize that vocal arts brought out something special from within. She followed this curiosity into the Exeter Music Department, learning the art of classical singing with Adjunct Music Instructor Anna Soranno and joining the Exeter Concert Choir. A senior year excursion to the Boston University Tanglewood Institute in the wooded hills of Lenox, Massachusetts, gave Greenawalt a vivid glimpse of how a career in vocals could look and sound. “All of the educational opportunities I had at Exeter seemed to open up many possible paths through the world,” Greenawalt says. “It was such an exciting moment.”

When she arrived at Harvard University in 1995, she joined the a cappella group The Harvard Opportunes, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum. At the same time, she set her sights on earning a bachelor’s degree in economics and soon discovered an aptitude for financial analysis and problem solving. Greenawalt quickly found herself at a juncture that will be familiar to any undergraduate with an artistic

“It’s not a reinvention: It’s a natural, organic expression. A fuller expression of who I am.”

inclination. “I kept thinking: Do I seriously pursue classical music by going to a conservatory or someplace? Or should I follow the more traditional college pathway and pursue a wider variety of interests?” Greenawalt remembers.

After much deliberation, she chose the wider path, finished her degree and landed a job with McKinsey & Company. Working with an array of companies with complex problems that required strategic solutions sharpened Greenawalt’s focus to the operational side of business. That road led her to an M.B.A. program and, later, to ClearChoice Dental. The company boomed during Greenawalt’s tenure as the executive vice president of operations and chief strategy ofcer. “You’d have patients telling you about being able to kiss their spouse for the first time in 20 years or being able to walk their child down the aisle, smiling,” Greenawalt says. When ClearChoice was sold in 2018, it felt like a well-earned victory. For Greenawalt, it was an afrmation of the choice she made at Harvard.

So when Kushner was looking to put the band back together for a show in Italy, Greenawalt was caught of guard but also thrilled. “People who pursue a life in the arts often feel called to it in an extremely singular way, and that’s not me,” Greenawalt says. “I feel called to many things, and that can be tough sometimes. And it was a joy to see this ship that I thought had sailed coming back around in the bend into the harbor.”

The Rachmaninof concert in the crypt rekindled a curiosity that Greenawalt hadn’t been able to explore since college.

“It was a profound experience that made me rethink what I assumed would be my next steps,” Greenawalt says. After returning from Italy, she stepped down from her position at ClearChoice, repacked her bags and spent the summer exploring Asia with her family, before the arrival of COVID-19. Greenawalt kept a foot in the business world by joining the

board of directors for a medical spa company, and she also started taking singing lessons for the first time in 20 years.

In her book on reinvention, Lipman identifies four S’s of a career metamorphosis: the Search, the Struggle, the Stop and the Solution. Greenawalt’s Search took root in Italy, and it reached her consciousness when she started seeking a vocal arts instructor. She was introduced to Andrew Lunsford, then a student at the University of Denver, who had discovered a passion for song in his 20s, after running a granite countertop business. Until then, Greenawalt’s reacquaintance with music had been free of pressure to fashion something out of it. That changed when Greenawalt confided to Lunsford that she wasn’t sure what she wanted the next few years of her life to look like. “Andy listened and then he asked me, ‘Have you ever thought about grad school?’” Greenawalt recalls. “I told him, ‘I’ve already been to grad school,’ and he goes, ‘No, no. For this.’” She was incredulous.

“I’m in my 40s,” Greenawalt says. “I haven’t done this in 20 years. It’s an absurd thing — right?” changing course

What Lunsford had in mind for Greenawalt was a graduate performance certificate program. “You submit a video of yourself singing arias and other songs that meet the school requirements, and if you make the cut, you’re

more alumni second acts

RICHARD

MATHISEN ’62

first act: “For 25 years, I was a manager with Prudential. My father had been a pastor, but I had never thought of a pastoral career for myself until 1991. I was going through a divorce. And it felt like God had grabbed me by the scruf of my neck and said, ‘You’re going to seminary!’”

second act: “I studied for four years at United Lutheran of Philadelphia and became an interim pastor. And I loved it — jumping in and going at 90 mph with diferent congregations. I eventually started teaching bible courses for all, including atheists and agnostics, inspired by this vision I first had when I was 19 years old: that someone needed to explain Christianity scientifically.”

looking forward: “I’m now enrolled in a three-year doctoral program at United Lutheran, which my wife encouraged me to pursue. I’m 79 years old and feeling happier than ever before in life.”

