The Exeter Bulletin, fall 2014

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The Exeter Bulletin FA L L 2 0 1 4

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Making it Happen 2013 GRADS AREN’T JUST CRACKING T E XT B O O KS — T H E Y’R E L AU N C H I N G THEIR CAREERS

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• Stanford profs teach creativity • Harkness school opens in Chicago • PEA pilots online learning course

LAMONT GALLERY FREDERICK R. MAYER ’45 ART CENTER

2014 & 2015 EXHIBITIONS SELF MADE September 8 - October 18, 2014

TARA MISENHEIMER

CYBÉLE MENDES

Cybèle Mendes, Caleb Cole, Lauren Kalman, and Tara Misenheimer (PEA Art Department Faculty and Clowes Chair in Art)

STRANGE DAYS

November 5 – December 13, 2014 BILL FRANSON

ANGELA CUNNINGHAM

Reception: Friday, November 14, 5-7 pm Gallery Talk: Saturday, November 15, 10 am Angela Cunningham, Haig Demarjian, Bill Franson, and Pauline Lim

GIFT! HOLIDAY SHOW & SALE December 10

January 19 – February 28, 2015

KATIE MCCARTHY

C O L L ECT I O N O F T H E L A M O N T GA L L E RY

PUBLIC STORAGE: COLLECTIONS & COLLECTORS

Reception: January 23, 5-7 pm Why and what do we collect? Featuring local and regional collections of objects, art and oddities. Including the work of Jung Mi Lee + Jon Sakata and PEA’s Democracy of Sound.

THE ANNUAL STUDENT SHOW

LUSH LIFE

March 23 – May 2, 2015

May 14 – June 7, 2015

Reception: Gallery Talk: Saturday, March 28, 10 am Natalie Andrew, Sean Beavers, Stephanie DeArmond, Gloria Calderón-Sáenz, Jung

NATALIE ANDREW

Friday, March 27, 5-7 pm

Reception: Friday, May 15, 5-7 pm Vibrant works in painting, photography, ceramics and design by PEA students.

Mi Lee + Jon Sakata + John Ellis, Laura Morrison and PEA’s Democracy of Sound.

LAMONT GALLERY PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY 11 TAN LANE EXETER NH 03833

603-777-3461 www.exeter.edu/lamontgallery gallery@exeter.edu Gallery Hours (school year): Monday 1-5pm, Tuesday – Saturday 9am – 5pm (closed school holidays) Free and open to the public. Call for accessibility information.

The Exeter Bulletin Principal Thomas E. Hassan ’56, ’66, ’70, ’06 (Hon.); P’11 Director of C ­ ommunications Robin Giampa

IN THIS ISSUE

Volume CXX, Number 1

Editor Karen Ingraham Staff Writers Mike Catano Nicole Pellaton Class Notes Editor Janice M. Reiter Contributing Editors Edouard L. Desrochers­­ Karen Stewart Creative Director/Design David Nelson, Nelson Design Editorial Assistant Susan Goraczkowski 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 G. Thompson Hutton ’73 Vice President Eunice Johnson Panetta ’84 Mitchell J. Bradbury ’78, Wole C. Coaxum ’88, Flobelle Burden Davis ’87, Marc C. de La Bruyère ’77, Walter C. Donovan ’81, John A. Downer ’75, Mark A. Edwards ’78, Jonathan W. Galassi ’67, David E. Goel ’89, Thomas E. Hassan, Jennifer P. Holleran ’86, Deidre O’Byrne ’84, William K. Rawson ’71, Kerry Landreth Reed ’91, Dr. Nina D. Russell ’82, J. Douglas Smith ’83, Morgan C. Sze ’83, and Remy White Trafelet ’88 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 Telephone 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 printed on recycled paper and sent free of charge to alumni, parents, grandparents, friends, and educational institutions by Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH. Communications may be addressed to the editor; email bulletin@exeter.edu.

Copyright 2014 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

Features

18 Making it Happen

2013 grads aren’t just cracking textbooks—they’re launching their careers

By Sarah Zobel

24 An Invitation to Reimagine the World

Summer School debuts creativity partnership with Stanford

By Nicole Pellaton

30 A Noble Cause

Collaboration between Exeter and a Harkness-based charter school in Chicago

By Sarah Zobel

Departments ­4

Around the Table: Opening of School Speech, Reflections on Brazil, PEA at Facebook, New Trustee Corner, and more.

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Table Talk: Harkness and Online Learning

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Inside the Writing Life: A Converation with Author Roxane Gay ’92 by Daneet Steffens ’82

34

Connections: News and Notes from the Alumni Community

36 Profiles: George Barnard ’39, Darius Arya ’89 and Aomawa Shields ’93 46

2013-14 Report of Giving

94

Memorial Minute: Charles Everett Deardorff

96

Finis Origine Pendet: Transformations by Michelle Ysrael ’15

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STUDY BREAK The Academy Library’s third floor study area provides perfect, front-row seating to enjoy the season’s vibrant display of colors.

—Photograph by Cheryl Senter

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AROUND THE TABLE

What’s new and notable at the Academy

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The Evolution of an Idea HONORING AND UPHOLDING OUR FOUNDING PRINCIPLES

By Principal Thomas E. Hassan ’56, ’66, ’70, ’06 (Hon.); P’11 Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from Principal Hassan’s Opening of School address given on September 5, 2014.

To read his full remarks, go to www.exeter.edu/bulletinextras.

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ur deed makes clear that it is the responsi-

bility of a school like Exeter to go beyond the core subjects of the day and teach students the “great end and real business of living.”

John Phillips also indicated that the Academy should ideally extend this mission beyond the campus proper. He wrote of “earnestly wishing that such institutions may grow and flourish; that the advantages of them may be extensive and lasting; that their usefulness may be so manifest as to lead the way to other establishments on the same principles.”

Of course, John Phillips could not possibly envision the opportunities the next 200 years would provide to honor his wishes. Phillips’ words were written before we had one of the most diverse Summer School programs in the world; or teacher professional development conferences that annually bring educators from 20 countries to Exeter’s campus; or an unparalleled range of term-long global programs that have evolved significantly even in the last 30 years. The deed as we well know predates the Harkness gift, which brought a groundbreaking dimension to the school’s original program and is increasingly

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serving as a model that other schools are choosing to adopt or emulate.

The Noble Academy—a new charter school in Chicago founded on the Harkness method—may be akin to what Phillips had in mind when he referenced in the deed the formation of “other establishments on the same principles.” One hundred and ninety-two ninth-graders are beginning their first year there and will be discussing ideas and topics around tables much the way we do. [page 30] Phillips’ aim to look beyond our own campus was, no doubt, twofold. Though he never had children, his impetus for establishing the Academy grew from, as he wrote in the deed, “a small acquaintance with the qualities of young minds, how susceptible and tenacious they are of impressions, evidences that the time of youth is the important period, on the improvement or neglect of which depend the most weighty consequences, to individuals themselves and the community.” Therefore, to extend the Academy’s principles to other institutions would, in Phillips’ estimation, ensure that more “young minds” were being impacted.

But Phillips must have also realized how intrinsically dependent the Academy’s growth is on its ability to lead.

One naturally informs and feeds the other. Our pioneering exposes us to alternative ways of thinking and to

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cultural or geographic norms different from our own— impacting our philosophies and how we approach subject matter back on campus.

This summer, 12 Exeter faculty members traveled to Brazil [page 6] to examine the complex challenges the country is facing as it develops into a global economic power. These instructors spent two weeks experiencing everything from a renowned international literary festival to piranha fishing in the world’s largest tropical wetland.

After witnessing the challenges of conserving vast ecosystems and participating in intimate discussions with local change-makers and innovative nongovernmental organizations, our instructors have returned with insights that will bring added currency to our Harkness conversations.

Conversations at Exeter are expanding in other new and exciting ways—“flourishing,” if we use the words of John Phillips. Collaborations by students and faculty continue to push at the folds of the traditional classroom experience— expanding how we view Harkness and keeping Exeter at the fore of emerging trends and technology.

Course options are also evolving. History 499, a new senior research seminar, provides students with an opportunity for professional-grade research on a historical topic of interest that culminates in a publishable-length paper. For the winter term, we’ve added an interdisciplinary course on epistemology, which is teamtaught by Ms. Waterman from the Science Department, Ms. Brownback from the Religion Department and Ms. Ream from the Theater and Dance Department. The class will explore how the perception of knowledge has changed over the centuries, the different forms of knowing (sensory, scientific, artistic, conceptual), the role of the individual and the group in knowing, and what this all might mean to us in the 21st century. With knowledge and goodness as the defining elements of Exeter’s mission, I cannot wait to hear the ideas that emerge from what I’m sure will be fascinating discussions.

I hope you were able to see The New York Times article, published last April, about Exeter’s ongoing efforts to provide space—both literal and figurative—for spirituality, regardless of one’s faith. Between the walls of Phillips Church is perhaps the most telling evidence of how Exeter has evolved over its long history. John Phillips was, by every account, a devout Puritan—the son of a preacher who, like his father, devoted a 10th of his salary “to keeping school and to pious and charitable services,”

according to one historian. In another historical sketch, William G. Saltonstall, Exeter’s ninth principal, wrote, “Almighty God was almost John Phillips’ personal acquaintance.” And Phillips, in the deed, minced no words in stating the school’s purpose was to promote “piety and virtue.”

For Exeter to truly grow and flourish in the manner Phillips envisioned, and to embrace youth from every quarter as he required, it has been right and necessary that the Academy provide proper space and support for students to practice their faiths, and to share these religions and beliefs with others.

As Mark Oppenheimer, the New York Times columnist, wrote, “No matter the lingering, and inaccurate, stereotype of New England boarding schools as warrens of Anglo-Saxon, Protestant preppies: A Friday at the Phillips Church is a multicultural adventure. You could— and I did—spend the whole day eating, praying, studying and discussing life’s big questions, as seen from a variety of world traditions.”

A good friend of mine and yours, Mr. Weatherspoon, once said to me, “People bring their whole selves to Exeter.

And their whole selves are complex.” It is an ongoing, collective willingness to learn from other people and cultures that has made Exeter what it is today. And I challenge each of you to help keep that tradition alive. For Exeter to continue fulfilling John Phillips’ vision, and to bring forward the excellence that has been the hallmark of the school, we must continue to grow and expand how we educate the “whole self,” and that requires each of us to continue pushing beyond what is standard, what is the norm, just as our founder did more than 200 years ago. E

IT IS AN ONGOING, COLLECTIVE WILLINGNESS TO LEARN FROM OTHER PEOPLE AND CULTURES THAT HAS MADE EXETER WHAT IT IS TODAY.

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Reflections on Brazil A C A L L F O R C H A N G E , O N E C O N V E R S AT I O N AT A T I M E

By Viviana Santos, modern languages instructor Editor’s Note: In August, 12 Exeter faculty members traveled to Brazil for a two-week immersion into a country on the brink of becoming a global economic power. One faculty member’s impressions are shared here.

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ising high above the Favela Alemao we ride the

Teleferico, sponsored by Kibon, Good Humor’s Brazilian brand. From a distance the favela looks almost benign: brick colored houses, their shapes a pleasing mosaic. Beyond, the Atlantic Ocean spanning wide; behind us, the hills of Rio. We arrive after a 20-minute ride, the only takers in this obscenely expensive distraction as empty gondolas

descend, mocking the inhabitants of the favela below.

As we start walking, our guide, a carioca who rose out of Alemao to become a Ph.D. candidate at one of Rio’s prestigious universities, talks about the living conditions, the cartel turf wars, the raw sewage and stray dogs that we walk around. A young girl runs up to me. She says, “un reais,” and it takes me a while to realize she is asking for money. Soon there are three or four children, grubby, barefoot, eating cocoa powder straight, selling bottles of water, playing in our midst trying to get our attention.

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Khadijah gives up on her reais, runs to her house and comes back with pad of paper and a little box holding treasured crayons, mismatched, broken. She sits next to me and asks for a picture. Big brown eyes look at me, take my hand and urge me to draw; first a dog, then a motorcycle, finally the Teleferico that rises up above her house: a shiny symbol, of what exactly? Misplaced priorities?

A hint at a different future? So I draw the gondola, the Kibon logo winking in the distance. She smiles and asks for Snow White. But our group is moving on, and I wonder if this little girl will get a chance at the golden ticket.

It’s our last night in Rio and we’re headed out to Lapa, Santa Teresa’s poor cousin at the bottom of the hill. Chapulin is guiding us, and we round the windy streets of this once wealthy neighborhood, now a Bohemian outpost, a bit frayed around the edges. He speaks softy, rhythmically, and I try hard to follow his Portuguese, wondering if this young slam poet has indeed moved from speech to poetry.

He tells me about the graffiti adorning the walls. It is a conversation, he says, between the disenfranchised and those who hold the power: the police, the landowners, the politicians who trade their idealism for a piece of the pie.

Dialogue is at the base of change and these symbols become representative of a growing unrest, a measure of discontent amongst those on the fringe. We reach the bottom of the hill, and we head to a traditional Samba club.

The music is sensual, the dancers move rhythmically, young, old, swarthy. And the drums beat, and the conversation continues, and I pray someone is listening. Among the sounds of the children who dream of becoming famous sits a little girl using art as language. Among the sounds of the street, young poets denounce the violence, the repression of dissent; performers protest, old hippies run NGOs and Sunday school teachers start book clubs and travel across this contradictory and breathtaking land so their charges can hear famous authors and aspire to something more than the favela.

As we leave Rio we drive down the hill. To the right, another favela is encircled by tall modern buildings, a visual reminder of a country that is changing, evolving, transforming. And I urge the conversation to continue, be it though a pad and crayons or symbols on a wall or the beat of the African drum. I listen for Brazil’s voice, willing it to be heard above the din of the FIFA fans, of Olympic committees and the promises of politicians. Above all this, I know the sound is sweet. E

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Harkness and Online Learning TA B L E TA L K W I T H L A U R A M A R S H A L L A N D V I R I C H T E R

By Karen Ingraham

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In its report, the Curriculum Committee noted that “Student-centered discussion is Exeter’s strength, and although discussion-based models are available in online courses, the committee feels that…fully online models are inferior to the face-to-face discussions that Exeter does well.” The committee said that opportunities exist to leverage online learning models or

FRED CARLSON

his spring, two seniors will enroll in the first blended (or hybrid), partially online course offered at the Academy, joining peers from the other independent schools that comprise the Eight Schools Association.

The interdisciplinary pilot course, Water and Humanity, has been in development for more than a year—the result of an ESA collaboration, the intent of which, Director of Studies Laura Marshall says, “was to see if there was a way to design courses that would provide added benefit to each of our schools and that would allow us to [offer] something that each individually would not be able to do.”

Students will spend about half of their time interacting with peers and instructors via online videoconferencing and the other half engaged directly with a teacher in a classroom setting. Field research and individual project development will further expand students’ discussions regarding the impact—biological, aesthetic, political—that water has on our lives. PEA History Instructor Molly MacKean Davis will co-teach the course and will work with the two Exeter students enrolled.

The pilot is part of the Academy’s ongoing exploration of how—and if—blended learning and other technologies can integrate within the Harkness model without infringing on the collaborative, interpersonal student experience. Marshall chairs the Curriculum Committee, a body of PEA faculty members that spent the 2013-14 fall and winter terms conducting research, Marshall says, “to look at our role in the world of online education and how it may or may not support what we do here or what we do in terms of our outreach.”

The committee’s report last spring included an overview of current online models, including MOOCs (massive open online courses), virtual schools such as Stanford University’s Online High School, and hybrid models that blend an online component with in-person engagement. Exeter is part of a growing cohort of independent schools doing such exploration. According to a 2014 survey by the ONESIS Group, 41.4 percent of independent schools are already implementing hybrid/ blended learning courses, and 50.8 percent are exploring this model of instruction.

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tools so that students and teachers can engage more deeply with the subject matter and their peers—outside of the classroom, or outside of Exeter.

“What’s going to be interesting,” notes Vi Richter, academic technology coordinator, “is to see what the students’ perception of online learning is. Through the course of this project, and when we [began] exploring online learning on campus, we were aware of a number of students who have taken online courses…but we also have a growing number of faculty now who have or are teaching online elsewhere, and they’re bringing in a different perspective about the possibilities.”

This has, in part, facilitated the Academy’s new tablet program this year, which requires each student to bring a tablet to school, as more faculty members begin to utilize subject-specific apps and create custom course e-books rather than order standard textbooks. “There are some teachers who really embrace experimentation,” Marshall says, “and there are other teachers who prefer the traditional model of Harkness. We want to support everyone as best we can.” E

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ACADEMY LIFE DAY AT A GLANCE The beginning of fall term is marked by several events: move-in day, opening of school assembly…and that first day off from classes. Academy Life Day is more than a break from busy schedules in late September; it’s a chance for boarders, day students and faculty alike to connect, have fun and begin building the relationships that are the heart of our community.

A few photo highlights from the day follow. For more images, go to www.exeter.edu/bulletinextras.

Science Instructor Rich Aaronian’s group of advisees harvest squash and weed strawberry beds at a nearby farm.

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Academic Support Counselor Pam Parris and her advisees navigate a local corn maze

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What Academy Life Day is all about: Soule Hall boys bonding with their dorm mates.

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Hoyt Hall girls carry their dorm mates in a race across the Academy lawn

Abbot Hall boys get energized for the fun day ahead, marked by clear skies and warm weather

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Residents of Main Street dorm link up for a game on the Academy fields.

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Facebook Hosts PEA Technology Panel I N D U ST RY E X P E RT S D I S C U S S T H E B U S I N E S S I M PAC T O F S O C I A L M E D I A A N D T E C H N O LO GY

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ROBIN GIAMPA

ark Zuckerberg ’02 attributes some of his personal development and professional vision to early lessons at the Academy. “The spirit of non sibi was really imprinted on me during my time at Exeter. It’s something I tried to bring with me to Facebook so we’d have a real social focus and sense of mission,” he said as he addressed more than 200 Exeter alumni, parents and students at his Facebook Menlo Park, California, headquarters in July.

Zuckerberg delivered his remarks as an introduction to a panel discussion on the business of technology and social media. Panelists included Michael Lynton ’78, chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment; Tom Cochran ’96, deputy coordinator of international information programs, U.S. State Department; and Sarah Salisbury ’06, digital marketing manager at charity: water. Elliot Schrage P’17, Facebook’s vice president of communications, marketing and public policy, moderated the discussion.

Citing how his Exeter experience influenced him, Lynton told the audience, “The thing that I recall most about my time at Exeter is the need to be constantly well-prepared and articulate—to be able to tell a story.” Lynton’s skill as a storyteller has propelled him into a nearly 30-year career in the entertainment indusMichael Lynton ’78, try, in which social media now plays a big role. “The minute something hits the movie Tom Cochran ’96, Sarah theater, social media lights up and everyone knows whether you have a dog or someSalisbury ’06, Mark thing that’s really good,” Lynton said. “Social media puts enormous pressure on us to Zuckerberg ’02 and make sure the kinds of movies we’re making are better.”

Principal Tom Hassan.

The trick for successful social media campaigns, noted Salisbury, is to tell a story: “For social to work it needs to be something people want to share. Over the last seven years, charity: water is one of the few charities that has not only survived the economic slump, but thrived during it, and that’s partly due to what our story is and how we tell it—we show impact.”

Cochran referenced “the paradox of plenty” in his comments regarding technology and whether or not it inhibits concentration or facilitates deeper learning. “Information has always been the power and now the tension of having too much information is the power,” he explained to the audience. “There needs to be a balance of conversation and when appropriate, technology can be a tool.”

Schrage closed the panel by discussing how technology is changing the way we access and use information. “There was a time when if you wanted to know who the 22nd president of the United States was, you had to go somewhere and look it up,” he said. “Now, you reach for a device in your pocket. The idea that knowledge can be universally available changes the way we think about engaging with information.”

Facebook’s headquarters provided an ideal setting for the Bay Area Exeter community to gather and connect in person about our ongoing virtual engagement. E

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The Academy Welcomes New Trustees

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itch Bradbury ’78, General Alumni Association president,

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Mitch Bradbury ’78 addresses the class of 2015 and Exeter Leadership Weekend attendees in September.

Deidre O’Byrne ’84 presents George Kalikman ’71 with one of three President’s Awards given out during Exeter Leadership Weekend.

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and Deidre O’Byrne ’84, GAA vice president, expand their long-standing service to the Academy as newly appointed trustees.

“For me, Exeter is beloved, it has always been there for me and I will always be there for Exeter,” Bradbury says. “Exeter is my church, my synagogue, it is where my feet are firmly planted and where my spirit soars.”

This is evidenced by his 20-plus years of serving as a class correspondent, as well as by his tenures as class president, reunion chair, Major Gifts Committee member and GAA director, and by his current role as GAA president.

To mark his 20th reunion, he helped to establish the Renaissance Fund, which provides financial aid to students who otherwise would have had to withdraw from the Academy.

Bradbury came to Exeter as a prep in 1974 and lived in Webster South. He was a member of the JV football, lacrosse and wrestling teams and worked in the Elm Street Dining Hall dish room. After Exeter, Bradbury attended the University of California Berkeley, where he played lacrosse and graduated in 1982 with a B.A. in psychology. He continued his graduate studies at the University of Miami, where he earned his doctorate in clinical psychology, which has led to faculty appointments at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, and New York Medical College. He is currently in full-time private practice in New York City.

Bradbury lives in New Rochelle, New York, with his wife, Barbara, and his children, Jonathan, 13, and Isabel, 10. Mitch’s eldest, Sarah, graduated from the Academy in 2009, and his dad, John Bradbury ’59, was a recipient of Exeter’s President’s Award in 2009.

O’Byrne, like Bradbury, is incredibly honored to serve Exeter as a new trustee. “I have been deeply gratified to learn that with each passing year my affection for the Academy and appreciation for its impact on my life grows a bit deeper,” she says. O’Byrne has served as an elected member of Exeter’s General Alumni Association since 2012 and has been a member of its Awards Committee. A class agent since 2005, she has also served as a major gift chair for both her 25th and 30th reunions.

A native of New Jersey, O’Byrne entered Exeter as a prep in 1980 and lived in Soule Hall and Dunbar, where she was a proctor. She also rowed crew throughout her time at Exeter and was captain of the team.

O’Byrne later earned an A.B. from Princeton University with a major in Slavic languages and literatures; an M.A. from Yale University in Russian and East European studies; and a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law. She is president of Beacon PT Company, a private family trust company, and a member of its board of directors. She also serves as general counsel of The Crosby Company of New Hampshire LLC. O’Byrne is married to Paul Staller and they have three children: Margaret ’18, Jimmy and Christine. E

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Pure Joy

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By Kerry Landreth Reed ’91 Editor’s Note: The Trustee Corner is a new column in the magazine written by an Academy trustee about an aspect of the Exeter experience that is newsworthy or personally meaningful to the author.

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Music was also a wonderful bonding and relaxing experience around campus. I have fond memories of impromptu sing-alongs to Sean Mahoney ’91 playing guitar on the Hoyt hill; rocking performances from Sandro Nivola ’90, Peter Jellinek ’93, Seth Spalding ’90 and the gifted John “Earl” Bethel ’90 out by the stadium after our Earth Day work; classmate Trish McEachern’s soaring opera voice filling Phillips Church; John Forte ’93 (born cool) bringing down the house; and many more.

The investments that the Academy is making in the proposed theater and dance center, in the music building addition, and in overall arts programming is tremendous—and it will enhance students’ Exeter experiences in countless ways. The opportunity is not only for those who are naturally drawn to the arts, but also for those who might want to explore the arts or see how their passion for math, engineering or writing plays a role in this space.

There will certainly be talented musicians who will take their skills to new heights, but there will also be students who discover their inner extrovert.