SIRIVISHNU KHALSA ’73

(FORMERLY KEITH PRATT)

first act: “One of my formative experiences at Exeter was being introduced to meditation. This led to studying philosophy and religion in college and joining the American Sikh community. I lived in an ashram in New York City in 1979 and ran a contracting business. I liked the diversity of the city, I liked building things, and I did a lot of restoration work in Brooklyn and Manhattan.”

s econd act : “After my wife and I moved to Santa Fe in 2016, I built a greenhouse on land that was owned by our community, but there were no plans to use it for farming. So I started bringing in folks who knew about organic vegetable farming, to use the land, and I learned how to farm myself. We now have a working year-round farm and we support local food security projects.”

looking forward: “I love this business because it’s about growing food and feeding people. I was taught that business is for profit and goodwill, in balance, and while the profitability side of farming is challenging, there sure is a lot of goodwill in it.”

DAVID HUBBARD ’66

first act: “I worked as a neurologist, but ever since I was at Exeter, I had been interested in how the brain works and what consciousness is. I would read about it when I could, as a hobby. But one day, I was in our backyard pool and I had this moment when I saw the dendritic spine neck: these tiny parts of the brain that help us retain memories. I wondered if they were perceptible.”

second act: “I was so excited by this idea but I couldn’t prove it yet. First, I wrote a hypothesis paper, then in 2020, I wrote the patent for a piece of technology that would make it possible to collect and share our memories; by engaging with the molecule-making in dendritic pines that we need for creating and preserving our memories. Last year, the patent was made ofcial.”

looking forwa rd : “I feel like I’ve entered a new world, which is thrilling and intimidating. I liked my first act! Licensing and selling this dendritic spine technology patent to a medical device company is going to be a huge project, over a long period of time. I’ve got to enjoy the process.”

invited to audition,” Greenawalt says. She would be starting from scratch, building a repertoire of songs — something she hadn’t done since her late teens. Lunsford persisted, suggesting that he and Greenawalt start small by focusing on individual songs, without fully committing to the idea that it would all be a buildup for graduate training. “It took me a while to process the idea of being a middle-aged person reentering this vibrant, young university environment,” Greenawalt says. “I mean, when you’ve spent 20 years in one career, building skills and doing one thing, it can be hard to conceive of a diferent life.”

Looking back, Greenawalt identifies her apprehension as stage fright. “A lot of people think that performers don’t have stage fright. Wrong!” she says. “It’s not that we don’t have these elevated feelings; it’s that we learn to channel what someone might experience as negative anxiety into the energy for a good performance.” As Greenawalt and Lunsford developed their songs, the flashes of a diferent life became more frequent and alluring. So Greenawalt did what many would do when grappling with an idea that feels both opportune and farfetched. She conferred with friends and family, explaining how invigorating it felt to have music back in her life and how the thought of pursuing it professionally, as a graduate student, still didn’t seem realistic for her.

The responses felt like a chorus of their own. “Maybe it was the timing, with life having been upended by the pandemic, because to a person, what I heard was, ‘That’s amazing; why in the world wouldn’t you do that?’” Greenawalt says. But validation was just half of it. “People would also tell me, ‘And you know, I’ve been thinking about doing something too,’” Greenawalt remembers. “It was always a diferent passion or curiosity. It might be going to culinary school, studying art history, you name it. A lot of us were getting to the place where we weren’t as wrapped up in the day-to-day routine of raising young kids. We’ve had successes, we’ve been knocked around, and we now have the freedom to contemplate and ask, ‘What if I did this?’”