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hen I sing, I feel pure joy. My parents instilled a love of music in me from an early age by playing everything from Blondie to ’50s to opera to Springsteen and taking me to loads of musicals. Every musical we saw was “my favorite.” But it was really at Exeter that music became part of my life. It began with PEADQUACS and choir and evolved to [classmate] Brian Ripel’s fabulous senior project of a band that included me, Andrew Heaney ’91, Rob Carrigg ’91 and Eric Sullivan ’91. Brian was a gifted musician and brought us a range of soul, funk and fun that we played for his project and at many dances. (Wentworth Bash, anyone?)

Importantly, I found that music was the ultimate balance to the stress of intense academics and a busy schedule. Rehearsal wasn’t a chore; it was a mental break, an inspiration and a liberating space for creativity and risk-taking. I always left with more energy and a clear mind.

Performing was a blast. It was a chance Mike Roberts ’92, Katherine We spend a lot of time in our trustee to learn how to calm my nerves in front (Hennessey) Gronberg ‘93, meetings discussing how to help foster the of a big audience, to risk failure, to let Kerry Landreth Reed ’91, crucial skills of adaptation, creativity and myself be absorbed by the music and to Oliver Gratry ’92, Andrew risk-taking in our students. The performexperience the high that comes when a Heaney ’91, Anne (Kehler) ing arts programs—and the new facilities talented group works together creatively. Wallner ’92, Annie designed to house them—will promote PEADQUACS had only eight singers: (Davidson) Murphy ’91 these skills brilliantly and provide a flexThere was nowhere to hide and every and Eric Sullivan ’91. ible and nurturing creative environment voice counted. I went on to sing at Stanfor teachers and students alike. I’m also ford, and, at the ripe old age of 39, I started singing in a excited when I think about the ways in which these new band again. (We refer to this as a “Dad Band”!) One of facilities will impact the broader Exeter community yearmy favorite aspects of singing with a group is when you round by providing greater opportunities to connect with first come together after practicing independently and the creative forces that so shaped my Exeter experience. E turn what is an interesting single voice or instrument into this fantastic merged sound. It sounds cheesy, but it is To read more about PEA’s performing arts campaign and strategy, please go to magical. www.exeter.edu/performing arts.

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NON SIBI IN A MINUTE EXAMPLES OF GOODNESS AND SERVICE IN THE EXETER COMMUNITY

Michaela Morris ’15 (right) with peers at the Special Olympics National Games in Lawrenceville, NJ.

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This summer, Michaela Morris ’15, of Hampton, New Hampshire, was named one of four regional winners of the national Lovin’ Award, thanks to her work with Special Olympics New Hampshire.

The sponsor, Lovin’ Scoopful ice cream, states that each award “recognizes young visionaries who are involved in programs that foster respect, inclusion and a true personal connection for people with differences.” Winners were drawn from a pool of student applicants, ages 8 to 18, who support Special Olympics and sister organizations through volunteerism.

Morris began her role with Special Olympics when she was 12 by volunteering at a swim meet. She described that moment on the award site, writing, “I loved the atmosphere. The air was charged with excitement. …When I was younger, I really struggled socially, so it was a really big deal to feel as included and accepted as I felt at that meet. Here, everyone was able to display their talents, personalities, and sense of humor.

Everyone was accepted….”

Morris went on to join PEA’s Best Buddies Club and lead the Heartbreakers Club, both of which mentor and support people with intellectual disabilities. She attended the Special Olympics National Youth Leadership Conference and National Games this summer, where she met hundreds of athlete and student pairs. “They all had amazing stories and experiences to share,” she says, “and Special Olympics made it possible for me to meet and be friends with such a diverse group of people.”

Morris has found that her volunteer work gives her a new outlook on what’s important. “My involvement with Best Buddies, Heartbreakers and Special Olympics has changed the way I think,” she says. “I’ve learned to appreciate little everyday things, and to be more thoughtful and accepting in all situations. You never know what one little action, like helping a girl make a Valentine’s card, will mean to the other person.” E

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Inside the Writing Life A C O N V E R S AT I O N W I T H A U T H O R R O X A N E G AY ’ 9 2

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aneet Steffens ’82 interviewed Roxane Gay ’92, a writer and cultural commentator who has been published everywhere from The New York Times, The Guardian and The Nation to Slate, Salon and The Rumpus. Her debut novel, An Untamed State, and a collection of essays, Bad Feminist, were published this year to critical acclaim. Gay currently teaches creative writing at Purdue University. Steffens is a freelance journalist whose author interviews and book reviews have appeared in Time, the Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, the Chicago Tribune, Time Out and the U.K.’s Independent on Sunday.

JAY GRABIEC

Q: This is indisputably your year: a critically acclaimed debut novel, and an equally successful essay collection of cultural criticism that honestly, humorously and accessibly captures the multiplicity of your views. We’re seeing it as the year of Roxane Gay, but both of these books must be the culmination of years of writing, observing, thinking. What does it feel like to have them both see published life at the same time?

It’s been absolutely overwhelming because you work and you work and you work, and you wonder if you’re ever going to get your shot, and then it happens all at once at the most unexpected time. So it’s been really overwhelming, but I’m going to figure out how to deal with it because it’s also really awesome.

Q: Your novel, An Untamed State, is about a wealthy woman who is kidnapped and held for ransom in Port-au-Prince. The magic here is the way in which you infuse myriad complexities —family, love, betrayal, home, migration, inequality, privilege, the danger of any kind of blinders—with equal weight. In depicting Mireille Duval’s ordeal and its aftermath, you’ve straddled this incredibly fine line: You write about brutality with an unflinching, exacting clarity, but the narrative has this extraordinary beauty to it, one that allows you to access the core of your characters’ experiences. You allow us to see the moments when the cracks show. How did you keep it so honest?

I kept my eyes on the prize. By that I mean that I never allowed myself to forget what the novel was about and whose story I was trying to tell; that was important to me. I also think we try to pretty-up suffering and violence and I was not interested in doing that, so I decided to treat violence as information—here are the facts of what this woman endured—and that really helped me to stay honest and to avoid unnecessary flourish.

Because there’s no flourish in a story like this.

Q: The essays in Bad Feminist cover a rich, entertaining variety of topics including Scrabble tournaments, movies, TV shows, violence, politics, humor, racism and feminism. Part of what makes your writing, both fiction and nonfiction, so accessible is a palpable, consistent strand of compassion running through all of it. What connects compassion and writing for you?

For me, writing is entirely an act of compassion. It’s trying to understand experiences beyond my own and it’s also trying to show people who have endured experiences beyond —continued on page 14

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—continued from page 13

my own that I am trying to understand what they’ve been through, that I’m trying to empathize with them. Writing and compassion are absolutely connected. There’s just no separation there.

Q: You’re currently teaching creative writing at Purdue. How does teaching inform your writing and vice versa?

Teaching makes me a braver writer because I see the chances and the risks that my students take in their writing. I see how open they are to the process and I think, “If they can do it, if they’re willing to be that brave, then I absolutely need to be that brave.” Teaching encourages me to take more chances with my writing, to get out of my comfort zone and try different things. It keeps me invigorated.

Q: You’ve got a seemingly insatiable appetite when it comes to culture that makes your essays particularly enjoyable, and this includes your reading tastes. Who are the contemporary writers whom you most admire?

Q: What kind of writing feeds you as a reader?

I gravitate towards writing that makes me feel and that makes me think. I try to read diversely and that doesn’t mean just demographics. I try to read across genres, I try to read outside my wheelhouse because I think it makes me a better writer to see what’s out there and what’s possible. I read with my heart first, but I also want to think and be challenged.

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I love the brevity and the flexibility of it. I love just the pithiness, and then at the same time you can still use the medium for more important things. It’s dynamic. It’s my happy place online. And because I’m a loner but also enjoy being around other people, it allows me to be alone and with other people.

“WRITING AND COMPASSION ARE ABSOLUTELY CONNECTED. THERE’S JUST NO SEPARATION THERE.”

I love the writer xTx, who I just think is brilliant and fierce. She is always impressing me with what she puts out. Right now she’s doing a lot of small-press writing but I have no doubt that she’s going to have a breakout year in the next couple of years. Anna Holmes is a really smart and thoughtful thinker. Michelle Dean is one of my favorite critics, Eula Biss is a gorgeous essayist, as is Leslie Jamison. Ashley Ford is an up-and-coming young writer. I love her rawness and her honesty and the way she’s willing to look at herself. Meg Wolitzer chronicles the human condition in such gorgeous, gorgeous witty ways and I can’t get enough of that. Curtis Sittenfeld…her American Wife is such a thorough and complete and humane book. Hey, it’s a long, long list….

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Q: You’re very agile and prolific on Twitter, covering everything from live-tweeting Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa to comments on movies (Love Jones), pop culture (Beyoncé), from discussing Scrabble with Meg Wolitzer to interacting extremely graciously with your readers. What do you enjoy about this form of writing?

Q: You arrived at Exeter holding the secret of a terrible ordeal. How did your experience at Exeter, especially with English Instructor Rex McGuinn, shape your personal and professional approach to writing?

Rex McGuinn was amazing. He saved me. He’ll never know, and that breaks my heart that I didn’t come into my own and realize how important he’d been until after he’d passed away. He saw something in my writing and made sure I went to the counseling center and totally encouraged my talent and told me to write every day and just gave me…my work ethic comes from my parents, but my writing ethic comes from Rex McGuinn.

He was just so passionate about writing and teaching—and he was hilarious.

He said, “Write every day!” and you could tell by the way he said it that he meant it. He instilled confidence in me: He made me feel like my writing mattered, like I had something worth saying.

Q: What’s next for you?

I’m working on Hunger, my next nonfiction book, which is coming out in May 2016. It’s a sort-of memoir. And then my next novel is called Nice Man and it’s about a woman who has a daughter via surrogacy for her sisterin-law. It’s about the bond she has with her biological daughter and how she tries to get her back. There’s also a YA novel and a magic realist novel about a miner; they will get done, but I’m focusing on the other two right now because, as it turns out, there are only so many hours in the day. Who knew? E

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Alumni are urged to advise the Exonians in Review editor of their own publications, recordings, films, etc., in any field, and those of classmates. Whenever possible, authors and composers are encouraged to send one copy of their work and original copies of articles to Edouard Desrochers ’45, ’62 (Hon.); P’94, P’97, Phillips Exeter Academy, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833.

ALUMNI 1954—John H. Barton [deceased]. International Law and the Future of Freedom. [Edits and introduction by Helen M. Stacy and Henry T. Greely]. (Stanford Law Books, 2014) 1963—Carter Wiseman.

Writing Architecture: A Practical Guide to Clear Communication about the Built Environment. (Trinity University Press, 2014) 1968—Christopher Peterson, translator.

Foundations of Paleoparasitology, by Luiz Fernando Ferreira. [Edited by Luiz Fernando Ferreira, Karl Jan Reinhard and Adauto Araújo]. (Fiocruz/International Federation for Tropical Medicine, 2014)

1972—Eben Alexander III. The Map of Heaven: How Science, Religion, and Ordinary People are Proving the Afterlife.

(Simon & Schuster, 2014)

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1977—Ann Cooper Albright. Engaging Bodies: The Politics and Poetics of Corporeality.

(Wesleyan, 2013)

1985—Clare Huntington.

Failure to Flourish: How Law Undermines Family Relationships. (Oxford University Press, 2014)

1979—Nate Bennett and Echo Garrett. Shannon’s Gift: A Story of Love, Loss, and Recovery [Kindle edition]. (BookLogix, 2014) 1981—Margaret McKay Shinn [as Peggy Shinn].

Deluge: Tropical Storm Irene, Vermont’s Flash Floods, and How One Small State Saved Itself.

(UPNE, 2013) 1982—Lydia B. Smith, producer/director. Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago [documentary]. (Future Educational Films, 2013)

1983—J. Douglas Smith. On Democracy’s Doorstep: The Inside Story of How the Supreme Court Brought “One Person, One Vote” to the United States. (Hill and Wang, 2014)

Cognate-Head-Dependent Constructions: Evidence from Africa.”

IN Linguistic Typology [Edited by Frans Plank]. (v. 18, no. 2, 215, September 2014) FAC U LT Y/ FORMER FAC U LT Y Sasha Alcott and Chris Viner. Photoelectric, by When Particles Collide [CD]. (Unstoppable Rock Records, June 2014)

1986—Katherine C. Jueds [as Kasey Jueds].

Keeper [Pitt Poetry Series; Winner of the 2012 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize]. (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013)

Jason BreMiller.

“This World and That.” [abridged] IN The Leader, “Belay Off” [NOLS]. (v. 29, no. 3, 29-30, July 2014) —[Parts One, Two and Three] IN The NOLS Blog.

(NOLS, July 2014)

1989—Edward E. Curtis IV. The Call of Bilal: Islam in the African Diaspora.

(University of North Carolina Press, 2014)

Yoojin Choi and Jae Hyeok Jang. Why Do Best Schools Focus on Character? (Seoul: Dasan Books, 2014)

1992—Roxane Gay. An Untamed State: A Novel [Cover quote by Edwidge Danticat]. (Grove Press/ Black Cat, 2014)

Ralph Sneeden and Nicolai Cikovsky, illustrator. “Django: Elegies and Improvisations with Small Boats.” [online, under Features] IN The Common, “Long Reads.” (The Common Foundation/ Amherst College Press, 2014)

—Bad Feminist: Essays.

(Harper Perennial, 2014) 2012—Brea Salim. Bright Eyes. (THC Mandiri, 2014) B R I E F LY N OT E D 1985—Gregory D.S. Anderson and Oliver Bond. “Aspectual and focal functions of

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Modern Health S TAT E - O F - T H E - A R T F I T N E S S C E N T E R W I L L O P E N N E X T FA L L

By Mike Catano

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eginning next September, PEA commu-

nity members will be able to walk into a new, expansive Fitness Center on the ground floor of Thompson Gym, designed to meet the needs of today’s athletes and exercise buffs. It will be a state-of-the art facility even by Division I college standards and will replace the existing weight room located in Love Gym, which was built in 1970.

“It’s really going to be a boost for our community,” Athletic Director Rob Morris says. “I don’t believe there will be a secondary school facility in New England comparable to this when it is complete.”

Morris and strength and conditioning coach Andrea Sweet developed their vision of the new Fitness Center after visiting some of the best facilities at New England prep schools and colleges, including Division I Boston College and Springfield College, which is recognized as a leader in exercise science and physical education.

In recent years, strength and conditioning has shifted away from universal weight machines that work on isolated muscle groups to more athletic movements, gross motor activity and multi-joint exercises. This all requires more space—for the heavily-used Olympic lifting stations (barbells) as well as an expansive turf area.

“The old universal machines promoted body building, but that doesn’t translate to athletic performance,” Morris says. “To gain explosiveness and power, you need more gross motor exercises which has brought us back to an emphasis on Olympic lifting.”

Sweet adds, “We also need more open space to do dynamic warmups, plyometric movements [quick jumping movements] and total body movements. A lot of our athletes don’t know how to stop properly and then restart their speed. A turf area will be great to teach change of direction and how to be in an athletic position.”

The physical education faculty and staff also recognized that at peak usage times the existing weight room cannot accommodate the numbers of students who contend for space and equipment. Interscholastic teams and PE classes can put 50 to 60 kids in the same 3,400-square-foot area. “This forces us to overflow to the hallways and squash court areas, which can cause problems there, particularly in the winter,” Sweet says. “It makes it hard for other students and adults to find space” because the exercise room is open to all PEA community members.

The additional space in the new Fitness Center will provide multiple benefits, Sweet adds: “I’ll be able to plan out a team workout, for example, with barbell squats being the main movement.

We’ll have enough racks and space to have everyone doing the same routine. I’ll be able to supervise the exercises, which is more efficient and more effective for the athletes.”

Having an instructor such as Sweet in the vicinity of the students during their workouts also enhances safety. Additionally, all the new flooring with be cushioned to reduce the stress on athletes as they work out, for example, in the Olympic lifting and turf spaces. At 9,000 square feet, it

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Olympic lifting area with 12 power racks and free weights

Thirty yards of turf for athletic movements, plyometric exercises and other training exercises

Corridor of cardiovascular machines, including treadmills, elliptical units and stationary bikes, as well as weight machines

will almost triple the space of the existing weight room, which is slated to be repurposed into an exercise studio for dance and yoga. The major areas of the new center will include: • An Olympic lifting area with approximately 12 power racks, free weights, benches and a medicine ball training space.

• A central turf area for athletic movement, plyometrics, agility training and other training exercises.

• A wide array of cardiovascular machines, such as stationary bikes, elliptical machines and treadmills.

This area also will include some multipurpose musclebuilding machines and a stretching area.

• The strength and conditioning coach will have an office to provide hands-on assistance to students.

• A music system, TVs and video technology will support training.

“We believe the new Fitness Center will impact this community in a positive way; its role as a major crossroads of the campus will be enhanced as a place where all students, faculty and staff can come together,”Morris says.

“We also have many alums who return as collegiate athletes during the summer and their vacations,” Sweet adds. “Speaking to several, I know they are excited to work out in a new facility that can be a hub for kids returning not only to exercise, but also to visit with their friends, coaches and teachers. It helps them maintain relationships with the school and their friends. I think it’s going to be a great community-building space!” E

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MAKING IT HAPPEN 2013 GRADS AREN’T JUST CRACKING TEXTB OOKS— T H E Y’R E L AU N C H I N G T H E I R CAREERS

BY SARAH ZOBEL

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lexander Yang ’13 is helping to bring hands, fingers and arms to the United States—functional prostheses that are made using a 3-D printer, some string, a little elastic and a few screws. At roughly $100 each, they are a low-cost alternative to higher-tech, electronic versions, which can cost as much as $40,000 a piece.

“It’s purely mechanical, which is the beauty of it,” says Yang, who spent his summer in South Africa working alongside native Richard van As, a carpenter who lost part of his right hand in an accident and invented “Robohand” to replace the severed digits. Robohand, Yang says, is especially popular among children, who find it intuitive to use—lift the hand’s stump up or down, and the momentum of that action moves the strings and pulleys, causing the fingers to clamp down or release.

In a country where landmines have severely injured many citizens, Robohands have been eagerly welcomed in South Africa; some 800 are already in use, and there’s a waiting list about 500 names long, according to Yang. Hoping to help generate interest in the United States, he has signed on as something of a sales representative, and plans to introduce Robohand to U.S. hospitals, prosthetic centers and regulatory agencies. Somehow, he’ll fit that in among his classes at Harvard, where he’s currently a sophomore, and the 25 hours a week he works at the university’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

Yang and his classmates are defined, in part, by the access to technology they have enjoyed since childhood and by growing up in a global society that is increasingly connected. Studies reveal that a majority of adolescents and young adults today (often defined as millennials and, increasingly, Gen Z) are interested in becoming entrepreneurs. They have the drive and desire to build their

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own businesses or organizations, and access to the tools— social media and crowdsourcing, for instance—to make it happen. And many of them are taking these leaps with a social mission in mind. They are members of a generation marked by its collaborative nature; by greater tolerance of racial, sexual and generational diversity; and by being community oriented. Raised in a post-9/11 digital world, these adolescents and young adults are in many ways more sophisticated than earlier generations were at the same age.

In his 2013 Commencement address, Principal Hassan told graduates, “You are a highly connected, firmly rooted and deeply compassionate class.” Yang, the class president, certainly serves as a model for that, as do classmates Jameel Mohammed and Nandini Mullaji and the dozens of other Exonians who are using their college years as early entry points into what John Phillips had defined as “the great end and real business of living.”

ENTREPRENEURIAL CREATIVES

Penn might not seem like a hotbed for fashion design, but as the only Ivy to host a designated fashion week, it’s not so far off. And for sophomore Jameel Mohammed, with internships at the houses of Nicole Miller and Narciso Rodriguez already under his stylish belt, it’s a good place to prepare for the business. With the recent launch of a new line of jewelry first conceived of during his time at Exeter, Mohammed is already making a name for himself.

A two-year Exonian, he started sketching fashions during his sophomore year of high school in Chicago. In the summer of 2011, just before transferring to Exeter, he attended an Oxbridge Academic Program in Paris, where he mentioned his interest in design to the director, who then invited Belgian designer Pierre Antoine Vettorello to teach a three-day mini-course. When Mohammed met with an Exeter counselor at the end of his upper year to discuss his future, he was intrigued to hear that Bud Konheim ’53, CEO of Nicole Miller, was looking for a summer intern.

That internship was a fruitful experience for Mohammed, who was allowed to take part in the entire design process and spent the summer sourcing materials from New York’s garment district, researching art history for

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inspiration and dying “a lot of trim.” He even had the opportunity to design for Miller herself, and got a couple of his own pieces into the early stages of production.

“That was the experience that made me sure that I wanted to go into the business,” Mohammed says. He would parlay it into another internship after graduation, this time with Narciso Rodriguez, where he worked for Casey Cadwallader ’97, the house’s design director.

Perhaps Mohammed’s biggest splash to date was his senior project at Exeter, a runway show featuring his own designs. After many sewing all-nighters, the event, titled “Modern Subversion” for the subtly unorthodox elements in the

“I THINK THAT IN THE CREATIVE PROFESSIONS, WHEN YOU HAVE AN IDEA YOU WANT TO REALIZE ... THE IDEA IS SO GREAT IN YOUR HEAD, IT’S SCARY.” —Jameel Mohammed is launching Khiry, his own line of luxury fashion accessories.

designs, showcased a half-dozen of his pieces that could be mixed and matched. It was held in the Lamont Gallery, with a runway lined with chairs, and catered like something out of New York’s Fashion Week.

“I think that in the creative professions, when you have an idea you want to realize ... the idea is so great in your head, it’s scary,” he says. But the senior project “gave me the confidence to say, ‘Here I am, these are the resources that I have, and I’m going to do the best work that I can with

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these resources.’ It all started at Exeter, with being empowered to go for it.”

Mohammed, who founded the Penn Fashion Industry/Entrepreneur collective, designs exclusively for women, citing as influences Phoebe Philo, creative director at Céline, and Dries Van Noten. He’s now focusing almost exclusively on Khiry, his new line of luxury accessories, and hoping to get them into stores soon. His bracelets and necklaces had their genesis in a couple of pieces he created at Exeter as part of his senior project show; the originals were made of polyester rope that Mohammed elaborately knotted—and then forgot, in all the hubbub, to put on the models. But he’s added to the collection, and last year during Penn’s annual fashion week, he took advantage of an invitation extended from the COO of Barneys

“GIVING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY HAS ALWAYS BEEN SOMETHING THAT HAS GUIDED MY DECISIONS.” —Nandini Mullaji is working hard to provide education to India’s nomadic tribes through her Adopt-a-Tent-School initiative.

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to meet with her, wearing one of his necklaces and earning yet another internship.

Working with a fashion director at Barneys, he has gone through several iterations of the pieces, even integrating metals and thinner cords of leather and twisted nylon. Because jewelry offers higher profit margins than clothing does, Mohammed is focusing his energy on the former, hoping to sell enough to help pay for

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a two-year associate’s degree program at Parsons The New School for Design when he’s finished at Penn.

With a major in PPE—philosophy, political science and economics—and a minor in business, Mohammed is confident he’ll have a leg up on competitors who went straight to design school.

“A liberal arts education is going to be valuable in the future,” he says, “just in terms of being a well-rounded person, but also in terms of getting a better understanding of my customer, getting a better understanding of marketing practices and production and things that are essential.” Regardless of where he ends up, he will always be “slightly employable,” Mohammed says with a laugh.