Greenawalt’s conversations with Lunsford and her own skepticism constituted what Lipman calls the Struggle — when someone begins to leave a previous identity behind while still figuring out the new one. But the awareness that she wasn’t alone in considering a midcareer pivot yielded one of the most important and elusive pieces of the second act

progression: the Stop. “It’s this moment that stops you in your tracks, allowing you to take a beat and get some perspective,” Lipman says. Empowered by the realization that what initially seemed ridiculous might not be absurd after all, Greenawalt found her Solution. She successfully auditioned for the University of Denver’s graduate performance

certificate program for voice and opera. Unlike a more academically inclined master’s track, a performance certificate program is about exactly that: performance. The road she had chosen would lead her onto the stage. She got her groove back, show by show, appearing in university choral concerts and productions of operas such as Handel’s Alcina. By 2023,

“When I walked out onto the stage at Carnegie Hall, in front of all those faces, it felt like cosplaying.”

Greenawalt was weeks away from finishing her program when another unexpected invitation rolled in. Her friend, mentor and advocate Andy Lunsford was going to New York for a performance at Carnegie Hall; a Choirs of America show, in which the winners of high school choral competitions perform on a lineup that also includes big names from the vocal arts world. Lunsford wanted Greenawalt to join him on stage for some songs. The venue was iconic. The audience would be enormous. If she said yes, Greenawalt would have to miss dress rehearsals for an upcoming opera at the university, while testing her mettle in a city long-considered the epicenter of the music industry.

Of course, she was in.

a musical life

Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium contains 2,804 seats, spread across five floors with the help of wraparound balconies from which concertgoers have watched headliners such as Tchaikovsky, Judy Garland and Bob Dylan. The epic scale and history of the venue had a humbling — and petrifying — efect on Greenawalt when she arrived in New York to sing with Lunsford. “When you’re up on that stage, you can see everything,” Greenawalt says. “On most stages, you have the lights in your face and you can only see the first few rows of the audience, and everything else fades to gray. But when I walked out onto the stage at Carnegie Hall, in front of all of these faces, it felt like cosplaying.”

Still, she was there, leagues beyond the intimate darkness of the crypt in Tuscany, where the possibility of a musical life flickered back into sight. And there was nothing left to do but start singing. “I’m just like, ‘Well … here I go,’” Greenawalt says, describing what came next as “crazy.” She and Lunsford began with a duet from The Merry Widow, an operetta by Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. Then it was Greenawalt’s turn in the spotlight, for three solo numbers including “I Dream A Dream” from Les Misérables. After the last song, she came back to earth by watching a

Five Questions To Ask Yourself Before Embarking

On a Second Act

What matters most to me?

A second act is a chance to tap into another dimension of yourself. Giving yourself lots of time to reflect and search is an essential first step. “You’re collecting information and experiences that are going to lead you to a transition,” Joanne Lipman says.

How do people see me?

Friends and family members can offer deeply insightful perspective. "My wife knew I had this grandiose idea of teaching the bible for everyone from atheists to Christian believers, but she also understood that to realize this idea, I had to focus," Richard Mathisen ’62 says. "She knew that I needed a more solid academic background, which convinced me to enter a doctorate program."

Can I try this on first?

A second act doesn’t require diving headlong into a new field. You can “sample” a new line of work as a volunteer or in a part-time role, to see what feels natural. “Before pursuing a graduate performance certificate, I focused on how it felt to be singing and learning new arias again,” Rebecca Greenawalt ’95 says. “It opened the door.”

What’s the (initial) cost?

Committing to a second act almost always means walking away from your primary line of work, temporarily or permanently. Be prepared to adjust your spending and lifestyle, to support your investment in a new career chapter.

What can I take with me?

Consider the skills and experiences you gained during your primary career that might help you thrive in your next venture. “As an operations executive, I learned how to speak to a room full of people and engage them,” Greenawalt says. “And there are parallels to singing onstage for an audience!”

subsequent performance by none other than her old Harvard college choir, and she decided to pay a backstage visit to congratulate them on their set.

It was a cheery scene, but the Harvard students really piped up when Greenawalt mentioned that she had sung in the choir before shifting her focus to economics. “They lost it,” Greenawalt says. Imposter syndrome began to flare, as she tried to explain that she was “a middle-aged mom with a business career who unexpectedly and fortuitously got to take a second swing at music.” But as the students kept peppering Greenawalt with questions, it became clear that the duality of her life — her business career and her second act as a vocal artist — was exactly what excited the undergrads. “They were at that age when they want to take over the world; when they’ve got their eyes on all these little stars on the horizon,” Greenawalt says. “As we talked in their dressing room, with me still wearing my sparkly gown from the performance, they’re like, ‘Oh … you can go and be a business executive and then do all of these other things!”