INVESTED IN GLOBAL WELL-BEING

Nandini Mullaji talks fast, perhaps because she’s got a lot to get done. A native of Bombay who came to Exeter at the beginning of her upper year (“If I could do it again, I’d have gone sooner, but it was two phenomenal years at Exeter,” she says), Mullaji is a student in Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, where she’s majoring in regional and comparative studies for emerging economies (India, Russia, China and the Middle East), with a minor in international business diplomacy. After graduation, she’s considering pursuing a master’s in urban design and planning, to be followed by work in development or social-sector consulting, but not in India, at least initially. Eventually she’ll go back to that country to live, she says, and sees herself as a politician there one day.

But even from a distance, Mullaji has India in her sights.

“Giving back to the community has always been something that has guided my decisions,” says Mullaji, who returns to India twice a year to visit family and check in on her many nonprofit projects. “There’s definitely this theme of helping nongovernmental stakeholders benefit public life.” Her passion project is working to help nomadic tribes in Gujarat, the westernmost region of India and her father’s native territory, through a pilot plan she calls Adopt-aTent-School. It’s a collaboration with VSSM, an organization dedicated to the rights and lives of nomadic and tribal communities; when VSSM began work with the tribes in 2011, they had a zero percent literacy rate, but that has been on the rise since VSSM began establishing tent

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MAKING THEIR MARKS EMMA CLARKSON

YALE UNIVERSITY

I was lucky enough to get involved in the Opera Theatre of Yale College and play[ed] in the pit orchestra for a period production of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. (We performed with gut strings and baroque bows.) This year I’m on the OTYC board as business manager. I am also involved in the Tiny Baroque Orchestra and am the co-president of another more standard orchestra, which means I help recruit new members, run auditions and select our repertoire.

BRANDON KAPLOWITZ

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

During my freshman year at University of Michigan, I worked with one of the U.S.’s most prominent political science professors, Robert Axelrod—most famous for his game-theoretic work. I [contributed] to his newest paper, “Timing of Cyber Conflicts,” and was referenced when it was published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. I applied to the Department of Defense [for a summer internship] and continued my research in cyber policy, where I was given free reign to work on projects, both classified and unclassified.

CHANNING PREND

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

As the Manhattanville news editor for the Columbia Spectator, I was reporting at two nearby [West Harlem] public housing complexes, and I saw a real lack of basic infrastructure (overflowing trash bins, rats etc.). I worked with a friend to organize workshops to educate residents about recycling. This summer, [as an intern] in the NYC Mayor’s Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability, I worked for a program called GreeNYC, which designs public education campaigns on issues related to sustainability. I worked on a campaign to increase recycling in NYC public housing complexes.

TIFFANY TUEDOR

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY This summer, I worked as a technology and operations intern at TEDMED, the health and medicine edition of the world-famous TED conference. I managed the content on the website and mobile app and worked on digital marketing and social media. I was also tasked with reaching out to international organizations to invite them to watch the stage program via live stream. We were able to get 147 countries and over 5,000 corporations, academic institutions, teaching hospitals and nonprofits to tune in and participate in the TEDMED conversation.

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schools. Through Adopt-a-Tent-School, Mullaji has spent the past three years enticing donors to help the cause.

Instead of pledging a specific financial total, though, donors sign on to “a promise for 100 percent literacy,” and commit to funding the schools for however long it takes for a community to attain full literacy.

Next up: Mullaji wants to help create houses for nomadic tribes. In the meantime, her work with VSSM motivated other youth, who asked her for help finding organizations that were looking for volunteers.

Through Build-a-Bridge, which she founded in the spring of her upper year at Exeter, she pairs small- and medium-sized organizations across India with people who want to volunteer.

“It’s my way of not just giving back to the Indian community, but also getting to help myself,” says Mullaji, who also runs Engaging India, a lobbying effort to increase awareness of the country’s issues and bring Indian politicians to campus. “And other students and people who work with me benefit.”

This academic year, Mullaji will be undertaking an internship with Ashoka, a worldwide network of social entrepreneurs based in Arlington, Virginia; she’ll focus on Israel and Turkey, where she’ll likely spend part of the summer of 2015. She’s also continuing her work with Hilltop, a student-run consulting firm at Georgetown. It’s a competitive group: As a freshman, Mullaji was one of 250 applicants for 10 analyst openings. This year, she’ll serve as project manager for a team of five students whose realworld client is iKure, an Indian social enterprise that’s focused on low-cost healthcare delivery.

“It’s been one of the formative experiences for me at Georgetown because I’ve gotten to work with a lot of interesting nonprofits and learned a lot of hard skills,” Mullaji says. Equally formative has been her work with the Hilltop Microfinance Initiative, a 501(c)(3) corporation staffed by students, with an external board of directors. Mullaji is the director of strategy at HMFI, which provides small-business loans to people in areas of metropolitan Washington underserved by banks. She cites proudly the story of a client who ran a food truck; HMFI provided him with a loan so he could purchase a second oven, and as a result, his revenues tripled. After two subsequent loans, he was able to open a brick-and-mortar location in the District.

“That’s the impact—we’re actually getting to see results,” Mullaji says. “Now he has something tangible. That’s why I’m so committed to this organization, because it’s really about making an impact.”

INSPIRED TO TAKE ACTION

Alexander Yang, who received the Yale Cup and a Cox Medal at graduation, gave an Exeter Talk on stem cells, but his interest in science began much earlier—as far back

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as seventh grade, when his science fair project involved the construction of a prosthetic limb using sensors that wrapped around the body (“It was a really stupid project,” he says with a laugh). A four-year Exonian and a native of Vancouver, Yang was involved with MECExeter, an engineering-focused club. The most memorable project he participated in was the construction of a 20-foot concrete canoe that actually floated—with passengers including Yang—in the Squamscott River.

“Things like that sparked my interest in thinking outside the classroom,” Yang says. “If there’s one thing I learned at Exeter, it’s that you have to appreciate what you learn in the classroom, but you realize that it’s so much more fulfilling when you pursue things on your own track, and take big risks like that.”

Yang has been working at the Wyss Institute since the beginning of his freshman year at Harvard. There, he’s a member of the team headed by Jennifer Lewis, Sc.D., which is trying to improve bioprinting, using 3-D printers to create human organs. Their approach has been to use cells to print a mesh of blood vessels into which they place a stem cell; an organ will then begin to develop.

But what’s perhaps most noteworthy to Yang is the disparity between the products 3-D printers can create, with plastic cups on the one hand and human organs on the other.

“That’s the gap that I’ve been trying to address,” says Yang. “I’m familiar enough with the 3-D printing industry that I know there’s a huge gap in the middle where you don’t really have anything that’s cost effective but also high impact, and I’ve been trying to find a niche there.”

And that’s what led him to South Africa and van As and his prosthetics.

“That was the first time I’d seen 3-D printing technology have such a high impact at such a low cost,” says Yang, who is eager to determine how such technology might be rendered practical in the United States. The Robohand design is open source, meaning anyone can download the plans off the Internet. That has led some to attempt to establish a U.S. presence for it, but they’ve failed when faced with the country’s stringent testing and regulatory requirements. So Yang is planning to visit medical centers and regulators to determine what needs to be done to make the prostheses more widely accessible to U.S. citizens. The eventual goal worldwide is to set up local hospitals with printers and teach officials there not only how to print—which Yang says is only 20 percent of the work—but also how to assemble the prostheses.

“The idea is that this thing is going to be sustainable even without our work,” Yang says. “In order for this to scale, you want to encourage people to step up and help themselves.

That’s the big idea with this project.”

Yang, who is majoring in biomedical engineering

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and minoring in history, has no shortage of big ideas. One that has spun out of the 3-D technology work is the establishment of a program that would involve the long-term lending of lathes, injection molds and other manufacturing equipment to villages in developing nations. One member of a village would be in charge of the equipment, paying rent and making money by selling the products, which would include such household items as pots and chairs.

“I really like the idea of empowering more individuals to develop their own products,” Yang says. He is also working with Evan Gastman ’12 on a book for high school students that discusses how to be a “high-impact” individual (hint: find problems around you and work toward solutions), as well as a “connectome” that would allow students to use the Internet more efficiently when

“IN ORDER FOR THIS TO SCALE, YOU WANT TO ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO STEP UP AND HELP THEMSELVES. THAT’S THE BIG IDEA WITH THIS PROJECT.”

doing research projects or digging into personal interests. His long-term goal is to stay involved in the entrepreneurial side of biomedical engineering, building products and making them accessible to people in affordable and practical ways. E

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DAMIAN STROHMEYER

—Alex Yang is hoping to introduce affordable, 3-D-printed prostheses to the United States.

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of Stanford University’s Architectural Design Program, and two Stanford colleagues—Amy Larimer, lecturer in the Architectural Design Program, and Jonathan Edelman, director of interdisciplinary design at Stanford’s Product Realization Lab— taught a three-course cluster in the Summer School called The Process of Creativity. Thirteen students from around the world attended the cluster, the first of its type in the high school program, with courses focused on design, architecture and the history of creativity.

The impetus for the Exeter/Stanford part-

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his summer, John Barton ’78, director

B Y N I C O L E P E L L AT O N P H O T O S O P P O S I T E P A G E : U P P E R L E F T, C H E R Y L S E N T E R , ALL OTHERS NICOLE PELLATON

nership was curiosity. At his May 2013 reunion, Barton spoke with Principal Tom Hassan about the interdisciplinary graduate architecture program he and his colleagues were developing at Stanford. “I wanted to learn more about how Harkness could have an impact,” Barton says.

A couple of weeks later, Barton, Hassan and Summer School Director Ethan Shapiro were discussing the concept for a course that would launch in Summer School the following year.

Their five weeks at PEA was eye-opening for Barton—a second-generation Exonian whose father, John Barton ’54, was recruited by Hammy Bissell—and his colleagues. A Q&A follows.

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“DESIGN IS A CONVERSATION THAT HAPPENS ACROSS TIME, SPACE AND CULTURE.” —Jonathan Edelman

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How does the creativity cluster differ from your classes at Stanford?

Jonathan Edelman: As we were beginning to

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work on the classes, John said to me, “Don’t dumb down the conceptual work because we don’t have time to get them up to speed technically.” I’m not giving them fire hoses full of information, but I’m giving them the same essential information that I give to graduate students at Stanford.

John Barton: I’m treating these students as though they’re college students. We don’t have time to teach technical skills but I’m coming to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter. If by the end of the semester they have some process, and some self-actualization and self-evaluation, that’s great.

Now that you’ve experienced teaching with the Harkness method, how does it fit into design teaching?

Amy Larimer: When I’m doing my job well—as

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a designer or architect or artist—I’m listening to the client or the site or the material or the light or whatever it may be. The synthesis of this process of listening and understanding and knowing, and communication with all of these things, that’s what Harkness feels like to me.

JB: Amy and I have been going to the Harkness discussions that Nita Pettigrew [emerita English instructor and Summer School teacher] leads. Nita was unhappy with our description.

We said the teacher is there to help students resolve a problem. Nita responded, the teacher is there to resolve an unknown. This goes right to design. Design is a discussion—between head and hand, and between people. I tell students, “If you’re designing a bottle for Coke and you know exactly what it is from the start, then it’s not a design problem.” Design is starting from nothing to build something that is unknowable at the start. And the process helps you learn what it is. That’s what happens with the conversation at the Harkness table.

What are your thoughts on the table?

JE: Here’s the design question: What is the

table achieving? It’s about having a common platform. The physical table is horizontally organized. But the platform might be the pinup where we put stuff on the walls, or a whiteboard or blackboard. It can be the act of experimenting, drawing, building something in cardboard.

People start saying, “Oh, look at this. Oh, look

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MAKING ROOM FOR A MAKER CULTURE The three Stanford faculty members are already planning improvements for next summer. They hope to have a maker lab for the cluster, and are developing a curriculum that can serve as a springboard for classes during the academic school year.

The redesign yourself project—based on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, which surrounds The Beatles with important influencers— was popular with students, shown here working on layout. One imagined her redesigned self as a monk— “an enlightened person with a lot of knowledge,” in her words—surrounded by Elon Musk, I.M. Pei, Queen Elizabeth II and others.

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Students work on experience maps, which graphically represent the emotions of an activity— purchasing a drink or ice cream in downtown Exeter—as the basis for improving the consumer experience. The drawings map emotions against the geographical backdrop of the shopping location.

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The five-week design a dorm project started with a thorough reconceptualization of what a dorm is.

Working in small groups, students shared ideas and sketches frequently, seeking input that helped further design development. One model included an indoor playing field, useful during harsh New England winters; another, based on the central core concept of Exeter’s Louis Kahn–designed library, had a glass roof extension to allow more light into bedrooms.

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at that. It could be this…” Those are the exciting moments.

AL: These discussions don’t always happen around the table.

JB: The table occurs elsewhere. We discovered that a Harkness table doesn’t really work for architecture—there’s not enough room for drawings and laying things out. So, we worked around that problem. But you could design a Harkness table for an architecture studio or a design studio. Jonathan and I were imagining a table with holes, or something like a closet, where you pull out a tool. I could even imagine a really big table that’s hollow in the middle, where students could work across from each other, or an instructor could come in and work individually and also see what’s happening—a doughnut version of the table.

AL: The relationship between overall collaboration to individual space is important, especially in working and making.

What have been the biggest surprises?

JB: It’s hard to teach at the Harkness table. It

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takes a lot of patience. And listening. I’m still learning. But once the students get it, you say, “Wow.” AL: It’s electric when it lands. There’s so much synthesis happening. There’s a level of accountability and presence that’s requested of them every day. It’s beautiful, this invitation to really show up to the table, to be aware of your peers and be present to them and to the material. It’s asking a lot and the learning potential is…

JB: Astronomical.

AL: Yes, astronomical.

JB: You spend a lot of time talking about teaching and learning here. We do a lot at Stanford by comparison to other universities, but we’ve met more as faculty in the last four weeks at Exeter than we did all of last year at Stanford. And there isn’t a teacher here who isn’t passionate about what they do.

AL: It’s gone by so fast—first thinking about what it could be, and then being here.

JB: And then changing everything once we got here. I change every week.

AL: Every day! There’s a real need to be responsive to what’s happening day-to-day here.

JB: I had drafted up a big Excel spreadsheet with everything we were going to cover.

AL: Have you used it?

JB: No. It became much looser, and better, in the end.

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What were the challenges of adapting to the Harkness method?

JB: I thought it would be easier to switch from being

a student to an instructor than it was. I’ve had a hard time tolerating the silences. But I found that answering questions when students have them on a need-be basis works. They’ve gotten used to my vague answers: “Can I do this?” “I don’t know, can you?”

AL: Before coming here, I thought, “I already do that.” NO. I do some of it, for sure. Harkness sounds simple but it’s so complex an experience. And so subtle. The theory is one thing. Experiencing it is very transformative.

JB: The students have wildly divergent educational models. We have 13 kids and only four of them are from the United States, and even they’re from all over the place: Miami, New York, South Dakota and Alaska. One of our students sits in the same chair for every subject back at home, and there’s nothing on the wall in his classroom. None of them have anything close to the Harkness system.

JE: There’s a big challenge here: We’re teaching a subject they haven’t done before, and Harkness, which is new to them.

JB: They’ve never been asked their opinion in the classroom.

JE: Especially in the depth we’re asking. You need to get data in order to design. If you’re redesigning a camera, part of the data is: What kind of pictures do you take?

Why do you take them? Oh, you like to feel professional? What does that look like? How does it feel? What does it do for your family and your life? You try to get very deep questions. That’s part of what they’re being trained to do. And they’re learning to ask each other.

If you could use another word to represent everything that we call Harkness, what would it be?

JB: Design. Respect. Participation. Democracy.

AL: Innovation. Self. Voice. Community. Collaboration.

Presence. Authenticity.

JB: Invitation.

What are you trying to get the students to achieve or experience in these five weeks?

AL: It would be a huge success if they walked out of

this with their eyes open to new ways of seeing: how stuff goes together, how it feels, why it’s there, what the experiences are. So many of them expressed that the relationships they’re building are important. The human impact of that on design and creativity is enormous.

JE: Design is a conversation that happens across time, space and culture. If we just got the opening of the eyes, it would be a huge success. But if we can flip them from

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being people who think that the world is delivered up in this way, to people who say, “I’m someone who can change this world,” that’s a monumental success.

AL: Last night in the dorm, one of the students said, “Being here has been the most amazing time of my life.” Blowing open their sense of what the world is—and what they can look at and how they can learn— that’s a huge thing.

Stanford is famous for innovation. What are the key factors needed for innovation, and how do they translate to Exeter?

JB: Some of it is the maker culture, which Stanford em-

bedded in engineering 20 years ago. Some is the allure of going to work for Google. A lot of it is the product design program, the architecture design program, the bioengineering program. All these semi-cross-disciplinary programs are really attractive to students.

If Exeter’s already extraordinary pedagogy were to extend to making and engineering, it would be phenomenal. It’s a direct extension of what happens at the Harkness table in English and math. There’s something really powerful about making something that didn’t exist, and all the problem solving that goes into it.

When you talk about a maker culture at Exeter, are you thinking about a lab?

JB: If I were to dream what it would look like here,

it would be an all-glass building. It would be a place where you store stuff, where you could safely work, where there would be classes. You’d start as a freshman, and by the time you were a senior you’d be a proctor teaching other students how to solve problems. It could reference the architecture program, bioengineering, physics, robotics, music. You could build your instrument. It could reference chemistry. You could build models. Getting students to see that they can manufacture their world would be great.

Will your Exeter experience have an impact on your teaching back at Stanford?

JB: Absolutely. The power of bringing diverse voices to

bear on a problem or an unknown as a way of teaching.

The key ideas of the new graduate program we’re working on are basically cribbing the Harkness table: working in groups, diversity, democratic voices, developing the curriculum when students need it, letting them take it where it needs to go. E

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A NOBLE

CAUSE

C O L L A B O R AT I O N B E T W E E N E X E T E R A N D C H I CAG O’S HARKNESS-BASED CHARTER SCHOOL , THE NOBLE ACADEMY

BY SARAH ZOBEL

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t’s a familiar sight: a group of students seated around

a table, engaged in a discussion of the rhetorical devices of ethos, pathos and logos, perhaps, or The Sound and the Fury, their teacher encouraging but not lecturing them. Instead of one oak oval, though, the table has been assembled from two rectangular and two semicircular tables that have been pushed together; the window affords a view not of Wetherell, but of a high-rise on the other side of the busy street.

This is not Exeter; it’s The Noble Academy, a charter school that opened this August with 200 freshmen— the result of a unique collaboration with PEA to bring Harkness to downtown Chicago.

Noble is a member of the Noble Network of Charter Schools, comprised of 17 campuses of non-selective secondary schools that has grown exponentially since the first location was opened in 1999. Network students, who are 92 percent African American or Hispanic, sign up through open enrollment after having attended one of 120 grade schools around the city; upon matriculation, they are met with longer class periods, longer school days and longer school years, along with a code of conduct and a culture broadly described as being based on high expectations.

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“The Noble Network is really known for the learning environment that we create through the culture in our school,” says Lauren Boros, campus leader of The Noble Academy. “It’s a very structured, disciplined environment, a very respectful environment, a very warm and demanding environment.”

And the students have responded: Noble schools consistently rank among the top-performing nonselective Chicago public schools on ACT scores and overall academic gains. With requirements of 70 hours of community engagement and 200 hours of extracurricular enrichment, coupled with biweekly progress reports, the expectations are indeed high.

The connection to PEA began in 2007, when Summer School Director Ethan Shapiro and then–Associate Dean of Faculty Rosanna Salcedo P’16 visited Chicago to recruit Summer School students; two attended in 2008, and Pablo Sierra, principal of Noble’s Pritzker College Prep, also visited. With a mutual respect for the schools’ commitments to academics, the decision was made to collaborate by bringing Harkness to Noble’s newest school, The Noble Academy.

“In a philosophical sense, a lot of education reform has turned into students in rows, and ‘I say this and you

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do this and I say this and you do this,’ and it’s a pingpong match between the teacher and each kid,” Boros says.

“We’re really trying to create more of a sense of volleyball, say, where the kids are bouncing ideas off each other, and they’re doing the talking and the working, and the onus of learning—the responsibility for their education— belongs to the child. We think that Harkness is the means to do that.”

In preparation for the new school’s opening, over the past academic year PEA English Instructor Johnny Griffith served as mentor to two Pritzker English teachers, each of whom tried out Harkness with a class of ninth-graders. Through onsite visits, Skype sessions and telephone calls, the three discussed teaching techniques and challenges while exchanging instructional video clips of their respective classes. The mentoring was a success, and so was the teaching: The 30 students who had been chosen to participate in those two classes were among the school’s top students, but because their achievement was already high, they had shown the least growth on test scores and other metrics in the past. Yet at the end of the year, those students’ scores on the ACT’s EXPLORE—an aptitude test for eighth- and ninth-graders—showed the highest growth of any cohort of Noble Network students.

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Lauren Boros, Pablo Sierra (left) and Noble Academy faculty members attended PEA’s weeklong teacher professional development institutes in June, meeting with Ethan Shapiro (far right) and other PEA faculty regarding how to use Harkness in their new school.

“THEY REALLY UNDERSTOOD WHAT THEY WERE TRYING TO DO AND WHY.” —Ethan Shapiro, PEA Summer School director

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“WE’RE REALLY TRYING TO CREATE MORE OF A SENSE OF VOLLEYBALL, SAY, WHERE THE KIDS ARE BOUNCING IDEAS OFF EACH OTHER, AND THEY’RE DOING THE TALKING AND THE WORKING.” —Lauren Boros, campus leader of The Noble Academy

Shapiro, who visited the Harkness classrooms at Pritzker, says he was genuinely impressed with the teachers’ ability to develop good Harkness techniques over the course of the year, but also with the students’ grasp of the approach.

“They really understood what they were trying to do and why,” says Shapiro, who is overseeing Exeter’s role in Noble’s Harkness implementation. “They were excited about being given ownership of their learning, of their voices being heard in the class. They talked about how they loved doing the work—the reading—and they loved coming to class prepared.” In fact, he says, many reported that “they felt like they were more prepared than they’d ever been before as students because of the demands placed on the kids to run the classes.”

These are students who might otherwise have easily been lost in some way within the Chicago Public Schools.

At The Noble Academy, for example, 85 percent of students are eligible for free and reduced lunch.

The kind of mentoring that Griffith did will continue to be an integral part of the schools’ association and will routinely include a couple of hours each week of phone and online conversations among the Exeter-Noble Collaboration Committee members—in addition to Griffith, they include Gwyn Coogan, Tom Seidenberg,

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Chris Matlack and Meg Foley, with Shapiro as chair—and their 10 Noble colleagues. In addition, the latter were required to attend one of Exeter’s summer professional development conferences: the Anja S. Greer Conference on Mathematics, Science and Technology; the Exeter Humanities Institute; or the Exeter Diversity Institute.

Sierra, who is now principal of both The Noble Academy and Pritzker, says the new school is a hybrid of Harkness and traditional classes, as necessitated by the financial constraints of the Chicago Public Schools. That means a relatively high student-to-teacher ratio—more than double that at Exeter. Yet even in classes with 30 students, the standard across the Noble Network schools, teachers are discovering that they can create three Harkness circles in a room and circulate among them.

“We really are trying to do Harkness 100 percent of the time, even in those larger classes,” Boros says. “It just looks a little different here.”

As the school grows to include all four grades, Shapiro and the Exeter-Noble Committee will consider how they can best support the staff; how they will continue to measure the project’s rate of success, including the use of metrics; and how more Exeter teachers and students can get involved. That might translate to something as basic yet personal as having ninth-grade pen pals

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Members of Noble Academy’s inaugural freshman class in one of the charter school’s Harkness classrooms.

communicating between the two schools.

“This is a two-way street,” Shapiro says. “Our teachers find this work to be really rewarding and challenging and invigorating, as much as the Noble teachers do on their end. The partnerships, the friendships, the respect…has been one of the greatest aspects of the project.”