Back in Denver, Greenawalt’s decision to undertake a second act was further vindicated during her graduate program recital — the final test — which earned her not just a performance certificate but an award from the university. Since then, she’s racked up new performances with the Opera Colorado company and has also kept close to the roots of her second act by serving as an advisory board member for Coro Mundi: an international festival choir composed of several members of the ensemble that Stephen Kushner brought to Italy in 2018. (Greenawalt is a founding member of Coro Mundi and has performed with the choir for a number of concerts.)

And yet, perhaps the most surprising twist of Greenawalt’s second act is that in 2024, she decided to fully reopen the door to the business world once again.

Not because her new life as a vocal performance artist hadn’t germinated, but because once again, a tempting invitation had arrived unexpectedly.

During her graduate school years, Greenawalt kept a foot in her past life by serving as a board member for medical spa company Ideal Image. When the company was going through a transitional period and needed someone to step in as interim COO, Greenawalt, with her executive background in operations was a logical choice, and she agreed, later serving as interim CEO. “It wasn’t something I sought out,” Greenawalt says. “It was opportunistic, which I think is sort of the theme of my story; being open to opportunities when they arrive.”

It was an intensive reimmersion that forced her to take a six-month hiatus from singing and performing. But there were surprising dividends. “I never anticipated the degree to which all of this time that I spent immersed in vocal music would enhance my efectiveness and my abilities in my primary career,” Greenawalt explains. “Spending three years thinking diferently about life and challenges allowed me to come back with a broader, more empathetic ability to understand and support my team.”

The unanswered question for Greenawalt is whether these two worlds can merge for the long term. Within two weeks of finishing her interim role at Ideal Image, Greenawalt was back in rehearsals for an Opera Colorado. “I had actually developed positive vocal changes during my time away from performing,” Greenawalt says. “It’s a work-in-progress, trying to balance it all. But I can say now, very clearly, ‘Here are the things I love about each side of my professional identity; the things I want to pursue.”

Miles Howard is a writer and author based in Boston. His work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and National Geographic

“Spending three years thinking diferently about life and challenges allowed me to come back with a broader, more empathetic ability to understand and support my team.”

Connections

Young Alumni

Ayush Noori ’20, a senior at Harvard College, continues the research he started as an Exonian.

Delivering Hope

Dr. Cathy Han ’87 is on a mission to reduce maternal deaths during childbirth

Dr. Cathy Han ’87 arrived in Uganda in January 2024 with a full-size pregnant mannequin on her back and a plan to teach 40 local midwives how to respond to obstetrical emergencies. For the midwives, it would be an opportunity to learn through hands-on training and simulation drills rather than the standard didactic classroom teaching. For Han, who was fulfilling the practicum requirement of her master’s degree program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the visit was a lesson in inequality, and in resourcefulness.

Although she and her collaborator, a fellow student and midwife, had been assured in advance that the large regional hospital where they were assigned was well equipped, on arrival they found that was not entirely true. “We were really humbled because we were teaching them these protocols and we’d say, ‘You’ve got to use five diferent medications,’ and they might have one of them,” Han says. “We were trying to address a small part of the puzzle. It was eye-opening.”

Like many low-resource countries, Uganda has a medical system in need

of improvements to infrastructure, equipment, personnel, medications and funding. Its maternal mortality rate is 284 per 100,000, compared to 21 per 100,000 in the United States; during Han’s one-week stay, the hospital experienced three maternal deaths that she speculates were attributable in part to a dearth of both medications and blood for transfusions. “One of the midwives jury-rigged a device for a postpartum hemorrhage — she created her own balloon tamponade with a catheter, a glove and saline,” Han says with admiration.

Not just underresourced nations face such issues. “There are preventable maternal deaths happening in the United States today,” Han says. “Even though this is probably the most resourced country in the world, there are things we need to address.”

“The goal is to elevate the patient so they truly do get heard and acknowledged.”

Uganda.