In Chicago, Sierra expects Harkness will catch on at other Noble Network schools.

“If this has results—and I think it will—I think more and more of our campuses will want to do it,” Sierra says.

“We’re very excited. We think this is going to turn into something revolutionary.”

Rohan Pavuluri ’14 witnessed that firsthand this past summer, when he co-taught a three-week public speaking course at The Noble Academy’s new summer program, in which he helped students analyze famous speeches and explore various rhetorical devices. The summer program, entirely taught with the Harkness method, was attended by half of the incoming student body. Pavuluri says he was impressed that Harkness worked so well, even with a class of 18 students, some of whom read at a third-grade level. “It’s really remarkable how much of an effect [it] can have on people from all sorts of educational backgrounds,” he says, noting that the students were “able to do it all by themselves within a matter of just a few days.”

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More important, perhaps, was the safe space—to listen and to be heard— that students found at the table. Pavuluri describes one moment that he says will stick with him for the rest of his life.

“At the end of the first week, we asked the kids to use ethos, pathos or logos to make some sort of argument for 90 seconds. A student named Brian shared his experience being courted by a gang and pleaded to his classmates not to be a part of the same culture. He told us about how his best friend had joined the gang and, in order to get out, his best friend had to either get beat up for two minutes or shoot someone. It was incredible to me that within just four days, this 14-year-old kid was able and willing to share such a story and convey it in such an eloquent manner. That’s the magic of Harkness.”

Right now, The Noble Academy is looking ahead in the short term, to next year, when the freshmen will move on to 10th grade and a new class of ninth-graders will arrive.

With an eventual expected four-year enrollment of 800 to 1,000 students, the school will need to find a more permanent location, somewhere other than its current home on a single floor of a Chicago office building—somewhere with plenty of room for lots of Harkness tables. E

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“EXETER HAS BEEN ABOUT TRANSITIONS, TRANSCENDENCE, LOVE AND LOYALTY.”

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CONNECTIONS

News and notes from the alumni community

Carrying the Vision Forward

By Mitch Bradbury ’78; P’09 President of the General Alumni Association and Exeter Trustee

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am excited to begin my work as a new trustee and General Alumni Association (GAA) president during a time of noteworthy change at Exeter. I look forward to assisting the Academy, on your behalf, with the transitions we face during the next few years. These include, of course, the departure of our beloved 14th principal, Tom Hassan, and our search for an equally outstanding leader.

In my vocation as a clinical psychologist, I understand that managing such change is best done in a caring environment by clearly defined action. Exeter has emerged well from similar shifts over time and will continue to demonstrate its ability to adapt. In preparing for my changing volunteer role, I read the Academy’s original Deed of Gift written by founder John Phillips in 1781. It confirmed for me his vision of a stellar and lasting academic institution. It also shows that in the crosscut of goodness and knowledge is a school where deep and caring consideration for future generations is applied to transitions; not only simple transitions, but the hard confrontations of self and purpose that lead to the meaningful evolution of character.

For me, and perhaps many of you, Exeter has been about transitions, transcendence, love and loyalty. This is how the Academy creates individuals of value to family and community. It is what inspires me, and hundreds of devoted alumni, to answer the call of service to Exeter. I look forward to being involved in this time of growth, and working with individuals with like minds and hearts who contribute to the strong character of this great institution as it evolves for years to come. E Mitch is part of a three-generation Exeter family including his father John D. Bradbury ’59, uncle Warren B. Bradbury Jr. ’52, and daughter Sarah Bradbury ’09. He lives with his wife, Barbara, and children Jonathan and Isabel in New Rochelle, New York.

His clinical practice is in New York City’s West Village.

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Reflecting on a Century of Life

By Lori Ferguson

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ince graduating from Exeter, George “Bud”

Barnard ’39 has lived a storied life, one that now spans nearly a century.

He witnessed the Bikini-Atoll atom bomb test from a hillside in Honolulu as a 2nd lieutenant in the Army; participated in the design team that created the

world’s first computer used directly for commercial purposes; worked as an activist on behalf of native Hawaiians trying to regain their indigenous rights; and in 2010 self-published his first book, a compendium of more than 300 of his dearly departed wife’s recipes entitled Aunt Bunny’s Favorite Recipes. At 93, Barnard is now hard at work on his memoir, A Life Worth Living, and his energy shows little sign of abating.

“The first thing I want to say is that my time at Exeter started my life off wonderfully,” Barnard says. “I grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts, and I wasn’t from a wealthy family, but my folks worked hard to make it possible for me to attend Exeter. The education I received there enabled me to make it to Harvard, something that I don’t believe would have been possible otherwise. I gained tremendously from my experiences at Exeter.”

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In fact, Barnard recalls with a chuckle, there’s one thing he took from Exeter that he’s still using every day: his front teeth. “I learned to dive at Exeter and became a member of the team,” he says. “One day at practice, I executed a dive and became confused when I hit the water. I swam to the bottom of the pool instead of the top and smacked my front teeth on the bottom, chipping them both. A kind person at the school repaired my teeth with porcelain, and since 1938, I haven’t had a single problem with them.”

On a more serious note, Barnard says that Exeter nurtured his spirit, feeding the sense of curiosity and love of people instilled by his parents. Barnard recalls many happy hours during his childhood, playing with his dad in the yard—“I remember seeing Lindbergh fly over our house in the Spirit of St. Louis!”—and learning about the far-flung regions of the world through his experiments with ham radio. In fact, he says, it was this hobby that spawned his interest in electronics and languages— Barnard perfected his French while at Exeter and later went on to learn Spanish and German, as well as a rudimentary command of Hawaiian, Mandarin and Hindustani. After graduating from Exeter, Barnard went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering at Harvard and Stanford, respectively. He spent the majority of his professional career in the computing field.

While living in the Hawaiian Islands after World War II, Barnard met his late wife, Annette “Bunny” Bilodeau.

The two married in 1949 and enjoyed a 56-year “marriage made in heaven,” Barnard says, before Bunny passed away in 2005.

During their years together, Bud and Bunny lived in Hawaii, as well as India and South America. It was their time abroad that reinforced Barnard’s love of people and his belief that “if we’d just look one another in the eye and smile, we’d be a lot better off. We’re all one people,” Barnard asserts, “and if we worked together, we could make our world a tremendous place.”

When asked to share his secret for living a full life, Barnard doesn’t miss a beat. “Look outwards,” he counsels. “Don’t dwell on what you think you can or cannot do, look toward what’s possible, and don’t put a limit on that! Let anything be an option. If you look inward, you’ll never get anywhere.” E

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Bringing Life to Ancient Rome

By Debbie Kane

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s executive director of the American Institute for Roman Culture (AIRC), Darius Arya ’89 “digs” history.

Based in Rome, Arya is a passionate advocate for all things related to Roman history; the archaeologist and classics scholar eagerly shares his enthusiasm with others on a near daily basis, tweeting, blogging and hosting online videos. He is about to launch a new, multi-platform online course, “Ancient Rome, Live” that will include an app, five hours of video, an ebook, and an interactive website.

“We’re trying to think outside the box,” Arya says.

“We want to take narrow, academic discussions about Roman culture and put them in context with larger contemporary issues. We want people to be inspired by Rome as more than a place to enjoy during vacation.”

Arya’s interest in the classics started in middle school in West Virginia and informed his entire education. At Exeter, he earned a classics diploma. While pursuing his undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania, he studied in Rome and realized, as he puts it, “I needed to be there.” He received a master’s degree and a doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin; a Fulbright scholarship and fellowship from the American Academy of Rome enabled him to return to Italy, this time permanently. He established AIRC in 2002, with a mission to educate others about the importance of historical preservation in Italy.

The organization offers study-abroad programs, an excavation field school and online education via videos and blogs.

Arya’s extensive use of social media and video sets him apart from many of his academic peers. He uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, as well as video blogs, to facilitate conversations about cultural heritage. His personable film presence is evident in such productions as Living History, a video blog for The Huffington Post documenting efforts to save the famed Roman Colosseum; short online videos about AIRC programs and

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archaeological digs; and Digging History, a Kickstarter-funded documentary series about Rome. He’s often an on-air expert in documentaries for the Discovery, History and National Geographic television channels, and has been interviewed by major media outlets around the world.

“I’ve had a longtime interest in video production and social media,” Arya says. “It’s a great way to communicate and to help with fundraising for AIRC. We have a good share of the preservation conversation that larger, more established organizations don’t.”

Arya and AIRC have put themselves squarely in the middle of key Roman preservation projects. One of the largest is a 250-acre archeological site at Ostia Antica, the 2,700-year-old ancient port of Rome, recently determined to be larger than Pompeii. For the past three years, students and adults at AIRC’s field school have worked in the Parco dei Ravennati, a park just outside the walls of Ostia. In April, they uncovered a cemetery where it’s believed the variety of tombs found reflects Ostia Antica’s once-bustling, multicultural population.

“Ostia is one of the top five archaeological sites in the world to understand the daily life of ancient Rome,” Arya says. “It needs more conservation management and this is a good opportunity to focus attention on the site.”

Arya has also launched online petitions to save important Italian heritage projects such as Hadrian’s Villa and the Gladiator Tomb, popularized in the movie Gladiator.

When he isn’t filming, digging, raising money, speaking or blogging about Italian archaeological projects and preservation issues, Arya meets with politicians, policy makers, and business leaders, discussing how history and preservation can be applied to real-world situations.

Arya believes history offers important lessons for leaders today. “The classics inspire people,” he says. “There are many business leaders, like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg [’02], who are enamored with history and motivated by it. It’s a discipline with far-reaching implications because it allows students to learn and really engages their minds.” E

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A O M A WA S H I E L D S ’ 9 3

MARTIN COX

Bringing the Stars Down to Earth

By Karen Ingraham

S

ipping hot cocoa before dawn at the Grainger

Observatory during her upper year, Aomawa Shields ’93 didn’t mind the cold or even waking up at 4 a.m. to join her physics classmates in observing Jupiter’s moons with a telescope.

“I have never forgotten that moment,” Shields says.

“Even though astronomy has become very remote controlled, what originally drew me to [it] was just being outside and looking up at the stars.”

Last summer, Shields received her Ph.D. in astronomy and astrobiology, and she’s now doing postdoctoral work at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics—thanks to a National Science Foundation fellowship. Shields is continuing her research on the potential habitability of planets found orbiting red dwarf stars. She is also dedicating a portion of her fellowship to the creation and launch of an interactive astronomy workshop geared toward young girls of color in middle schools.

“That’s the age when girls start to become quiet, not raise their hands as much, and become more concerned with outward appearances and less about being proud and confident in what they are learning,” Shields says. “I really wanted to get those girls early and expose them to all different types of astronomy education.”

Called “The Universe: More than Meets the Eye,” Shields’ workshop is designed to be metaphoric—to reveal not only the hidden truths behind a planet’s superficial appearance, but also behind a person’s. Venus, she says, “might look like this gorgeous planet, but if you get on the surface, it would melt you in seconds. We’ll be learning a lot about those types of misconceptions about the universe…and we’ll be involving the [students’] own personal backgrounds and experiences…with astronomy.”

Shields’ background is a significant catalyst in the development of her program, and in her completion of a Ph.D. after a long absence from academia. She is candid about saying that she chose Exeter, in part, because it had its own observatory, which she was proctor for during

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her senior year. But Shields became a star in her own right, landing her first acting role (Trudy in Steel Magnolias) during her lower year, after auditioning on a whim.

“Exeter in general made me feel like I could do anything,” she reflects. “I was able to do astronomy, a theater show practically at every turn, and also play violin in the orchestra and chamber orchestra.”

Exeter led to MIT and an undergraduate degree in earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences. That was initially followed by enrollment in a Ph.D. program; but Shields’ theater chops had been further flexed at MIT, so she chose to pursue an MFA in acting at UCLA, which she completed in 2001. In the years that followed, Shields ultimately found ways to marry her two passions, including as a TV host and field reporter on PBS’s “Wired Science” and as a guest scientist on programs produced by the Discovery and History channels. Her curriculum vitae lists memberships in both the American Astronomical Society and the Screen Actors Guild, and in 2012 Shields won the Audience Choice award at FameLab, a national science communication competition.