She is working to do just that in her new role as implementation specialist for TeamBirth, an initiative developed by nonprofit Ariadne Labs to improve communication during labor and delivery. In the interest of universal accessibility, it uses low-tech, inexpensive tools: a team huddle that includes doctor or midwife, nurse and patient; and a whiteboard in the patient’s room on which to write their preferences, team members and anything noteworthy related to the delivery process.

“The goal is to elevate the patient so they truly do get heard and acknowledged,” Han says. “It’s a behavioral shift because it changes the dynamic. We’ve found it really helps women for whom English is the second language and women from minority groups who in the past have not felt like they were being listened to, especially in a hospital setting.”

To date, TeamBirth has been adopted by 180 hospitals in the United States, along with several in European countries; one in Nepal is next on the list. Han is tasked with expansion in California, and is working directly with medical and nursing schools there.

It’s a world Han knows well. She left a successful obstetrics practice in Southern California — after delivering 3,000 babies over 15 years — to stay home with her three young children, all Exonians (Calvin Chai-Onn ’19, Henry Chai-Onn ’22 and Emily Chai-Onn ’25). With the arrival of COVID, Han volunteered at a clinic, administering some 1,000 vaccines and simultaneously awakening an interest in public health that she pinpoints in part to the non sibi lessons she learned at Exeter: She likewise credits Exeter with her confidence in going back to school at age 53. “I learned how to write, how to have a discussion around a table and listen, and — I know it’s a cliché — how to be a lifelong learner.”

Although she would like to see TeamBirth in use in Uganda, Han says the country has more urgent needs. She’s making plans to return, but this time will pack her suitcases more thoughtfully, filling them with basic medical supplies such as gloves and catheters donated by her local hospital. —Sarah Zobel

Dr. Cathy Han ’87 teaching a class for midwives in

Dr. Cathy Han ’87

PAINTING

Canvasing Light

The life of plein air painter John Schmidtberger ’79

As a plein air painter — one who paints outdoors with particular focus on conveying the quality of light and atmosphere — John Schmidtberger ’79 is particularly subject to nature’s vagaries. A gust can topple a canvas, a squall can darken the sky. Once, a team of draft horses, escapees from a county fair, nearly ran him down in a Maine blueberry barren. (After a farmer collected the runaways, Schmidtberger resumed painting, trepidatiously.)

And, of course, the environment itself must move him.

strong, pure white so it can function as a color.”

His work often features water and earth, with some houses and the occasional human figure. Some landscapes, awash in lavender, seem painted just at the moment they’re waking up; others incandesce under a high sun. Many depict Down East Maine, where he and his wife, also an artist, have visited for decades.

John Schmidtberger ’79

“I start out just looking around a lot,” he says. “I try to keep a journal of places and things.” He maintains a supply of canvases and panels, primed to a brilliant white via many coats of Gesso. He likes how white underpins the translucent colors he layers on top, and if he leaves an area unpainted, he wants it to be a “very

“Artists have been going to Maine forever for the light,” he says. “It’s a very hard, clear but warm light, with very little atmospheric perspective, meaning that as things disappear into the distance, they don’t have that blue-ing haze.”

He paints outdoors for one to three hours, and tries to finish in one session “because of conditions, but also because of my nature,” he says. “I need to be in this incredibly intensively focused state … to gather and fortify myself and really

get ready, almost like training for a marathon. I have to bring really good energy to it.”

It's joyful, yet lonely, work. He misses the hubbub of Exeter — a “whole new world” — where he took sculpture and filmmaking, and the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied painting under Neil Welliver, chairman of the university’s Graduate School of Fine Art.

“You’ve had all this camaraderie and constant critiques and input from people, and you get out and it just vanishes,” he says. For decades after graduating, he and his wife ran a decorative-painting business while raising two children. It was hard enough painting on his own, let alone building an artists’ community. “It was a real struggle, and a very alone struggle,” he says.

Serendipity struck in 2011, when a friend mentioned a small downtown storefront only 90 minutes from New York. Their exchange was brief:

Friend: “You should rent it.”

Schmidtberger: “What for?”

Friend: “It’s a good deal. Figure it out later.”

And so he did, opening SFA Gallery in picturesque Frenchtown, New Jersey. Since then, a community has coalesced, including long-lost graduate school friends, other artists he has followed for years and finally contacted, and new artists seeking a venue. Having established a loyal clientele, he has found more time to paint on his own. Occasionally, he’ll head a few blocks away to paint street scenes, leaving a hand-drawn map on the gallery door for visitors to find him.

“I never intended to be a gallerist, but I’m very happy I am,” he says.

Like all artists, Schmidtberger sometimes hits a wall. “They tell people in art school (and it’s really terrible advice), ‘Never stop working,’” he says. But he has found he cannot force the creative intensity painting entails. If inspiration wanes, he’ll focus his artistic energy elsewhere — cartooning, preparing canvases, figure-drawing — until sooner or later, his emotional weather shifts, and he’s ready to head outdoors and court serendipity again. —Juliet Eastland ’86

Belfast Sailboat After a Storm, oil on canvas, by John Schmidtberger ’79

Sincerely Yours

William Wreden ’58 and his life of letters

When was the last time you wrote a proper letter to someone?

You’ll be forgiven if it has been too long to recall. To lifelong book collector William “Bo” Wreden ’58, however, handwritten correspondence remains endlessly fascinating, even in our digital times.

Wreden spent more than 20 years assembling a trove of books, articles, comic strips and more addressing the art of letter writing. The inspiration? A book he bought from a catalogue: The Polite Letter-writer, published in London in 1804. This past spring, he organized the collection into a 10-week exhibition titled “Correspondence & Letter Writing,” on view at The Book Club of California.

Among the exhibition’s treasures was an item Wreden acquired during a 1952 visit to Exeter as a prospective student. While Wreden was on a tour, the chair of the English Department, D’Arcy Curwen, gave him stapled mimeographed pages titled “Putting Your Best Foot Forward on Note Paper.” In 1954, soon after his arrival at Exeter — some 3,200 miles from his home in Menlo Park, California — Wreden felt the importance of letter writing.

“When I was at Exeter, we were not allowed to have or use telephones,” Wreden says. “All communication with family and friends was by letter writing, which set me on the path of becoming a correspondent.” Wreden still has letters he wrote and received while he was a student at the Academy.

“At Exeter ... all communication with family and friends was by letter writing, which set me on the path of becoming a correspondent.”

Wreden has been a member of The Book Club, a San Francisco institution celebrating the book arts and western history, for about 32 years. The first exhibition he organized there, in 2004, was called “A Joint Show” and featured psychedelic posters. In 2015, a second exhibition showcased 70 years of playful and festive fine press holiday cards, many of which were commissioned by his family from some of California’s most important printers. Like those, “Correspondence & Letter Writing” offered unique historical perspectives and plenty of wit. A friend who attended wrote to Wreden, “The whole experience was like going through a magic keyhole.”

To speak with Wreden on the topic of collecting is not unlike the experience of exploring an old bookshop. He recalls details — names, dates, titles, publishers — with ease, as he shares memories from his past. A holiday card printed by the Grace Hopper Press, featuring

an illustration labeled “California, the Baloon [sic] Railway,” by a man named John Browne from the 1849 issue of Mechanics Magazine . A 1958 Sports Illustrated article titled “Baseball’s for the Birds,” covered a thrilling rowing race in which Wreden and his crewmates competed during his senior year at Exeter. A psychedelic poster printed for a 1967 meeting of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers with the motto “Amor Librorum Nos Unit.” In this way, he reveals fascinating pockets of publishing history that are permanently intertwined with his own.

Wreden was born into the literary world. His father, William P. Wreden Sr., was an antiquarian book dealer with a shop in Palo Alto, California. As a boy, Bo was often in the store; as an adult he managed a second outpost the family opened in San Francisco in 1963. At Princeton, where he majored in early and modern European history, Wreden

The Polite Letter-writer, published in 1804, is the oldest book in William Wreden's collection.

William Wreden ’58

found his way into a job in the university’s rare book room. After graduation, he went abroad, studying 18th-century literature at the University of Edinburgh. He then traveled to France to work as an apprentice at Aux Amateurs de Livres, an antiquarian bookshop owned by Marcel Blancheteau.

Today, Wreden’s library in Berkeley, California, spans centuries and includes books, correspondence, pamphlets, posters, greeting cards, bookmarks and more sourced primarily from bookshops and catalogues. He has collections by and about California authors Joan Didion and Richard Brautigan, who wrote an introduction to a limited edition the Wredens published. His largest collection, consisting of a few hundred books and ephemeral items, is devoted to Buddhism, sensory awareness, yoga and Zen, with some emphasis on publications relating to the San Francisco Zen Center.

“What can I say about collecting?” he muses. “There’s a certain thrill to finding things that you know fit into your collection, and it’s a way of connecting with people.”

Like so many of us, Wreden relies heavily on email these days. But he still maintains letter-writing relationships with many people, preparing first drafts in a notebook before he sends a final version into the world. Properly, politely, he remains a man of letters.

—Danielle Cantor

The Love of Discovery

Ayush Noori ’20 moves neurological science forward with empathy and AI

Ayush Noori ’20, a senior at Harvard College, is pursuing both a bachelor’s degree in computer science and neuroscience and a master’s degree in computer science, all in four years. The catalyst: for many years, Noori cared for his grandmother, who had progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare neurological disorder. Noori now aspires to develop AI tools that can customize diagnostic and treatment plans for people with PSP and other neurological disorders.

His research on this topic began when he was an Exonian. “When I was in Mr. Chisholm’s BIO510: Advanced Biology class, we would get breakfast in the dining hall many mornings,” he says. “I’d bring a stack of highlighted and annotated papers, well beyond what we were discussing in class, and he was generous enough to indulge all my crazy questions.

“That’s really how you foster someone’s intellectual curiosity,” he continues. “It’s by giving them permission to ask audacious questions that might defy the textbook, but that allow you to go deeper into the truth of the matter.”

While at Exeter, Noori presented a TEDx talk called “The Neuroscience of Non Sibi.” In it he discussed kindness and empathy, which he asserted to be the foundation on which human brains are formed. He believes the topic is worth continued exploration. “When we’re interacting with machines, sometimes it’s easier than interacting face-to-face with people,” Noori says. But “what do we lose when we start to think about AI-human collaboration? What do we lose in the value of sitting in a classroom, around the Harkness table, without electronics, reading from paperback texts and thinking about the human experience?”

Recently, Noori has conducted his hybrid explorations at the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School; the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, also at Harvard; and the Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease at Massachusetts General Hospital. At each institution, his collaboration with experts in a variety of disciplines has been built upon AI’s rapid acceleration. “The scale, complexity and modeling ability of large-scale AI models has really propelled our research forward,” he says. “I love the day to day of what I do, the simple, mundane experience of discovery, working with some of the smartest people I know and the promise that the work that we’re doing can potentially be impactful to people, now and into the future.”

All his work is grounded in the work he was doing at Exeter, he says, adding: “Exeter is one of the greatest gifts of my life.” — Marisa Procopio

“I love the simple, mundane experience of discovery, working with some of the smartest people I know and the promise that the work we’re doing can potentially be impactful to people, now and into the future.”

Ayush Noori ’20

The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness, One Letter of Gratitude at a Time

Crane’s Blue Book of Stationary: The Styles and Etiquette of Letters, Notes, and Invitations

Other Titles From Wreden’s Collection on the Art of Letter Writing

A Look Back

Rich Calvert ’50 recently sent his class correspondent a copy of Look magazine from January 6, 1948, highlighting an article titled “Exeter Drops the Old School Tie: The 166-year-old boys school has a tradition of democracy that is accepted now as a matter of course.” We felt it was worth sharing with our wider audience.

In words and pictures of classrooms, debate meetings, sports practices and pillow fights, the article provides an intimate snapshot of the school at

a time when the world at large was concerned with the Cold War, the Nuremberg trials and Gary Cooper. Look also printed a poll taken among 659 students, including Calvert. Here are a couple of the questions and the responses: Do you think religious training is an essential part of your education?” Yes: 502. No: 184. Which is most important in your future — money, fame or the respect of your community? Money: 87. Fame: 44. Community respect: 534. “Students’ opinions are conservative,” it declares. ●

Scan this QR code to read the article.

20 MAIN STREET

Recipient: If this magazine is addressed to an Exonian who no longer maintains a permanent address at this home, please email us (records@exeter.edu) to update our records. Thank you.