“Research alone is not where my path lies,” Shields says. “Communication of some sort is a large part of my life. When I feel most fulfilled is when I’m interacting directly with people of all ages.”

That interaction between science and the general population is a role that Shields is eager to expand upon with her postdoctoral work—particularly in her outreach efforts. “As a young girl of color, I didn’t remember seeing a lot of role models that looked like me,” she says. So she wants to make science more accessible, to demonstrate that scientists do look like her, and even like her colleague who competes in roller derbies and dresses in Goth. The universe is full of revelations. E

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M E M O R I A L

M I N U T E

Charles Everett Deardorff R O B E R T W. K E S L E R ’4 7 ( H O N . ) T E A C H I N G C H A I R I N M O D E R N L A N G UAG E S A N D C H A I R O F T H E D E PA RT M E N T O F M O D E R N L A N G UAG E S, E M E R I T US (1931 –20 1 2 )

L

egend has it that Missouri Congressman

Willard Vandiver coined his state’s nickname, “The Show Me State,” in a speech given in Philadelphia in 1899. He declared: “I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.” Politics aside, this adage captures the independent spirit and lifelong Midwestern outlook of Charles Everett Deardorff ’68 (Hon.); P’79, P’84, P’87. He believed in action, practicality, pioneering, empiricism, and a healthy sense of humor.

Charlie was born in Burlington Junction, Missouri, on April 7, 1931, and attended primary school and high school in Fairfax. Charlie said he understood what small class size is, for even today Fairfax High School has but 77 students and 11 teachers. In 1951, after two years at Northwest Missouri State College, Charlie joined the Air Force and served five years—as Russian linguist while stationed in Japan, and at the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. He took up formal studies again in 1955 at the University of Kansas, majoring in Russian and German, and in 1961 was awarded an M.A. degree in Slavic languages and literatures from the University of Indiana. While teaching at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, Charlie applied to launch the Russian Program at Exeter, and was appointed in 1962 as instructor of Russian and German, neither language known for its “frothy eloquence.” He, his wife, Andrea ’68 (Hon.); P’79, P’84, P’87, and 1-year-old son, Andrew, moved into Soule Hall; and, as the Deardorff family grew, dormitory and housing assignments changed: Ed Gilman House (now called Cushwa House), Webster North, Hooper House, and—not to be forgotten—a year in the top flat of Corner House at Eton College, England, in 1979–80. British school etiquette, and English weather and heating take some getting used to, and Charlie wrote to Dean of Faculty Don Cole ’49, ’51 (Hon.); P’70, P’72, P’75, P’77 about the challenges, perhaps exaggerating a bit. Don was concerned though, now that the Deardorffs included daughters

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Jennifer and Marceny ’87, and wrote and asked how he could help. Self-sufficiency always being one of Charlie’s traits, he wrote back, “If things continue as they are, not only will the Deardorffs survive England, England will survive the Deardorffs.”

Charlie began his teaching career in the coldest moments of the Cold War era, when in America, nothing positive could be attributed to the Soviet Union. Space and armament competition, threats and counterthreats, fear and hatred were the political climate. American government policy, though, saw an urgent need for forming Russian speakers and scholars in order to tilt the balance in the West’s favor, for secret intelligence, journalism, and perhaps eventually entrepreneurship. The latter goals as we know took much longer to achieve. Charlie felt the challenge, but also was determined to show that all Russians were Soviets; that Russia was a land of culture and tradition, of science and mathematics, of poetry and emotion. He read and talked about whatever dissident Soviet writings he could obtain. He realized, too, that in order to discover the true Russian identity, students and teachers alike would have to visit Russia, make contact with ordinary citizens, and make it possible for Russians to do the same in the United States. And so Charlie began a series of student travel and study programs to Moscow, Leningrad and Novograd—not an easy feat in the ’60s and ’70s—and later established the Exeter-Krasnodar student- and teacher-exchange program. More than once did anticipated visas not come through in those years preceding the dissolution of the Soviet Union, forcing itinerary changes and delays, but Charlie took this all in stride. This was experiential learning.

Charlie’s love and enthusiasm for the Russian language became the cornerstone of his teaching. Charlie needed no propaganda machine, because his students spread the word. When awarding him the first Kesler professorship in modern languages, Principal Emerita Kendra Stearns O’Donnell ’31, ’47, ’63, ’89, ’91, ’97 (Hon.); P’00 closed with these words: “[. . .] Good nature fills his classroom and creates in his students an interest in the Russian language

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STEVE LEWIS

which extends far beyond their years at Exeter. Charlie can and does claim with fatherly pride that an uncommon number of his students become scholars and teachers of Russian. Clearly, as legions of parents and students [can] attest, Charlie inspires as well as instructs.”

Charlie’s expertise and contributions to the study of Russian were further acknowledged beyond Exeter in his leadership in the Russian SAT and NAIS programs, by his work with AATSEEL (the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages), and by the many non-Exeter students he brought to campus for the Russian Olympiadas. He also taught a tuition-free Russian course at New Hampshire College in the late ’60s.

During his 31 years at Exeter, Charlie coached a variety of sports: soccer, baseball and lacrosse; and for many years he was the adviser and coach to the Shooters Club, where he shared his love of hunting going back to his Missouri childhood. He was not pleased when the program lost its place in the Academy’s offerings, and felt we were becoming “soft”—an expression he used more than once about changes to the curriculum and student rules.

Charlie valued order, clarity, and probably what we term today as “transparency.” He served on many committees: Academic Review, Commencement, Dining Hall, Faculty Fund, and when it still existed, the Dance Committee. Of course he tirelessly led the Russian Club and Russian table as well. Charlie loved the outdoors: gardening, hunting, cutting wood and camping. He and his family camped

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their way across Europe and the Soviet Union for eight months in 1975, and several weeks in Great Britain during his Eton exchange.

In his 1993 retirement year, Charlie was honored with a yearbook dedication and also honorary membership in the class of 1968. The inscription on the induction plaque recalled Charlie’s teaching as well as his dormitory style in Ed Gilman House. A former advisee wrote, “He strictly enforced the letter of the law, yelled and threatened a lot, and never wavered in the execution of his duty as our parent away from home. He was, in fact, what all of us parents today aspire to be . . . consistent and predictable.”

The 1993 yearbook inscription focused on the classroom. A senior wrote: “God meant for us to suffer and therefore invented the Russian language, but then He decided that He didn’t want some of us to suffer that much, and therefore sent us Mr. Deardorff.”

Charlie passed away at age 81 on April 17, 2012. He spent his retirement years engaged in his favorite activities, surrounded by family and grandchildren. He would tell a colleague that, of course, he was reading in his field, and he meant that literally. E This Memorial Minute was written by Ethan Shapiro P’17, P’17, P’18, chairperson; Aldo Baggia ’72 (Hon.); P’91, P’92, P’03*; and Joe Reiter P’91, P’96, P’98, and was presented at faculty meeting on September 8, 2014. *Aldo Baggia served as a member of the Memorial Minute Committee but passed away before this Minute could be read to the full faculty.

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P E N D E T

Transformations

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ack home, we had one season: summer. Seventy degrees was considered “sweater weather,” and the wispy clouds that occasionally drifted across the sky were never enough to subdue the tropical sunshine. I was woken at the same time every day by the morning rays that filtered through the verdant palm fronds outside my window and by the soft rhythm of waves kissing the shoreline. I’d experienced cold weather and snow on family ski trips, but to me the four seasons seemed more like an idea poets and authors used in their work than an actual phenomenon. When I applied to boarding schools on the East Coast, some of my off-island teachers who knew I was leaving came to congratulate me on my acceptance and tell me how great of an experience it would be.

“You’re going to have so much fun! Where is your school again?”

“Exeter, it’s in New Hampshire.”

“Oh, oh my, I remember my days up near New Hampshire. Pack warm, honey; you’re in for some of the harshest weather in the country.”

With my first year of boarding school came my first seasonal-transformation experience. When I arrived on campus in the fall, the sun was shining brightly and the vibrant colors of summer were still splashed across the landscape. A brawny oak tree splayed its green foliage in front of my dormitory window, casting a familiar homey glow throughout my room when the afternoon sun shone through its leaves. I observed the unfamiliar, papery leaves, tracing the thin veiny patterns that decorated their broad surfaces. When the crisp autumn wind began to blow, the green leaves turned shades of red and gold.

I positioned my bed to face the window, thrilled to have such a close-up view of the beautiful metamorphosis.

Absorbed in the stark hues of the autumn leaves, I hardly noticed the gradual transition into winter. It wasn’t until the afternoon rays stopped making their way through my window that I noticed the colors beginning to fade and dull. Without the sun’s glowing backdrop, the golden leaves of the tree looked withered and brown, clinging to gnarly branches with frail stems. The sun hid for days behind thick, gray clouds, casting desolate shadows across campus and into my room. I began setting morning alarms on my phone, waking up to the heavy beating of slushy sleet against my window and looking out to see the leaves of the tree drooping under the weight of frozen raindrops. When the bleak veil of rainclouds finally cleared, icy wind and snowstorms tore through

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the tree, stripping the last shriveled leaves off the naked branches. The days of winter slouched by in a cold, dreary haze, lit only by the flat, white flickering of the fluorescent light on my dorm room ceiling.

Just when I thought I would never see the sun and feel its warmth again, the first signs of spring emerged, tauntingly peeking out from behind the slowly receding clouds of winter. The transformation materialized slowly before my eager eyes. I looked out my window every day, searching for the sun as it cautiously pushed aside the gray masses and shined gently on the mounds of discarded snow, gradually melting them into pools of water. I watched the icicles that glinted like frozen daggers on the tree’s branches melt into shimmering droplets that pattered softly on my windowsill. “Don’t get your hopes too high; there’s always one more snow-dump before spring actually comes around,” my friends forewarned me when they noticed my growing excitement for the coming of the new season.

The last snow fell overnight in March, soft and silent, settling on the ground and on the braches of my tree. The scene outside my window the next morning was caked in white, the wispy tree branches sprinkled with a fine snowy powder that glittered in the sunlight.

Spring’s coming was agonizingly prolonged, but the return of life and color was mesmerizing. On the barren branches of the tree outside my window, small, white bulbs began to bud. One by one the bulbs unraveled into the leaves I had not seen in months. They were small and fragile, fluttering like delicate pale-green petals in the spring breeze. As the sun’s rays grew brighter, the green of the leaves deepened, filling my room with a pleasant glow.

In the beauty and excitement of spring, much of winter’s gloom was forgotten. I loathed winter—I despised the cold that gnawed mercilessly at my bones and the dismal grayness that shrouded the scene outside my window for a seemingly endless four months. Throughout the bane of winter, I craved the simple things I’d grown up taking for granted. Finally, one April morning I woke up before my blaring phone alarm for the first time in months, my eyes gently pried open by the first rays of sunrise. I blissfully turned to my window, taking in the sight of my tree’s branches and their new leaves rustling in the morning breeze as the warm rays filtered through them, the revitalized beauty of the scene enhanced by the scattered rainbow-colored fragments of spring sunlight. E

FRED CARLSON

By Michelle Ysrael ’15, native of Guam

PH IL L I P S E XET E R ACAD E MY 20 Main Street Exeter, NH 03833-2460 Parents of Alumni: If this magazine is addressed to a son or daughter who no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, please email us (records@exeter.edu) with his or her new address. Thank you.

“A PROGRAM THAT STRIVES TO COMPETE WITH THE BEST AND WIN NEEDS UNIFORMS, EQUIPMENT, TRANSPORTATION AND QUALITY COACHES. WHEN YOU SUPPORT THE EXETER FUND YOU GIVE EVERY STUDENT A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE.” Visit www.exeter.edu/EA for a schedule of the Exeter/Andover games on Saturday, November 8, and find out how to live stream some of the action.

—ROB MORRIS, DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS