The Exeter Bulletin WINTER 2020
What Does Harkness Taste Like? Discuss. AT T H E TA B L E W I T H A WA R D - W I N N I N G CHEF JASON GOODENOUGH ’97
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WINTER
The Exeter Bulletin Principal William K. Rawson ’71; P’08 Executive Editor Karen Ingraham Managing Editor Patrick Garrity Senior Editor Jennifer Wagner Class Notes Editor Cathy Webber Editorial Coordinator Maxine Weed Creative Director/Design David Nelson, Nelson Design 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 John A. Downer ’75
Ciatta Z. Baysah ’97, Suzi Kwon Cohen ’88, Walter C. Donovan ’81, Mark A. Edwards ’78, Claudine Gay ’88, Peter A. Georgescu ’57, Jacqueline J. Hayes ’85, Jennifer P. Holleran ’86, Cia Buckley Marakovits ’83, Sally J. Michaels ’82, Daniel C. Oakley ’80, Deidre G. O’Byrne ’84, William K. Rawson ’71, Peter M. Scocimara ’82, Serena Wille Sides ’89, Morgan C. Sze ’83, Kristyn M. Van Ostern ’96 and E. Janney Wilson ’83 The Exeter Bulletin (ISSN No. 0195-0207) is published four times each year: fall, winter, spring and summer, by Phillips Exeter Academy 20 Main Street, Exeter NH 03833-2460 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 2020 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
PATRICK GARRIT Y
Vice President Wole C. Coaxum ’88
“OUR COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION AND OUR COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION GO HAND IN HAND. ONE CANNOT BE SEPARATED FROM THE OTHER.” —page 28
IN THIS ISSUE
Volume CXXIV, Issue no. 2
Features 28 Lessons in Empathy and Identity Exeter faculty create spaces for students to explore tough topics. By Patrick Garrity and Jennifer Wagner
34 Kitchen Confidential Chef Jason Goodenough ’97 brings the heat and Harkness to the Big Easy. By Sandra Guzmán
38 Adaptable Harkness 34 38
Practitioners share their methods at Exeter’s pilot leadership conference. By Sarah Pruitt ’95
44 A Tremendous Step Forward Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the vote for coeducation. By Patrick Garrity
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Around the Table: Meet the Faculty, Exeter Annotated, Deconstructed and more
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Inside the Writing Life: Alex Myers ’96
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Sports: 150 Seasons of Hoops
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Connections: Catching up with our alumni —Cover photo by Chris Granger
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Jeremiah Swett ’21 puts the shot in a track and field meet at Thompson Field House. PHOTO BY MARY SCHWALM
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What’s new and notable at the Academy
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Open to All By Principal William K. Rawson ’71; P’08
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hillips Exeter Academy “shall ever be equally open to youth of requisite qualifications from every quarter.” John and Elizabeth Phillips wrote those extraordinary words two years before the Revolutionary War ended and seven years before the U.S. Constitution was ratified. Our school is older than our current federal government. Importantly, John and Elizabeth Phillips established Exeter as a free school. They also anticipated that their initial philanthropy would not be sufficient to support the school over time. In the Deed of Gift, the Phillipses wisely stated their expectation that “persons of ability, who reap some advantage by this institution, will cheerfully assist … so that poor children of promising genius may be introduced, and members who may need some special aid may have it afforded them.” In the 239 years since those words were written, our founders’ expectation has indeed been cheerfully met by generations of Exonians who have supported our great school. Exeter’s annual fund provides a wonderful example. In 1922, the class of 1920 voted to have classmates who were able give $10 annually to the Academy. The classes of 1921 and 1922 quickly followed suit. They were inspired by Principal Lewis Perry’s habit of using his own money
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to provide students in need with clothing and other items. The alumni classes wanted to provide funds for the principal to use at his discretion. Their collective generosity, known then as the “Christmas Fund,” established what we now call The Exeter Fund — the second-oldest annual fund in the United States (Yale’s being the first). It is because of such examples of philanthropy during our school’s history that more than 500 students are recipients of financial assistance this year. That’s up from 215 when I was a student on scholarship 50 years ago, and up from 334 just 15 years ago. Support for financial aid changes lives. It certainly changed mine. Without it, Exeter would not be the school that it is today, nor the community that you see reflected in this issue of the Bulletin. Exeter remains true to its mission to unite goodness and knowledge and inspire youth from every quarter to live purposeful lives. We see this in the stories presented in this issue of the Bulletin, all of which demonstrate our community’s collective will to maintain the strength and diversity of our student body and the excellence of our programs. As we look to the future, and as the cost of an Exeter education increases, we must continue the same commitment to the Academy introduced by our founders. Exeter must remain a school open to all qualified students, and support for financial aid must always be one of our highest priorities. On behalf of the entire Academy community, I wish to express profound gratitude to the generations of alumni, parents and friends who have supported our school. We look to the future with great anticipation for what we will accomplish together in service to our students and to Exeter. Thank you. E
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CHRISTIAN HARRISON
Exeter Salutes Its Veterans
Alumni who served in the U.S. military gather around a Harkness table for a conversation with Instructor in History Emeritus Jack Herney ’46, ’69, ’71, ’74, ’92, ’95 (Hon.).
A L U M N I M I L I TA R Y S E R V I C E C E L E B R AT E D By Lissa Gumprecht
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he Academy welcomed alumni who have served or are currently serving in the military to campus over two days in November for “Exeter Salutes.” Attendees shared war stories alongside Exeter memories and participated in Harkness classes — both with current students and then one another, led by emeriti faculty. Exeter has a rich history of military service. More than 500 living alumni and two dozen current employees are either veterans of or on active or reserve duty in the U.S. armed forces. Scores more have died in service to their country. A panel of veterans shared how their days at Exeter prepared them for their time in the military. “There were definitely multiple times in the Marine Corps where I wasn’t the smartest or strongest but … I was able to lead through example … drive and attitude,” said former Capt. Greg Parsons ’90. “With passion, perseverance and grit, which I had honed here [at Exeter], there isn’t any obstacle you can’t overcome.” E
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Math Instructor John Mosley’s Math 420 class.
Letters to the Editor HARKNESS ‘GRAFFITI’
My classmate Wes LaFountain’s piece on Mercy Carbonell’s classroom (“The Stories English Instructor Mercy Carbonell’s Classroom Tells”) in the fall 2019 issue of The Exeter Bulletin triggered this memory of mine. When Mercy Carbonell mentioned the carvings on her Harkness table and her colleague Peter Greer ’58, it reminded me of a visit to Peter’s classroom many Septembers ago. It was a late Friday afternoon class. Only the visiting alumni lingered after class for the chance to chat. It didn’t matter whether you were a former student of Peter’s or, like me, hadn’t known him as a student (I was a senior in his first year on the faculty), he was glad to welcome all. That afternoon, he reflected on a change that had taken place over the summer: His Harkness table had been refinished. Lost were the decades of carvings from former students like those Mercy cherishes and the memories behind each one, conjuring up a class, a discussion, a time of year, a cohort of students in the wave of
history every classroom holds. From all that had been lost off his table, Peter mentioned only one name: Eddie Perry ’85. I knew the name only for the circumstances of his death, a young black man shot by a white police officer in New York City the same month he’d graduated from Exeter. We alumni didn’t ask, and I can only wonder now, what Peter remembered that afternoon about Eddie Perry, gone at least 15 years by the time that Harkness table was refinished. May the Academy spare Mercy Carbonell’s table a similar fate. George Bain ’69 Jamesville, New York
A VISIT TO RICK PARRIS’ CLASS
Patrick Garrity’s “Not by the Numbers” (The Exeter Bulletin, fall 2019) brought back memories of a Parents’ Day visit to Rick Parris’ class during my daughter Kate’s prep year. What I saw epitomizes both Exeter’s math curriculum and its creator’s character. The class ran routinely. Mr. Parris assigned each PHOTO BY MARY SCHWALM
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student a problem from that day’s set. Students wrote their solutions on the blackboards, and were called on one by one to explain them. When it was Kate’s turn, she said her problem had two solutions and explained both. Mr. Parris asked for comments, noted both solutions were viable, and moved on to the next problem. After class, Mr. Parris told me quietly, almost offhandedly, that Kate’s problem had been part of the curriculum for many years. It had been reviewed annually by the faculty, but was never understood to have more than one solution. I was astonished, but a prep’s discovery of a new solution neither surprised nor consternated Mr. Parris. The discovery was satisfying, but far from rare. The student received no special praise, the annual reviewers no criticism. To paraphrase Panama Geer’s comment in Mr. Garrity’s fine article, that the discovery had come from a student simply made Mr. Parris’ work more rewarding. Dan Kelly P’08 Mitchellville, Maryland
GRATEFUL FOR EXETER ALTRUISM
My family returned penniless from Greece in 1946 after the war. My father said: Nick will work at Uncle John’s
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little grocery store. My mother said: Nick will go to school. My good luck was that a Harvard faculty wife involved in social work suggested that I learn my English as a test subject at the Harvard Basic English Program established by the respected professor I.A. Richards and his instructor Christine Gibson. Under the tutelage of Miss Gibson, I had no idea that at one point I was applying for a summer school admission to Exeter. At Exeter, after I pulled up my English grade to a D-, I was accepted for the year. Mr. H. Hamilton Bissell ’29, as director of scholarship boys, managed to get the funds for my stay. I buried myself in my studies in a heavy coat donated by the family of a war victim. Mr. Bissell (to me, never “Hammy”) introduced me one day to a wonderful couple, Charles and Marie Robertson. I became one of their scholarship boys and they, as well as Mr. Bissell, kept lovingly always in touch. I cannot express adequately my gratitude to Exeter faculty and those three persons for their altruism. Exeter was a wonderful springboard to Harvard, and both led to my successful career as a cardiologist. Nicholas Yankopoulos ’48 Malibu, California
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A Guided Tour of Bill Jordan’s Classroom By Jennifer Wagner
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to Bill Jordan’s classroom. There the history instructor of 22 years fosters dialogue about American and ancient history, politics, and the law across ideological and party lines. It’s a teaching philosophy reinforced around the table and on each of his room’s curated walls. There are rally placards for Trump, Obama, Newt and Ron Paul, he notes. “I want it to be as balanced as possible.” Valuing all perspectives is a skill Jordan P’12, P’17, P’17 first honed at home (“My father was a newshound and politics junkie.”) and further developed during his time as a newspaper reporter covering crime, local government and school board meetings in Massachusetts for The Beacon and The Malden Evening News. He brings that selfsame passion for community involvement and civic engagement to the Academy as a longtime boys cross country coach, dorm affiliate and adviser to the Exeter Political Union. Here’s the scoop on a few notable objects in Academy Building Room 028. E
PHOTOS BY CHERYL SENTER UNLESS NOTED
ant to talk turkey? Head
The George McGovern button is Jordan’s favorite. The two met in 1972 while McGovern was on the campaign trail and Jordan was at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. “We chatted. He’s a very nice guy,” he recalls. “It was one of my best political moments ever.”
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CHRISTIAN HARRISON
“Studying national politics can make you feel a little bit hopeless about the future,” Jordan says, which is why he brought students to a deliberative session in Exeter, where they picked up this voter card. “They’re not at each other’s throats and they’re not polarizing,” he says of local politicians. “They can compromise, they can listen to each other. [Students] see that in person in that room.”
“This book is my bible,” Jordan says. “Classrooms are political spaces, there’s no way around that, but they should not be places of indoctrination. We shouldn’t be telling our students what to think, but helping them learn how to think.”
Jordan designed these stickers to hand out to students. “I am into this notion of epistemic humility,” he says. “One of the things we need to teach people to be good citizens is to always think, ‘Could I be wrong?’ That way, they listen to other people, take in other views, and don’t assume that they’re always right.”
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Ken Ilgunas
author, environmentalist “The oceans are rising. The storms are strengthening. The climate refugees are fleeing. The droughts are coming. The planet is warming. What are you going to do about it? What is your duty as a citizen of the world? How far should each of you go to protect our planet?”
To watch videos of these assemblies, go to exeter.edu/exeterlive.
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Heard in Assembly SOUND BITES FROM LAST F A L L’ S S P E A K E R S E R I E S Compiled by Jennifer Wagner BK Fulton, film producer
“If I want to have influence today, I need to be able to use the tools of this time, and one of the most important tools is art. Art and genuine expression is like a truth space. I realized that if I could do something that contributed to the arts, it could be seen worldwide, it could influence people. Imagine if we could make love go viral? Kindness go viral? Support for your friends go viral? I think art can help us to do that.”
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Dallas Brown ’74, retired U.S. Army colonel, senior counselor
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at the Department of Homeland Security “How did Exeter prepare me? … I think it really boils down to building a sense of internal discipline, of learning how to be prepared, learning how to write, how to think and how to respond effectively when challenged by other very talented people. The Harkness table system is probably the best preparation I can think of for a career at senior levels of government.”
Julie Livingston ’84, historian, anthropologist “Growth is an idea that has become so second nature that when we think about a place in this world and how to improve it, immediately we assume growth has to be the basis of that effort. But as growth has become a kind of common sense, a cascade of unseen consequences also becomes second nature. I call this process self-devouring growth. That’s my name for the ways the superorganisms of human beings are consuming our finite planet. Self-devouring growth is everywhere. It is so fundamental as to be unremarkable, but it is quite literally eating away at the ground beneath our feet.”
Livingston
Courtney Sender, poet, Bennett Fellow “I understand the real world as very much only understandable with some recourse to the spiritual, because so many strange things happen. I mean, the experience of love, loss, sorrow, sadness, it always feels so much bigger than us and our own lives. It feels like it requires some recourse to something other than the strict real.” Richard Blanco, author, presidential inaugural poet
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“One of the great things about America is that immigrants continue to infuse and remind us of our ideals and remind us, as a country, of the promise that we made to the world in terms of freedom, liberty and justice for all. And of our duty to step up and participate in our democracy as a way of not losing our country.”
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Ronan Donovan, biologist, wildlife photographer “When they reintroduced wolves to Yellowstone, they said we’re going to have dead children at the bus stop. Hasn’t happened. There have been maybe six recorded deaths in the last 100 years. We lose 20 people a year to cows. It’s easier to fear these predatory animals rather than these benign ones. The fear isn’t necessarily realistic. It’s a perceived fear, and part of the goal is to re-educate people.”
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Dr. Yiannis Monovoukas, CEO, bioentrepreneur “In 1974, as a result of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, [my family] lost everything. We fled to the mountains to avoid the bombings and invading troops. For perhaps three weeks, we slept under trees or in trenches. One day, my dad turns to me and says, ‘Let this be a lesson to you. Material things can disappear overnight, just like we lost everything. But not knowledge, not education.’ I never forgot those words.” E Monovoukas
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Global Humanitarian Honored D. M I C H A E L S H A F E R ’ 7 1 R E C E I V E S J O H N A N D E L I Z A B E T H P H I L L I P S A WA R D By Jennifer Wagner
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to 21 children, a grassroots community organizer in rural Thailand and a university professor, D. Michael Shafer ’71 has spent a lifetime doing what others consider acts of kindness and sacrifice, but which he has understood as no more than the recognition of the basic humanity of others. For this clarity of purpose, Academy Trustees honored Shafer with the 2019 John and Elizabeth Phillips Award during a special assembly in October. Shafer accepted the recognition with a humble recounting of his first days at the Academy nearly 50 years ago as a “newbie lower.” He never forgot the poignant words his father imparted as he dropped him off for preseason football. Your measure as a man, his father said, will be how much better the world is when you leave it than when you entered it. Taking this sage counsel to heart, Shafer traveled the world. His first international foray was to France through Exeter’s “Schoolboys Abroad” program. The following summer he walked the length of Yugoslavia with his brother. During his undergraduate years, he took 15 months off to explore Africa. During one impactful trip to Ethiopia, he befriended the leaders of an insurgency movement and witnessed firsthand how they mobilized laborers to rise up against a powerful war machine with nothing but wooden pitchforks. The experience taught him about authority, legitimacy and the strength of individuals to enact change. It became a touchstone for his professional career. Shafer completed his bachelor’s degree in history at Yale and set to work, first at the State Department in Washington, D.C., and then at the Agency for International Development. After earning his doctorate in political science from Harvard in 1984, he accepted a teaching
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position at Rutgers University and remained there for nearly 25 years, winning teaching awards every year. At Rutgers, Shafer led the Citizenship and Service Education initiative, or CASE, growing it into the largest service-learning program in the United States. His personal commitment to the developing world inspired him to found Global Partnerships for Activism and Cross-Cultural Training. Global PACT has trained students from more than 50 countries to run programs in civic engagement, anti-poverty, anti-trafficking and post-apartheid conflict resolution. After achieving tenure and helping raise four adopted children, including two with special needs, Shafer pivoted from scholar to social entrepreneur. He and his wife, Evelind Schecter, sold or gave away most of their possessions and moved to the rural village of Phrao, Thailand, to found Warm Heart, a grassroots community-development organization serving one of the country’s poorest districts. Warm Heart currently provides safe housing, education and health services for 40 at-risk children, disabled people and the elderly. In addition, Shafer developed a low-tech, low-cost biochar machine that converts biomass into fertilizer. By teaching local farmers to build and use these machines, he not only helps them improve their crop yields and income, but positively impacts the environment through climate change mitigation. As assembly drew to a close, Shafer directed the students to never stop acting out their humanity. “Here at the Academy, we talk about a lot of very theoretical things,” he said. “I’m asking you to engage things with your own hands, to be there.” How to do that? “Commit small, daily acts of kindness.” That way, he said, “every one of you can leave the world a better place than when you entered it.” E Since 1965, Academy Trustees have presented this award to an Exonian whose life and contributions to the welfare of community, country and humanity exemplify the nobility of character and usefulness to society that the founders sought to promote in establishing the Academy. The award was renamed in 2019 to acknowledge Elizabeth Phillips’ role as co-founder of the school.
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Bravo! Bravo! The arts have long pervaded Exeter life. Half of our students take music lessons or perform in ensembles large and small. Hundreds more participate in theatrical and dance productions each year. The recent expansion and upgrades at the Forrestal-Bowld Music Center and the arrival in 2018 of The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance have further burnished the arts at the Academy and their integral contributions to an Exonian’s education. SYMPHONY: Instructor in Music Rohan Smith conducts the Symphony Orchestra in The Bowld performance space.
LIGHT AS A FEATHER: Sophia Emy ’21 dances in the snowfall during The Nutcracker.
STAGECRAFT: Students in Instructor Lauren Josef’s Technical Theater and Design class work on platforms for the set of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.
PHOTOS BY EVA CARCHIDI ’20, WILLIAM VIETOR ’21, AND LAUREN JOSEF
ACT I: Sav Bartkovich ’23 on the Actor’s Lab stage.
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A Return to Africa I N S T R U C TO R K E V I N B A R T KOV I C H ’S M I S S I O N TO H E L P B U I L D A S C H O O L I N U GA N DA By Patrick Garrity
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Above: Exeter Math Instructor Kevin Bartkovich (right) poses with school co-founder Scott Myhre. Inset: Bartkovich speaks with current students.
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hen Math Instructor Kevin Bartkovich and his wife, JD, arrived in
Bundibugyo, in the farthest reaches of Uganda, the leading natural resource was despair. No electricity. No phones. No schools. Plumbing was a luxury; the internet, a fantasy. There was one road in and one road out, and if you were lucky, you were on the latter. That was 20 years ago. In September, Bartkovich was back in Bundibugyo, surveying a different place from the one he and JD first laid eyes on in 1999. He was there to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Christ School Bundibugyo, a faith-based school he helped build from nothing. He shared the story of how that came to be with inductees of Exeter’s Cum Laude Society in the fall. “I was newly married and doing cool stuff as a math teacher at North Carolina School for Science and Math, and I felt I was at the height of my profession,” he told the students. “Teaching
the best and the brightest, I was working with colleagues to write innovative textbooks, training teachers at other schools, speaking at conferences. Yet this question was nagging at me: ‘Is this it? Is this all there is?’” It was during this time of self-reflection that Bartkovich received a letter from an old friend inviting him to come to Africa to help open a secondary school. “JD said, ‘Yes, let’s do it,’ and I said, ‘No way,’ but six months later, there we were, leaving our
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possessions and our income and moving to this place called Bundibugyo.” Bartkovich joins school Bartkovich recounted to the Cum Laude Society the difficulties the founders faced. founders and leaders The region, straddling the equator on the border with the Democratic Republic of in celebrating the 20th Congo, was a literal war zone. Corruption was rampant. An education was an extravaanniversary. gance few could attain, because it meant sending Bundibugyo’s youth out of the region. In a year, the Bartkoviches and the other founders had managed to build a classroom, a dorm and a kitchen and stake out the school compound. The first school year ended with 25 students — half the number at the start — and only one other teacher, but they persevered. By the time the Bartkoviches left Uganda, 10 years later, the school had grown to six grades, 26 teachers and 350 students. Today, it thrives. Bartkovich found during his reunion in September that the school’s graduates hold leadership positions throughout the region. One just finished his medical degree and is beginning his residency. Four others are now teaching at the school. “A doctor in Bundibugyo told me of a recent meeting with the district hospital nurses. While they were talking, he asked them where they had done their schooling,” Bartkovich said. “All of them had attended Christ School.” Bartkovich has been at Exeter ever since leaving Uganda. Since 2010, he has lived in and served as dorm head in Ewald. In 2018, he assumed leadership of the Anja S. Greer Conference on Mathematics and Technology, the popular summer weeklong teachers institute. He and JD have five children: Joe ’16, Louisa ’18, twins Nate ’23 and Sav ’23, and Lexi. Having learned in Uganda that “there is always room for one more,” they also are foster parents (“eight kids and counting”). Bartkovich closed his remarks to the Cum Laude Society inductees with a call to action: “There are many forms your service can take; I chose to go down as far as I could and to be proximate to the poorest of the poor, past the end of the road, a true outpost on the edge. For you it might not be about going remote in geography, but in terms of resources, there are many communities that are ‘remote.’ … You are an incredibly talented group of young people. If you pay attention and keep your hearts open, you will have the opportunity to make a difference. Where will your journey take you?” E
“If you pay attention and keep your hearts open, you will have the opportunity to make a difference. “
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T H E S C H O O L W E L O V E I N D E TA I L By Patrick Garrity
THE THOMPSON GYM SWIMMING POOL
On a remade South Campus, tucked between two gleaming new pieces of Exeter’s present, sits part of the Academy’s past — and, perhaps one day, part of its future. The Thompson Gymnasium swimming pool, drained dry for nearly half of its hundred years, remains in the school’s master plan. How it might be used is still in the idea stage, but its enviable spot near the William Boyce Thompson Field House and the David L. and Stacey E. Goel Center for Theater and Dance makes the space a prime piece of property in South Campus’ renewal. When it was built in 1918, the pool was considered state-of-the-art — not to mention an essential addition to Big Red athletic offerings, given that Andover had opened its new pool more than three years earlier. That head start didn’t help the Blue, however; Exeter won eight of the first nine head-to-head swim meets with its oldest foe. The pool’s heyday ended in 1969 with the construction of an Olympic-sized pool in what became Love Gymnasium. In 1986, a sagging skylight over the original pool was disassembled, the electrical system was upgraded and the signature glass blocks in the exterior wall were replaced. The pool has been in semi-hibernation ever since, awaiting its next chapter. E
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Speaking Out on Identity A C O N V E R S AT I O N W I T H E N G L I S H I N S T R U C T O R A L E X M Y E R S ’ 9 6 By Daneet Steffens ’82
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lex Myers fights for inclusivity, equality and plain old human goodness. Myers was Exeter’s first openly transgender student, attending as a girl for three years and returning for his senior year as a boy. Today, he shares his values by advocating for others, teaching English and writing fiction.
immersive descriptions of Ron’s new world, from air filled with foreign scents (“I breathed in sage and the sharp resin of pine”) to detailed touches that evoke a canny immediacy, as when Ron finds himself in a group of Forest Service firefighters tucked into their sleeping bags “like rows and rows of string beans.” I caught up with Myers, now in his fifth year teaching at the Academy, in between dorm duties to chat about his life and body of work. As a high school senior, what was it about Exeter that made you feel comfortable enough to be openly transgender?
“Writing has helped me understand my gender and my identity in a way that I don’t think I would have been able to if I’d just talked about it,” Myers says. His debut novel, Revolutionary, mined the story of Deborah Sampson Gannett, America’s first female soldier, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in transgender fiction. His new novel, Continental Divide, published last fall, hits closer to home. Drawing on his own experience during a challenging summer in Wyoming, Myers introduces readers to Ron — formerly Veronica — a transgender teen. Ron ventures out West where he lands work at a dude ranch and finds himself battling bigotry from co-workers. It’s an experience that proves exhausting, overwhelming and life-threatening, but Ron, like Myers, perseveres. Myers’ well-crafted narrative contains
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People here, unlike in a lot of the rest of the world, listen. That’s one of the best things about Harkness: You have to listen for the system to work. I felt that I always had a voice. Even when people didn’t really want to listen to me, there were contexts in which they had to, and where, in turn, I had to listen to them. I had to learn to articulate myself, defend myself and be a good human. I came back here to teach because I felt that the institution values what I value — openness, dialogue, genuine humanity, a belief in goodness — and I saw that there was a lot of change that could happen. I like to be an advocate for change. That’s so intensely frustrating on a political level; it’s much easier in a community like Exeter. How much of this new novel is based on your own life?
The skeleton of the story was based on my experience; the fictional flesh includes the characters and a lot of the minor incidents. I did head out West, I had gotten a job as a cook on a dude ranch in Wyoming. But after a couple of weeks I was fired. A friend of mine sent a postcard that mentioned that I was trans and the boss fired me on the spot. I did get a job with the Forest Service, but I did not come out to everyone there. I was very much in stealth mode and it both felt awesome — in terms of realizing that I could do that — and terrible and confining because I was continuously hiding and hounded by this secret, wondering what they would do to me if they found out.
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Why did you choose that particular experience to turn into a novel?
It’s just one of those magnetic times in my life that I always come back to. … I loved that summer. It was such a beautiful place and so formative. It was so personally challenging for me to go there. It’s always been one of those times that thinking about it, even after all this time, can still bring me to the verge of tears. And I feel unbelievably lucky: it wasn’t but four months after I got back that Matthew Shepard was murdered. I just remember hearing about that, having that absolute stomach-drop moment of, “That could have been me.”
“THAT’S ONE OF THE BEST THINGS ABOUT HARKNESS: YOU HAVE TO LISTEN FOR THE SYSTEM TO WORK.”
As a teacher, how do you share your experience with others?
I try not to pull my personal story into the classroom. It’s in the dorm that I talk most about my personal life. There, I’m a person rather than just a teacher and the kids are very curious. I also run an affinity group for transgender and nonbinary students, and that’s a great place to share. How do you keep your writing and your teaching separate?
The great thing about Exeter is the student-centered learning. Whether I’m teaching preps how to craft a paragraph or working with seniors to improve their fiction, I always deflect the conversation back to them. If they say, “You’re the professional writer, how do you do this?” I’ll say, “I can tell you what I do, but I’m more interested in you telling me how you’re figuring this out.” It’s about making them do the work. I’m the mean teacher that way. Were there faculty members whose support had a particular impact on you?
Carol Cahalane was probably the first person who ever used the word “transgender” around me. She knew how to pace conversations with adolescents. She didn’t push them to say something they weren’t ready to say, but communicated that she was available when you were ready to talk. She cared; that meant a ton. In terms of writing and a role model in the classroom, Fred Tremallo. He was one of those teachers who never looked at his roster very closely. When I showed up in his class my senior year wearing a coat and tie, he never realized that I hadn’t [always] been a boy. Early on, someone misgendered me in class and Tremallo said, “Why on earth would you think Alex is a girl?” After class, I explained the situation to him and he said, “I have no idea what you just told me, but I’m going to figure this out.” I had very open conversations with him and he urged me to write about my experiences. What is your next book, The Story of Silence, about?
It’s a historical fantasy, a retelling of a 13th-century French poem in which a king decrees that women can’t inherit. As a result, a count decides to raise his daughter as a boy. Nurture and Nature personified argue with each other: “He’s mine, I made him what he is.” “She’s mine, I formed her.” There’s this understanding of gender that I found super-fun to play with. What’s the thread that ties your work together?
I think when life is working well, one thing feeds another. Oftentimes what I’m reading feeds what I’m teaching; what I’m teaching feeds what I’m thinking about; and what I’m thinking about feeds what I’m writing. By doing all these things, I nourish myself. There are some days when it absolutely doesn’t work, but mostly, if I can carve out a little bit of time to be creative, I’m happier on a day like that. But I think I could never be a writer who does nothing but write. I’m usually pretty happy to close my computer and go to class. E
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Alumni are encouraged to advise the Bulletin editor (bulletin@exeter.edu) of their own publications, recordings, films, etc., in any field, and those of their classmates, for inclusion in future Exonians in Review columns. Please send a review copy of your published work to the editor to be considered for an extended profile or review in future issues. Works can be sent to: Phillips Exeter Academy, The Exeter Bulletin, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833. ALUMNI 1956—William “Bill” Bayer. The Murals. (Severn House Publishers, 2019)
1989—Jeff Locker. “The Forgotten Place,” play. Published in Off Off Broadway Festival Plays, 43rd Series. (Samuel French, 2019)
1956—Bill Garnsey. Dead Reckoning: Memoir of Herrick Garnsey, a Navigational Chart of My Life. (Self-published, 2019)
1990—Pi Ware, writer, director. Skin Deep: The Battle Over Morgellons, documentary film. (2019)
1960—Jacob Watson. We’re Gainin’: Collins Brook, A Maine 1996—Joshua Levine, producer. Murder in Free School — a Memoir. (Dorrance Publishing Co., 2019) the Bayou, documentary series. (2019) 1965—Robert M. Wallace. Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel and the Present. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019) 1966—Peter Thompson. Harrison’s Word. (Diálogos Books, 2019) —Perishable Poems, translation of Abdellatif Laâbi. (Lavender Ink, 2019) 1968—Tony Seton. The Francie LeVillard Mysteries: Volume XI. (Seton Publishing, 2019) 1974—Christopher Knowlton. Bubble in the Sun: The Florida Boom of the 1920s and How It Brought on the Great Depression. (Simon & Schuster, 2020) 1995—Keya Kai Guimarães. Raising Generation Peace. (Four Stops Press, 2019) 2002—Nathaniel Webb. Expedition: Summerlands. (Level Up Publishing, 2019) —Veil of Worlds: The Days of Guns and Roses. (Vulpine Press, 2019) 2003—Steffon Davis. The Rise of the Curator Class: Changing the Way We Buy, Sell, and Make Everything. (Praeger, 2019)
1997—Naima Lowe. “Aren’t They All Just Love Songs Anyway?,” solo multimedia art exhibition at the Jack Straw Cultural Center in 2019. 2017—Alexandra Houx Grounds. “Delusions of the Wild,” solo art exhibition in 2019. FAC U LT Y Erica Plouffe Lazure. “The Ghost Rider,” short story. (Carve Magazine, fall 2019) Tara Lewis. Two drawings published in Between the Lines: An RxArt Coloring Book by Contemporary Artists, Vol. 7. (RxArt, 2019) —“On Guard NY,” group art exhibit at The Storefront Project in New York. (2019) Matt W. Miller. “When You Open the Book Don’t Go Looking for Yourself: A Conversation with Willie Perdomo,” article. (The Adroit Journal, September 17, 2019) —“The Adorned Fathomless Dark Creation,” “Getting Out,” “Boys Beyond June,” and “Legend,” poems. (Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, fall 2019) —“Oh Father, Your Fear,” poem. (Narrative, 2019) Alex Myers. “Life After Death,” essay. (storySouth, Issue 28, fall 2019)
BEYOND BOOKS 1962—Ted Shen, composer. Broadbend, Arkansas, musical. —“The Alarming Message of Mattel’s ‘Gender Neutral’ Played at the Duke on 42nd Street theater in New York City Dolls,” essay. (Slate, Nov. 8, 2019) in November 2019. Ralph Sneeden. “Surface Fugue: Clark’s Island, 1974—Robert E. Tench. “25 W 2 μm broadband Wampanoag Bowl, Carcharodon Carcharias,” poem. (New polarization-maintaining hybrid Ho- and Tm-doped fiber England Review, Vol. 40, No. 13, September 2019) amplifier.” (Applied Optics, Vol. 58, 2019) FORMER BENNETT FELLOW 1983—Chang-Rae Lee. “Coming Home Again,” essay. David Brendan Hopes. The Falls of the Wyona. (Red Hen Lee’s 1995 work was adapted into a film of the same title Press, 2019) by director Wayne Wang. It premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2019.
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150 Seasons of Hoops MOMENTS IN EXETER BASKETBALL HISTORY Compiled by Wes LaFountain ’69
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in 1891 — primarily, legend has it, to keep his young Christian charges occupied and healthy during our long, cold New England winters — the game arrived on the Exeter campus in 1919. Oscar W. Pearson, a 1910 PEA graduate, coached Exeter’s first basketball team and headed the program for 27 years. He retired in 1946 with 195 wins, 89 losses and 1 tie to his credit. During his long tenure at Exeter, Pearson also coached track, tennis and football, and he was the Academy’s
he year 2020 marks a milestone in Exeter’s
history: the 101st season of boys varsity basketball and the 49th season for the girls team. Combined, these programs represent 150 formal seasons of Exeter basketball. A fitting time, then, to celebrate a sport that has been irrevocably influenced by Exeter alums over the years. Invented by Dr. James Naismith, physical educator and Christian chaplain, in Springfield, Massachusetts,
Coach Oscar Pearson ’10 (front row, second from left) and the unbeaten 1928-29 Big Red.
Bud Palmer ’40 is credited with helping to invent the jump shot.
EXETER BASKETBALL HIGHLIGHTS 1919 On March 12, Exeter christens the floor in the new Thompson Gymnasium by beating Haverhill (Mass.) High School, 35-20, in an exhibition. 1920 Exeter earns its first varsity basketball 2 2 • T H E
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victory on Jan. 17 in “the most exciting with a 23-18 win over game ever played” Reading (Mass.) High. in the three-year-old Thompson Gym, On March 13, defeating Andover, Andover wins the 47-43. first E/A basketball contest, 31-27. 1929 Exeter’s first 1921 unbeaten basketball Exeter exacts season comes to a revenge on March 19 rather anticlimactic B U L L E T I N
end when the annual E/A game in March is canceled due to an outbreak of German measles on Andover’s campus. Big Red finished 9-0.
Miller Ream ’53 drives the lane in a 1952 loss to Worcester.
1946 Coach Oscar Pearson ’10 retires. Gordon Benn, the Academy baseball coach, is named his successor.
1959 1942 Pete Kelley ’59 On Jan. 24, “Long” smashes the school Fred Green ’43 scores scoring record on a school-record 37 March 4 with 52 points in an 87-49 points in a 110-96 win win over Cushing. over New Hampton.
1968 Eight players score in double figures in a 121-64 win at Cushing on Feb. 3. 1970 Big Red plays on its new gym with a 70-55 win over Andover. The Jan. 21 victory gives Exeter a 31-30 lead in the 50-year-old rivalry.
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first wrestling coach when the sport arrived in 1934. His retirement rated an article in The New York Times, which noted, “In losing Pearson, Exeter parts with a man who was practically a tradition.” One of Pearson’s basketball players was Walter Brown ’26. Brown chose not to attend college after graduation, instead apprenticing with his father, who was president of the Boston Arena Corporation, which took ownership of the Boston Garden in 1934. Brown succeeded his father and, in 1946, formed the Boston Celtics, who won seven National Basketball Association championships during his tenure. Brown was also instrumental in the formation of the NBA in 1949. One year later, the Celtics were the first NBA team to draft a black player: All-American Chuck Cooper, from Duquesne University. While Brown blazed a trail for professional basketball, another Exeter hoopster, Bud Palmer ’40, is credited with
Andover and Exeter have tipped off at least once annually in boys basketball since 1920.
1971 Girls basketball debuts at the Academy on Dec. 8 with a scrimmage against Exeter High School.
girls surge past Abbot Academy, 20-10. It is the final meeting with Abbot, which would merge with Andover the next fall.
1973 Jan. 31, Clayton Spencer ’73 and Vicky Thomas ’74 lead a fourth-quarter rally, and the Exeter
1974 Ann Taylor ’75 scores 15 points, and Exeter closes its season on Feb. 23 with an 11-1 record and a 48-23
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victory over Pingree in Barbara Bowes’ first year as head coach. 1976 On March 3, the Exeter girls earn the second seed in the first New England Prep School Invitational Girls Basketball Tournament.
being one of the originators of the jump shot. During his three years at the Academy, Palmer would regularly practice the technique. In an interview years later, he told journalist John Christgau that he had realized, “If I dribble and stop, and jump, I will have an advantage.” Palmer went on to star at Princeton and then in the NBA in the late ’40s with the New York Knicks, where he warmed the bench until convincing his coach that his jump shot was a team advantage. Palmer ultimately became the team’s first captain and highest-paid player.
A NEW ERA DAWNS
In 1971, history was made at PEA with the formation of the school’s first girls basketball program, a year after coeducation was implemented. Coach Karen Timmer led the team in an abbreviated five-game season during ’71-’72. An Exonian article reports wins in January 1972
Coach Karen Timmer (top right) and the first Exeter girls team played five games in 1971-72.
1980 Eighth-seeded Exeter upsets Groton, Northfield Mount Hermon, and Noble and Greenough to claim the New England Prep School Girls Basketball Championship on March 2. Anne Ready ’81 and Leslie Hamilton ’82 are named to the all-tourney team.
1983 On March 12, the Exeter boys knock off Andover, 62-61, in coach Charles Hamblet’s final game after nine seasons. Malcolm Wesselink is named Big Red boys varsity coach.
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1990 The unbeaten Exeter girls rally on March 3 from a nine-point, fourth-quarter deficit to edge out Suffield, 44-42, and claim the New England Championship. Jessie Murtagh ’90 is named tourney MVP as Big Red finishes 16-0.
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by the varsity and JV teams over St. Paul’s School, noting “the defenses for both teams were outstanding.” By the mid ’70s, the girls teams had established a winning tradition, with an 11-1 season for the varsity team in ’73-’74 under their second varsity coach, Barbara Bowes. “I think the most impressive aspect of this year’s team was its enthusiasm, team spirit and concern for others,” noted Bowes to The Exonian. The team went on to enjoy 12-2 (1975-76) and 13-3 (1976-77) seasons. During those early years, Paul “Rick” Mahoney ’61; ’74, ’95 (Hon.); P’88, P’92 was instrumental in the enrollment of girls at the Academy through his work as an admissions officer. In 1982, Mahoney became head coach of the girls varsity team, a position he held for 27 seasons before his retirement in 2009 and which included the storied 1989-90 season. That year, the girls varsity team made history again with an undefeated 16-0 record and a New England Championship. In 2004, Mahoney received the Dee Rowe Mentor Award from the New England Basketball Hall of Fame for his then 37 years of coaching. In 2011, the emeritus director of financial aid received the Academy’s Founder’s Day Award for his 42 years of
service at the school. Said Annie Mitchell ’09, a senior on Mahoney’s last team, of her coach’s style: “He motivates us when we need motivation and he knows when we need advice or a just a kick in the pants to get us going.”
SUSTAINED EXCELLENCE
The Exeter boys program has enjoyed a century of success under the guidance of just eight coaches (save for a one-year interim coach to fill in for Robert Brownell while he was on leave). But no stretch of success surpasses the one Big Red and coach Jay Tilton currently enjoy. Tilton has built on the sustained excellence of Malcolm Wesselink — who led his teams to 292 wins in 27 seasons — since taking over in 2010, steering Exeter to four New England Class A titles. This while playing in what Tilton calls “one of the most challenging conferences in the entire country.” Included in that run is a school-record 25-win season in 2013 that featured a lanky shooter named Duncan Robinson ’13. Robinson’s journey from Exeter to Williams College to the NCAA Final Four with Michigan became
The 2012-13 boys team set a school record with 25 wins in claiming the New England Class A Championship.
Rick Mahoney ’61 spent four decades coaching basketball at Exeter, 27 as girls varsity head coach.
2003 The Exeter boys set school records for 3-pointers attempted (475) and made (198) in a single season. Big Red sinks an average of 10.2 3-pointers on 25 shots per game.
officer, is chosen as the new coach.
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2009 The Exeter girls hand Andover its only loss of the season in a 51-48 triumph in March, the final game in the rivalry for coach Rick Mahoney ’61. Mahoney retires with a 270-173 record and
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five championship appearances in 27 seasons. 2010 Coach Malcolm Wesselink retires after 27 seasons and 292 wins as boys basketball coach. Jay Tilton, admissions
2013 On March 3, Exeter wins its first New England Class A Championship for boys basketball and finishes with a school-best 25-1
record. Big Red, led by seniors Chris Braley, Keon Burns, Harry Rafferty and Duncan Robinson, goes unbeaten in the league. 2014 Seniors Nicole Heavirland and
Yvonne Dean-Bailey power the Exeter girls to a schoolrecord 20 wins, capped by a 65-36 victory over Choate to win the inaugural Eight School League tournament.
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basketball folklore — but his story wasn’t over. He has parlayed a long-shot tryout with the NBA’s Miami Heat in 2018 into a starting role just two years later. His 10 3-pointers in a game in December tied a team record. Tilton credits the basketball program’s success to the overall ethos of excellence that pervades Exeter life: “Whether it’s where to go to college, or being up late the night before to finish a paper, it’s introspection; it’s communication; it’s learning to be comfortable being vulnerable. It’s learning to live with the trust factor that permeates an Exeter education. It’s thriving on good chemistry.” E Wes LaFountain ’69 helped guide Exeter’s boys varsity basketball team to a winning season his senior year, capped by an 80-67 victory over Andover.
Claudia Lee ’20 sparked the Exeter girls to a winning season last winter. 2015 On Jan. 17, Courtney Henrich ’15 sinks a 3-pointer from the corner in the second half of a win over Deerfield to become the first girls player to score 1,000 points during her Exeter career.
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2019 Pearson Parker ’19 wins tournament MVP honors on March 5, and the Exeter boys claim the program’s fourth New England Class A title in seven years.
Donor Ensures Golf Team Stays the Course By Jennifer Wagner olf is a challenging sport to play on a perfect summer day. When the New England winter hits, forget about it. As coach Bob “Beetle” Bailey says, “Mother Nature is tough to beat.” To keep Exonians swinging through every season, Bailey assembled an indoor training room on the second floor of Love Gym. “We commandeered an old squash court about 10 years ago,” he says, “and jury-rigged the space together.” Slowly, but surely, they added simulators, hitting nets and a putting surface. When the new Downer Family Fitness Center opened in 2015, Bailey repurposed the old lockers for golfbag storage. Despite all of his efforts, the room never quite matched the quality of the Top: Edwin Hoopes ’61. Bottom: CJ Drapeau ’22 players, Bailey says. and Teddy Keller ’20 in the “clubhouse.” That changed this academic year thanks to a generous donation from Edwin L. Hoopes III ’61. The Hoopes ’61 Golf Fund supported a complete renovation of the team’s “clubhouse” and will continue to help provide for golfers’ supplemental needs — think greens fees, travel, meals, uniforms and coaching staff professional development — for years to come. Hoopes was a three-year varsity golf team member and captain his senior year. When he returned to campus for his 50th reunion, he caught up with Coach Bailey and played a round with some of his old teammates at Breakfast Hill Golf Club. Hoopes fondly recalled his years playing for the Academy. “The golf team had no transportation to the course, so we walked from Abbot to the Exeter Country Club … with our bags on our shoulders and we thought nothing of it,” he said. “We had a good team, good coaches, we bonded on those walks. … And we never lost to Andover!” It was formative memories like these and a lifelong passion for golf that inspired his gift. “I love the game, and it’s a wonderful way to spend time with a person that you may not have known, but after spending time with them on the golf course, you know each other a lot better.” Hoopes passed away last summer before the golf-room update was complete, but his legacy lives on. “The [golfers] have been using the area since their return in September, and with the weather turning colder it will get used every day,” Bailey says. “Thanks to Ed, the kids will hit the ground running in the spring!”
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FALL SPORTS
GIRLS VOLLEYBALL RECORD: 20-0, NEW ENGLAND CHAMPIONS
Head Coach: Bruce Shang Assistant Coach: Sue Rowe Captains: Angelle Diamond ’20, Mia Glinn, ’20, Joy Liu ’20 MVP: Joy Liu
BOYS SOCCER RECORD: 11-5-2
Head Coach: A.J. Cosgrove Assistant Coach: Nolan Lincoln Captains: Jacob Gehron ’20, Billy Menken ’20 MVP: Billy Menken
FIELD HOCKEY RECORD: 7-9
Head Coach: Liz Hurley Assistant Coach: Mercy Carbonell Captains: Leah Cohen ’20, Sophia Rosati ’20 MVP: Annie Smaldone ’21
FOOTBALL RECORD: 1-7
Head Coach: Bill Glennon Assistant Coaches: Patrick Bond, Ted Davis, Tom Evans, Bob Lietz, Tim Mitropoulos ’10, Josh Peterson, Brandon Thomas Captains: Gannon McCorkle ’20, Josh Riddick ’20, Ethan Rosenthal ’20 MVP: Justin Jameson ’20 PHOTOS BY MARY SCHWALM AND WINSLOW TOWSON
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BOYS WATER POLO RECORD: 12-4, NEW ENGLAND RUNNERS-UP
Head Coach: Don Mills Assistant Coach: Avery Reavill ’12 Captains: Charlie Venci ’20, Milo Walshe ’20 MVP: Milo Walshe
GIRLS SOCCER RECORD: 8-8-2
Head Coach: Alexa Caldwell Assistant Coaches: Deigo Ardura-Faraj, Mustapha Achab, Dane Nielson Captains: Robin Potter ’20, Dennesha Rolle ’20, Abby Smith ’20 MVPs: Abby Smith, Allison Hanlon ’21
BOYS CROSS-COUNTRY RECORD: NEW ENGLAND CHAMPIONS
Head Coach: Brandon Newbould Assistant Coaches: Bill Jordan, Nick Unger ’90 Captains: Will Coogan ’20, Jinwoo Kang ’20, Sam Kim ’20 MVP: Will Coogan
GIRLS CROSS-COUNTRY RECORD: NEW ENGLAND CHAMPIONS
Head Coach: Gwyn Coogan ’83 Assistant Coach: Dale Braile Captains: Lucy Gilchrist ’20, Maddie Machado ’20 MVP: Sophie Cohen ’22
BOYS TRACK RECORD: 10-3
Head Coach: Hilary Coder Assistant Coaches: Mustafa AbdulRahim, Michele Chapman, Hobart Hardej, Mark Hiza, Jill Lyon, Julia McPhee, Brandon Newbould, Kurt Prescott Captains: Chudi Ikpeazu ’16, Vincent Vaughns ’16 MVP: Chudi Ikpeazu
GIRLS TRACK RECORD: 9-1; SECOND PLACE AT INTERSCHOLS
Head Coach: Hilary Coder Assistant Coaches: Mustafa Abdul-Rahim, Michele Chapman, Hobart Hardej, Mark Hiza, Jill Lyon, Julia McPhee, Brandon Newbould, Kurt Prescott Captains: Bridget Higgins ’16, Jordyn Marlin ’16, Michaela Streep ’16 MVP: Christine Hu ’17
Lessons in Empathy and Identity E X E T E R F A C U LT Y C R E AT E S P A C E S F O R STUDENTS TO EXPLORE TOUGH TOPICS
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hen Principal Bill Rawson ’71; P’08 addressed Opening Assembly last September, his message was clear and potent: We are better together. He told the Exeter community that the Academy’s diversity is its strength and that providing equal opportunity for and fostering a sense of belonging in every Exonian is synonymous with the school’s mission. “Our commitment to excellence in education and our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion go hand in hand. One cannot be separated from the other,” Principal Rawson said. That message has followed the students into their classrooms. Empowered by a vision statement put forth by the Trustees in 2018 to codify these beliefs, Exeter instructors are incorporating them into the curriculum. Science Instructor Andrew McTammany ’04 is transforming his instruction from the theoretical to the tangible by showing chemistry’s real-life impact, for better and worse, on society. A trio of history teachers developed a class for 10th-graders about race and how it came to have significance among humankind over a thousand years. Health and Human Development Department faculty are working directly with Stephanie Bramlett, the school’s director of equity and inclusion, to refine lesson plans that include topics such as cultural competency and implicit bias training. Other departments are taking a closer look at their curriculums, as well, and cross-disciplinary collaborations on topics of equity and social justice are increasing in frequency and scope. These ideals of inclusion are not new to Exeter. As Principal Rawson reminded listeners during his opening-of-school address, the founders intended for this school to admit “youth from every quarter.” In the last two centuries, the school has evolved to become more inclusive in terms of gender, ethnicity, national and geographic origin, socioeconomic background, race and religion. The progress and the challenges inherent with such work are ongoing. “The journey is far from complete,” noted Principal Rawson, “but with every step along the way, as we have become a more inclusive community, we have become a stronger school.”
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JING JING TSONG
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BEYOND THE ELEMENTS
Students in Science Instructor Andrew McTammany’s class study all the effects, good and bad, that chemicals can have on humankind.
By Jennifer Wagner
In room 218 of the Phelps Science Center, students learn much more than the fundamentals of chemistry. Through hands-on lab work, multidisciplinary readings and far-reaching discussions, Science Instructor Andrew McTammany ’04 cultivates an understanding of the broader impact chemicals have on Earth and its inhabitants. Think of it as the Chemistry of Empathy. “Even though what [students have] done in this classroom is technically chemistry,” he says, “this has been about making sure that when they leave this classroom, they can see the effects of chemistry on society, on the human experience.” In many ways, McTammany, who earned his bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and his master’s degree from Stanford, is redefining what a chemistry class can teach students. His Principles of Chemistry courses, for example, begin with lessons about standard chemical structures, how to convert grams to moles, and the like. Students draw or construct 3D representations of compounds and figure out how intermolecular forces work. But as the term goes on and students master the core science, he moves on to more complex ideas not traditionally posited in high school chem class. Students progress from benchmark questions like, “Is dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT, soluble in water?” to “Can you calculate the risk ratio of DDT exposure and pancreatic cancer?” They explore why a compound might be developed, what its intended uses are versus its unplanned effects, and which groups of people are most affected by its existence. This type of inquiry pushes students to think about, say, how DDT’s molecular structure resulted in its
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effectiveness as a pesticide, as well as its long-term effect on human health as a persistent organic pollutant. Students wrestle with an ethical quandary common in material sciences: A single chemical can be both beneficial and harmful. McTammany explores this idea in a powerful unit about the manufacture and use of the defoliant Agent Orange. Assigned readings culled from scientific journals and nonfiction novels alike offer students multiple perspectives about Agent Orange’s domestic use in agriculture, its military use in Southeast Asia, and its ongoing influence on our culture, history and geography. “My unit [on Agent Orange] stemmed from a line that [author] Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote in Nothing Ever Dies,” McTammany says. “He wants people, when they look inside the refrigerator, to see that Dow Chemical made the refrigerant and they also made Agent Orange. There are these links that I’m trying to have students be aware of, that’s my goal. … It’s about creating complexity for them and having them break down societal issues or things that they hear about in the news and getting them to look beyond the Harkness table or beyond the lab and see that it’s everywhere.” Requiring students to consider the material on an intellectual level and on a personal level is not always easy. “At first it was difficult for them because they’re so used to traditional problem solving in chemistry,” he says. “Getting them to think about effects on individuals, on the narrative histories, was very different. But they definitely got into it.” By opening up chemistry class discussions to include personal experiences, McTammany allows students to draw on a different set of skills. “It’s another way to create space at the table,” he says. “Sometimes Science Instructor Andrew students come in and feel like chemistry is this intimidating experience and they’re not McTammany ’04 teaches necessarily going to engage because they don’t want to be wrong in front of the teacher, the chemistry of empathy. in front of their peers. But no personal experience is ever wrong. It humanizes the subject.” Beyond that, the Harkness method is particularly well-suited for developing an inquisitive and inclusive mindset. “The students can leave without feeling like there was an answer,” he says. “There was a resolution, but it’s about the process of investigating and using the experience and the ideas and the understanding of others to challenge your own assumptions, to build a framework that you can take and use in other contexts.” McTammany takes this methodology outside the classroom, too. “Mr. McTammany makes a very conscious effort to include the ways in which chemistry interacts with the world,” says Anna Iacobucci ’20, who has taken three classes with the instructor. Last year, her class toured the solar panel installation on top of the William Boyce Thompson Field House and built a manual filtration system to collect microplastics. “When we filtered Exeter River water through, we found all sorts of plastics,” Iacobucci says. “One of the reasons I fell in love with science is because I want to help make the world a better place. Mr. McTammany teaches his students how we can make the world a better place.” A PEA science instructor since 2012, McTammany has expanded his social justice efforts to all aspects of campus life. Along with teaching and coaching water polo, he serves on Exeter’s Environmental Stewardship Committee, Campus Master Planning Committee and Curriculum Committee. “Science and technology is not exempt from the work of diversity, equity and inclusion,” he says. “There’s a responsibility that comes with being a chemist. You’re taking nature, you’re taking the earth in some form, and you’re turning it into something commercial, something used that has impact beyond the chemistry lab. … In my mind, science and explanation is just another way of telling a story. Some people choose poems, some people write scientific papers, but you’re essentially saying the same thing — you’re telling a history.”
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HISTORY LESSONS By Patrick Garrity
Fourteen 10th-graders ring a Harkness table in a cozy, corner classroom in the Academy Building. It is the first week of winter term, and History Instructor Betty Luther Hillman asks each student to introduce themselves and share what led them to enroll in History 309: Race: A Global History. One by one, counterclockwise, the students explain their motivations and aspirations. Maddie Saavedra ’22 sought “a topic that is relevant throughout history, not just a moment in time.” Jasper Knabe ’22 says, “I wanted to study a history that was more than just a timeline.” To these Exonians, this examination of the past speaks to their present. The topic of race is part of their everyday, not some dusty period whose significance is less obvious to 15- and 16-year-olds. “One of the reasons why I really felt it was important to teach it as a history class is because learning history is all about learning facts,” Luther Hillman says. “Not just to memorize them and spit them back out, but to think about how facts and evidence inform our ideas and our perspectives.” History 309 is a new course offering, developed by Luther Hillman and department colleagues Cameron Brickhouse and Hannah Lim. The three instructors were inspired to create the class by the school’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day workshops and by what they perceived as students’ lack of a broader historical perspective about the subject of race — regardless of how present the topic is in teenagers’ lives today. The course description states that race, as it relates to human civilization, is a social construct.
“One of the reasons I fell in love with science is because I want to make the world a better place.” —ANNA IACOBUCCI ’20 Science finds few genetic differences between people of different races and ethnicities. Social scientists thus contend that racial distinctions are a product of society and culture rather than biology. The question asked in the summary in the Courses of Instruction is: “At what point did differences in skin color and other phenotypic traits become significant?” By studying examples across time and place, the students hopefully will gain a deeper understanding of how and why race has been used to classify, define — and divide — cultures. “I want them to understand that the history of race is much more about power and exploitation and competition between groups of people, than it is about any biological reality,” Luther Hillman says. A Minnesota native, Luther Hillman joined the History Department in 2011. She regularly teaches classes on U.S. history, Ancient Rome, the world in the 20th century, and historical topics related to women and gender. She revised her dissertation at Yale into a book about how self-presentation influenced the culture and politics of the 1960s and ’70s, and she leads faculty and staff on an annual summer community-service trip to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Teaching specifically about race is a new challenge. Luther Hillman and her colleagues chose Racism: A Global Reader (Routledge, 2002) to serve as the primary text for this inaugural term. The collection focuses on racism worldwide over a thousand years and consists of original documents, scholarly essays and journalistic accounts of events as they happened. It is one of the few books Luther Hillman could find that viewed the topic
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through a global lens rather than a strictly American one. It includes subjects such as the caste system in India, African slavery, and the mistreatment by colonizing powers of indigenous populations in Australia and the Americas, and features sources as disparate as Benjamin Franklin, Desmond Tutu and Rudolf Hess. “If we can see the true injustice behind racial distinctions, I think it becomes much harder to make statements like, ‘Well, if everyone just worked hard they’d be fine,’” Luther Hillman says. “Because there’s a whole long history that has shaped where everyone is right now that we need to understand in order to move forward.” As ever, the text is meant to serve as tinder for a Harkness discussion, and on this day the class
“The history of race is much more about power and exploitation than ... any biological reality.” —INSTRUCTOR BETTY LUTHER HILLMAN buzzes when Luther Hillman asks, “Shall we jump into the reading?” after a kickoff discussion about a New York Times story on the racial makeup of the Democratic field of presidential candidates. These are the types of conversations that inspired Nicole Craighead ’22 to enroll in the course. She told her classmates that discussions about race and racism are not something people in her hometown in Connecticut are comfortable having. “I believe that open communication can solve most problems,” Craighead says. “Classes like this are immensely important as they allow for a space where a dialogue can be created. … If discomfort in the topic silences us, it won’t allow for this progressive dialogue to begin. “What this class has taught me,” she adds, “is how people are born into cultures that fail to recognize racial discrimination. That, in turn, makes it very difficult for change to occur.”
A HOLISTIC APPROACH By Patrick Garrity
Race: A Global History represents a new element of Exeter’s deep commitment to cultivating an environment of inclusion. That effort is ongoing in the Health and Human Development Department, which has embraced its purpose of developing the whole child. Central to that effort is a redistribution of the curriculum. Instead of HHD courses being required only for ninth-graders or first-year 10th-graders, students now will take courses each year they’re enrolled at the Academy. “We had been thinking as a department a lot about how timely topics are with a ninth-grader, and it didn’t really match what their experiences were,” says Michelle Soucy, department chair and member of the faculty since 2008. “If you’re talking about drugs and alcohol with a 14-yearold who is not thinking about it, but we know the high-risk behaviors are [more common among] 16- or 17-years-old, why don’t we have a touchpoint with them?” This reorganization presents the team with the opportunity to broaden its messaging beyond traditional health education curriculum to a more holistic approach. Important facets of that are the concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Soucy says that discussing race, ethnicity and social class seemed integral when the department started thinking about adolescent development in an environment as racially and socioeconomically diverse as Exeter’s. Work began with department members attending professional
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development conferences and collaborating with the Academy’s Office of Multicultural History Instructor Betty Affairs to develop lesson plans. That effort has expanded with Stephanie Bramlett’s Luther Hillman (center) arrival as the school’s first director of equity and inclusion. and her class discuss the Not every class revolves around topics of equity and inclusion, just like not every history of race. class features discussions about addiction or contraception. Cultural competency and implicit bias lessons are more intentional in some classes than others. In Identity, Empathy and Understanding, for instance, an Integrated Studies class that Health Instructor Liz Hurley has co-taught with English Instructor Courtney Marshall, the course summary states directly that students will learn to “think critically about issues of equity in our society.” The instructors have also found that DEI-related issues present themselves indirectly throughout their curriculum. “You can’t talk about the history of drugs and alcohol in the United States without talking about race,” Soucy says. “Like, why is marijuana a Schedule 1 drug (defined by the federal government as having no medical value and high potential for abuse)? Well, there’s a lot of racial implications behind that, right? Or, why is access to mental health for certain minorities really difficult?” Critical to every classroom conversation is the assurance it is being had in a safe environment for the students. “Ground rules” posted inside classroom doors underscore that. “We will respect and celebrate our differences — we have much to learn from each other,” and “Anything said in this room will be held in confidence” are among the rules the students must abide by. The goal is to promote discussion without fear of ridicule or retribution. The instructors feel confident that Exeter students want to have these discussions. “That’s one of the comments we get: ‘Let’s talk about race and racism a little bit more. Let’s spend some more time on it,’” Soucy says. “They’re hungry for it.” E
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CHEF JASON GOODENOUGH ’97 B R I N G S T H E H E AT A N D H A R K N E S S T O H I S B I G E A S Y E AT E R Y By Sandra Guzmán
J
ason Goodenough ’97 was destined to be a chef. As a young boy, when
he wasn’t helping his grandparents cook in their Minnesota greasy spoon along the Mississippi River, he was globe-trotting with his foodie parents, dining in the world’s finest eateries. One meal from his childhood gastronomic jaunts offered a particularly telling hint at his future calling. When he was 7 years old, his parents took him to the Michelin three-star L’Oustau de Baumanière in Les Baux de Provence, France. He ordered a lobster soufflé, which he tasted and quickly sent back to the kitchen. “There was something about the texture that was not right,” he still recalls. Now knowing the Herculean effort it takes to run a restaurant that satisfies fussy palates, Goodenough feels a little guilty about the drama he may have caused the kitchen of the legendary chef Jean-André Charial. “What did I know?” he chuckles. “I was just a kid eating lobster soufflé.” Yet it’s precisely Goodenough’s discerning taste buds and his self-described fanatical drive to serve quality dishes that help the New York City native win over food critics and food lovers alike. New Orleans Magazine named Goodenough Chef of the Year in 2018. That same year, his modern Southern bistro, Carrollton Market, was named Top 10 by The Times-Picayune, Louisiana’s leading newspaper.
During his time at the Academy, Goodenough admits, he would never have
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predicted he would end up becoming a chef and owning his own restaurant. He enjoyed taking history classes and sports, playing on the varsity football and track teams. “Academically,” he says, “I struggled somewhat due to a pretty severe case of undiagnosed ADHD.” Food remained a private passion until Goodenough’s upper year, when he devoted his Reporter-at-Large project to researching and interviewing Mexican cooks at Soup Burg, a burger joint on New York’s Upper East Side. “It was around the corner from my house,” he says. “The place had nine seats with a kitchen that was about 80 square feet. I was fascinated by the tiny amount of space in which these guys were able to work. I wrote about the process of making the burger: reaching into the refrigerated meat cooler with an ice cream scoop, placing it on the grill, and pushing it down with the underside of a giant spatula.” After graduation, Goodenough studied economics at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, with plans to follow his father, Gary “Goose” Goodenough ’65, to Wall Street. “I loved food but I never thought I could make it into a career,” he explains. “It took me a while to find the confidence that I could live sustainably from a career as a chef.”
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A gig as a line cook emboldened him, and he decided to devote all of his efforts to cooking. He enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America, located in New York’s Hudson River Valley, and never looked back. After culinary school, he trained and worked under some of the country’s most celebrated chefs, including Emeril Lagasse, Masaharu Morimoto and Georges Perrier. “I chose jobs with the belief that in order to be the best, one has to work for the best chefs that will hire you,” he says. “I think that working for chefs like this can provide cooks with a few things, the first and most obvious is technique — each chef has things that they do uniquely.” Cherry-picking techniques from each of his mentors and adapting them, Goodenough developed his own unique culinary style. By 2014, he was ready to open his own restaurant. At the time, his wife, Dr. Amelia Goodenough, was in her third year of residency at Tulane University and pregnant with their second child — circumstances that informed Goodenough’s choices. “It was very important that the restaurant be up and running in order for me to take a step back and be home with the baby a bit,” says the 41-year-old chef. He found a turnkey space in the historic Riverbend district and opened Carrollton Market, an eatery with a modern Southern vibe that marries the bounty of local ingredients found in Louisiana, Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico with touches of the world’s cuisine. Carrollton Market’s menu is like an edible soundtrack of Goodenough’s upbringing — diners can taste the flavors of Thailand, France, Italy, Korea, Morocco, Mexico, Malta, Japan and his new home, the Gulf South. There’s pork belly al pastor with poblano peppers and cotija cheese; seared Gulf shrimp crepinette with Thai yellow curry and gochujang; and whole roasted fish with his new take on the Provence staple kale pistou. Goodenough’s culinary style, he says, is “ingredient-driven,” with sustainability at the core. “The thing that catalyzes each and every dish at Carrollton is great product,” he says, adding that he thoughtfully sources vegetables and fruits from local farmers and fish from small fisheries. His dishes often feature American red snapper and blue crab caught in the coastal lagoons of Louisiana and the rest of the Gulf region. For the past three years, Goodenough has partnered with Healthy Gulf, which promotes sustainability in the region’s waters. The area, like many parts of the country, is experiencing the tension of climate change and conflicting interests: sustainability versus land and sea use. “I had no idea how political fish could be,” he says.
“My collaborative approach, Harkness-style, is something that does make me stand out.”
But the secret to Chef Goodenough’s sauce is inspired by the Academy. Before any dish makes it
onto the menu, he puts it through a rigorous Harkness discussion. “My collaborative approach,
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C O U RT E SY O F CA R R O L LTO N M A R K E T
Harkness-style, is something that does make me stand out,” he says. “While the buck certainly starts and stops with me and the vast majority of the dishes are created by me, I seek input from everyone on my staff.” Harkness kicks into full gear when Goodenough prepares a new dish. “Everyone stands around, tastes it and then shares their opinions. What can we do to improve the dish? Is it menu-worthy? Is there enough salt? Too little? Enough acidity? If so, is it the right acid? Would lemon juice serve better than white wine vinegar? What about sherry vinegar? Is the sauce right? Is the cooking technique the right one for this dish?” The collaboration of dissecting, exploring and listening to everyone’s opinions not only results in delectable food, but also unites his employees. “We are a small team in a small space — someAbove: Goodenough times you find us rolling pasta in the dining room,” he explains. “When everyone is and crew, including PEA heard and participates in creating what we serve, it encourages a sense of ownership.” teammate Chris Johnson ’97 Over the years Goodenough has stayed in touch with the Academy and former class(back left), cooking at the mates such as Chris Johnson ’97, who is now a pastry chef with Cronut creator Dominique James Beard House in June Ansel. When Goodenough was invited to prepare a meal for the James Beard Foundation, 2018. Below: Oysters on he knew exactly whom he would ask to prepare the dessert course — his former PEA team- the menu at Goodenough’s mate. “Chris was at Main Street and I was in Ewald and we were big dudes, which put us restaurant. in a lot of places at the same time: linemen on the football team, shot-putters on the track team,” he says. “I don’t remember Chris having a huge interest in food then, but I don’t know if I wore my interest on my sleeve either.” The gathering was a success. “It was really great reuniting with Chris,” he shares. “There were about a dozen Exonians [there] and we had a blast.” At one point Goodenough remembers holding a huge black truffle above classmates’ heads and making it rain truffle shavings. The proud Exonian is also actively involved in non sibi work within his local community. “Chefs are asked to do a staggering amount of charity events, and for me it’s important to serve my community and not just prepare fancy dishes for rich people,” he says. “Every Wednesday, my kitchen crew and I cook for a group of homeless and hungry folks in my neighborhood at Okra Abbey.” Goodenough also serves on the board of Café Hope, a center on New Orleans’ West Bank that provides culinary and life skills training for at-risk youth. With the help of his staff, he remade Café Hope’s kitchen and culinary curriculum. This spring, Goodenough was back in Provence, France, with his wife and two young daughters, 9-year-old Eloise and 5-year-old Penelope. He says he gazed at the restaurant he went to as a boy from the cliffs above and enjoyed the dazzling scenery. However, the family did not go in to taste the lobster soufflé. “My children are definitely not the types to enjoy that kind of a meal.” E
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Adaptable PRACTITIONERS SHARE THEIR METHODS AT E X E T E R ’ S P I L O T C O N F E R E N C E By Sarah Pruitt ’95
M
eg Foley remembers her first experience in a Harkness classroom. It
was 1999, and she was in the midst of applying for a teaching position at Exeter, having spent the past several years working at the Colorado Springs School, a small independent school. “I thought I was a pretty student-centered teacher before I came to Exeter,” Foley says. “[But] when I came to interview, I saw how radically student-centered the classes were here. I remember being astonished by what the students were able to do when it was really left in their hands.” PHOTO BY T YLER EATHERTON
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Harkness Now, as a veteran instructor in history and the Bates-Russell Distinguished Faculty Professor, Foley has become a leader of Harkness Outreach, Exeter’s ongoing effort to facilitate the adoption of student-directed, discussion-based teaching in other schools across the country and abroad. In fall 2019, she organized the Harkness Leaders Conference, a three-day event attended by educators from five schools. Attendees at the pilot conference were specially selected due to their work implementing Harkness methods on their campuses over the past several years, and were invited to share their successes with such efforts, as well as the roadblocks they’d encountered along the way. The five schools that participated are a mix of public and private, urban and rural, with diverse circumstances that can include larger class sizes and a high proportion of financially disadvantaged students. Two of them are newer schools founded expressly around Harkness principles, while the others are implementing the method within a system of more traditional teacher-directed learning. None has a great deal in common with Exeter, with its highly selective admissions criteria, small class sizes and faculty unified in its dedication to Harkness.
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Educators from five schools gathered on campus last fall to learn from one another how to make Harkness work in their classrooms.
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In her role as Exeter’s Bates-Russell Distinguished Faculty Professor, Meg Foley has worked to support other schools’ adoption of Harkness.
Despite their different circumstances, all of the educators who took part in the Harkness Leaders Conference share a commitment to the method and its potential to transform their schools and their students. With Exeter’s support, they are seeking to empower those students to take control of their own learning — in the same radical way Foley first witnessed on the day of her interview. “So much hard work goes into trying to develop things, in so many different ways that you necessarily thought of ... yourself in isolation,” says Leanne Abbott-Jones, vice principal of London’s Isaac Newton Academy, of her experience implementing Harkness teaching methods at the school. For her, attending the conference felt for the first time like she was in a room with lots of other people all trying to achieve the same thing. “I spent the whole three days going, ‘Oh wow, that’s awesome — great idea, great idea,’” she recalls. “I felt like my head was buzzing at the end of each day.”
ORIGINS OF HARKNESS OUTREACH
Exeter’s signature student-led teaching method was hatched in 1930, when the philanthropist Edward Harkness proposed a substantial gift to the school, where his friend Lewis Perry was serving as the eighth principal. As Katherine Towler recounted in the fall 2006 issue of the Bulletin, Harkness told Perry that he didn’t want his money used for simple updates or expansions to Exeter’s existing facilities; he wanted to accomplish something “much more radical.” Harkness’s subsequent gift to Exeter of $5.8 million, or around $89 million today, helped fulfill his vision of making learning at the Academy more democratic. “A simple but profound notion defined [Harkness’s] thinking about education,” Towler wrote. “That a small group of students, seated around a table and guided by an instructor, could best be engaged in learning by voicing their own ideas and questions and listening to those of others.”
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In the generations to come, Harkness’s namesake method — or system, or philosophy, or pedagogy, as it is variously known — would become so integral to life and learning at Exeter that it’s now nearly impossible to imagine the school without it. The objective to extend its benefits to schools beyond the Academy has inspired a growing slate of professional development conferences, beginning with the launch of the Exeter Humanities Institute (EHI) in 1999. Founded by English Instructor Rebecca Moore P’03, P’05, P’08 and three other teachers, EHI is a summer workshop that trains secondary school English and history teachers in key Harkness learning concepts. “They thought that Harkness should be demystified in terms of a teaching technique,” Foley says. Due to overwhelming interest, EHI recently branched out to the West Coast, with educators gathering around Harkness tables at the Bishop’s School in La Jolla, California. Foley became involved with EHI early in her time at Exeter, but her commitment to Harkness Outreach stepped up in 2016, when she began a five-year term as the Bates-Russell Distinguished Faculty Professor. This rotating position, endowed by George F. Russell ’50 and named for Robert Bates ’29, a longtime instructor in English at the Academy, aims to give its recipients time to pursue outside projects. Exeter granted Bates, an accomplished mountaineer who helped map Canada’s Yukon Territory for the National Geographic Society, leaves of absence for his mountaineering activities and for working in the Peace Corps. For Foley’s Bates-Russell tenure, she took on the project of Harkness Outreach, including the ongoing partnership between Exeter and Noble Academy in Chicago, founded in 2014 as part of the city’s Noble Network of Charter Schools. Former Dean of Faculty Ethan Shapiro P’17, P’17, P’18
“To me, the interesting question is, can the core philosophy of Harkness be adopted to places that aren’t as resource-rich?” worked closely with Noble Academy’s founder, Pablo Sierra, who wanted to implement Harkness methods at the school to better prepare its students for college and careers. Sierra was seeking to improve the college performance, graduation rate and career success of Noble alumni, wrote Lincoln Caplan ’68 in The American Scholar in 2016. By 2018, when Noble’s founding class graduated, members of that class had achieved a 63 percent projected college graduation rate — the highest in network history. As the current Bates-Russell professor, Foley teaches a half-load of classes for the History Department and serves as the point person for Harkness Outreach, fielding inquiries from educators at all levels, elementary through postsecondary, in all kinds of schools. Foley welcomed the challenge, as she had long been curious to see how student-led, discussion-based learning could look in places very different from Exeter. “It’s kind of a no-brainer that it could work in a place like this,” she says. “To me, the interesting question is, can the core philosophy of Harkness be adopted to places that aren’t as resource-rich?”
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T YLER EATHERTON
HARKNESS AT ISAAC NEWTON ACADEMY
“One of the benefits of the Harkness method is that it causes you to prepare,” says Gerard Griffin ’86. “You know you’re going to be exposed if you don’t.” Griffin, who founded the London-based hedge fund Tisbury Capital Management and now works as managing director at QRails, had this type of accountability in mind when it came time to plan the curriculum at Isaac Newton Academy (INA), which opened in 2012 in Ilford, east London. Part of the United Kingdom’s state school system, an academy such as Isaac Newton functions like a U.S. charter school. As INA’s founding sponsor and chair of the board of governors, Griffin — like Pablo Sierra at Noble — saw Harkness as a vital part of empowering the school’s students to take charge of their own learning. Before INA opened, Griffin and his founding principal, Rachel Macfarlane, who is no longer with the school, traveled to Exeter and met with Ron Kim P’18, P’20, then dean of faculty. “To make the numbers work, my average class size was 25 to 30,” Griffin says. “There was also a lot of pressure on all the teachers to get through curriculums and cover materials. So the question was, how do I incorporate as much as I can of Harkness into this system where I’ve got these curricular … and budgetary constraints?” Kim helped Griffin and Macfarlane work out how the Harkness spirit could be implemented at INA, even without an oval table in every classroom. They ordered a single Harkness table to be installed in the school’s library, with each class meeting there roughly once a term; movable furniture in every classroom allows for Harkness-style arrangements on a regular basis. Every year, two teachers travel to Exeter to observe lessons and speak to staff here, while six INA students go to Exeter Summer, the nation’s longest-running summer education program. All of them are
“Anyone who gets exposed to the Harkness method, particularly in its manifestation at Exeter, comes away believing in it.” tasked with bringing back the insights they gained and sharing them with their peers. “What I’m trying to do is create a grassroots belief and excitement about the Harkness method to counterbalance the skepticism of teachers about this American system invented at a private school in New Hampshire,” Griffin explains. “Anyone who gets exposed to the Harkness method, particularly in its manifestation at Exeter, comes away believing in it.” Abbott-Jones, the school’s vice principal, was one of the first INA educators to travel to Exeter; she later returned to teach physical education in the Exeter Summer program. For her master’s dissertation on the value of Harkness methods, Abbott-Jones incorporated the experiences of the first group of Harkness Champions, as the INA students who attend Exeter Summer are known. “They wrote reflective diaries about their learning,” she says. “How it felt for them to be around the table, what happened when it became silent, how they best prepared
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themselves for learning, [and] what made a really excellent question.” The role of the Harkness Champions is key to the progress of discussion-based teaching at Isaac Newton, which now serves about 1,200 11- to 18-year-old students in its secondary school. A primary school opened in 2014. The champions meet with their teachers to plan lessons, and help introduce younger students to skills such as making eye contact, listening and taking notes, and even leading discussions themselves so that bigger classes can be broken up into smaller groups. “People always comment on how confident our students are in terms of conversation, how articulate they are as learners,” Abbott-Jones says. “I think that really comes from empowering them to have a voice and lead their learning using the Harkness method.”
Faculty from London’s Isaac Newton Academy; Pinkerton Academy in New Hampshire; Little Rock Christian Academy; Chicago’s Noble Academy; and Vermont’s Harwood Union High School at PEA’s inaugural Harkness Leaders Conference.
HARKNESS AT PINKERTON ACADEMY
Founded in 1814, Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire, is a private school that also serves as the public high school for six towns: Auburn, Candia, Chester, Derry, Hampstead and Hooksett. With some 3,300 students and more than 500 employees, it is the nation’s largest independent high school. At Pinkerton, Harkness is one of several instructional practices used to increase students’ efficacy and engagement, explains Kirsten Soroko, the school’s curriculum and instruction coordinator. As a longtime teacher of middle school English and language arts, she had used Harkness and other discussion-based techniques in the past but knew it would be a challenge to implement them at Pinkerton. “For a traditional high school, using Harkness or other inquiry-based spaces is a shift,” Soroko says. To confront this challenge, she reached out to Exeter and began working with Foley, who for the past two summers has —continued on page 111
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C O M M E M O R AT I N G THE 50TH A N N I V E R S A RY O F T H E VOT E F O R C O E D U C AT I O N By Patrick Garrity
A Tremendous O
n Feb. 27, 1970, a Friday morning, Exeter’s Board of Trustees gathered to do Academy business. Finances and future construction were on the agenda, but their collective attention focused on the top of the list. The matter? Coeducation. For most of two centuries, Phillips Exeter Academy had lived up to only half of its noble mission to educate “youth from every quarter.” Now, 16 trustees assembled to remedy that. Their unanimous vote to open the school’s doors to girls was announced to alumni, faculty and the student body shortly after 5 p.m. by Trustee President Frederick “Bill” Andres ’25 and Principal Richard Day. Immediately after the announcement, trustees fanned out to dorm common rooms to meet with students and discuss what the future would look like. Ira Fink ’71, managing editor of The Exonian, summarized the prevailing sentiment of the day in the pages of the newspaper: “We have made a tremendous step forward.” The momentous decision set Exeter on a new, better path, blazed by the 39 day students who entered that September and by the thousands of girls who have since followed in their footsteps. Over the next 18 months, the Academy will reflect on the past 50 years, appreciate how this seminal moment forever changed Exeter and hear from those who lived history as it happened.
A LONG ROAD
The Trustees’ vote was hailed as a new beginning, but it also marked the end of a drawn-out debate at the
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Academy. Coeducation had been under consideration for a decade. Exeter’s Summer School, sometimes seen as a test kitchen for the Academy, began admitting girls with success in 1961. Four years later, a faculty-led planning committee recommended that Exeter admit up to 250 girls in grades 11 and 12, stating in its report to the principal and Trustees that “if they were founding a boarding school today, it would be coeducational.” That recommendation was rejected. Day, in announcing the decision in December 1965, voiced support instead for the idea of “coordinate education” — separate but adjacent schools for boys and girls — and expressed his desire for “an independent girls boarding school down the road” that might affiliate with the Academy. Milton Academy had operated under a coordinate structure, and a similar system had governed Mount Hermon and Northfield schools for a century. In a news conference, Day noted of the Trustees’ decision to shelve coeducation: “This does not mean never, but only for the foreseeable future.” The future wasn’t far off, as it turns out. In 1967, a survey of the senior class, faculty and alumni was conducted around several key topics of concern at the Academy. On the issue of coeducation, the findings showed overwhelming support among students (88 percent) and faculty (77 percent). Alumni were divided, generally by year of graduation. Pre-World War II graduates preferred the status quo; but those who had graduated in the 20 years immediately prior to the survey were strongly in favor of coeducation.
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The survey findings were printed in the winter 1969 issue of The Bulletin just days after Yale and Princeton universities announced their intentions to admit women in the coming fall. A movement was on. A new trustee-appointed committee was formed to again study the issue at Exeter. In the fall of 1969 that committee produced a familiar recommendation: Admit girls. “It would not be the tradition of this school to wait until everybody else had done it and then say it was the thing to do,” said one committee member. Added an 11th-grade boy serving as a student representative on the committee: “As for me, I know I like girls a lot.”
TOM KATES PHOTOGRAPHY
Step Forward
‘DECISIVE ACTION’
Ahead of the Trustees’ visit in early 1970, the Student Council urged them to “take decisive action” to bring coeducation to Exeter. A steady drumbeat of student support reverberated throughout the opinion pages of The Exonian, culminating in an editorial printed two days ahead of the historic Trustees meeting: “Perhaps there are other Exonians who can see reasons for postponing or abandoning coeducation. We cannot. Coeducation at Exeter is one of the few issues around which unanimous student support has arisen. We are hard put to understand the presumptions — camaraderie, cold showers, concentration — which dictate that Exeter should remain a monastic community. We urge the Trustees to move forward
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as rapidly as possible towards transforming Exeter into a balanced coeducational school.” The vote of the Trustees was unanimous. The response among alumni was less so. To some, it surely was no coincidence that The New York Times’ story of the decision ran on the newspaper’s obituary page. Paul Sadler ’45, then the editor of The Exeter Bulletin, wrote about the feedback in the spring 1970 issue: “It would be something less than candid to report that all reactions have been favorable.” Sadler then added: “Surely, the real test will be in a few years as the performance of the girls is known. I, for one, feel they will contribute greatly to the school and I shall be glad to see them here.” E
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CONNECTIONS
News and notes from the alumni community
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Build Your PEA Network By Michelle Curtin, director of alumni and parent relations
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am often asked, “What do you love most about your job?” While my role in Exeter’s Alumni and Parent Relations Office has evolved over the last decade, my response is always the same: the people. I am privileged to work with some of the most compassionate, intellectually curious and inspiring individuals I have ever met. These connections with Exonians from around the world are the very best part of my job. The stories of the impact that the Exeter experience has had on individuals and the strength and significance of the connections formed among Exonians continue to inspire and reaffirm my commitment to this work. Providing opportunities for Exonians to not only maintain and nurture their connections to each other and the Academy, but to also discover and develop new ones, is the focus of the alumni and parent relations team, and I am fortunate to play a part in this effort. Class reunions remain one of the school’s most enduring and meaningful occasions for alumni to connect with each other and the Academy. This May, we’ll welcome back classes ending in 5 or 0 as we celebrate their past experiences on campus, showcase the Exeter of today, and seek input on the Exeter of tomorrow. For those classes, I encourage you to visit exeter.edu/reunions for more information. Our regional associations also host more than 160 events worldwide for alumni and parents each year. (An up-to-date listing can be found at exeter.edu/alumni.) It’s a chance to meet and mingle with other Exonians in the region and learn about Exeter’s immediate and long-term priorities. Last summer, we launched a new alumni mentor directory and enhanced search features in our online alumni directory to provide more opportunities for alums to engage around career and affinity interests. More than 800 alumni have already flagged themselves as mentors in the directory and there are over 180 affinity choices to select and filter on. Log into the alumni network at exeter.edu/ alumni to access these new features and begin expanding your individual Exeter network. The world continues to shrink in terms of our ability to connect and foster relationships, and yet the possibilities in which we facilitate these connections are growing rapidly. As we continue to support lifelong connections among Exonians and with the Academy, we encourage you to be an active community member and thought partner. Be sure to look for an email soon to participate in an Alumni Engagement Survey. Or, you can reach out directly to share your thoughts, ideas and suggestions. We are always happy to hear from you at alumni@exeter.edu. E
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Alexa Liautaud ’12 By Sarah Zobel correspondent for NBC News Now, where she has investigated life as a Chicago public school teacher; the processing of terrorism-related crimes in the U.S. courts; and the possibility of a cyber war with Iran. We caught up with her in New Hampshire on the U.S. presidential campaign trail. What prompted you to go into journalism?
At Stanford, I chose to write my honors thesis on a province in Afghanistan that witnessed enormous upheaval alongside a rotating American military presence. I was working with disparate primary sources, cables between generals, old books, speeches. The war undoubtedly spurred an interest in seeking the truth from leaders making momentous and costly decisions for the American people. Do you often have to set personal politics aside when reporting a story?
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aised in London by an American mother and a French father, journalist Alexa Liautaud ’12 has always had a global focus. When she arrived at Exeter as an upper, the expat expanded her worldview even more. Classes in Arabic and Middle Eastern history, as well as her experience at Seeds of Peace working with teens from Israel and Palestine to overcome political conflicts, fed her fascinations. The passionate and civic-minded Exonian continued studying history, specifically war and counterinsurgency conflict, as well as Middle Eastern languages, literature and culture at Stanford and got her first taste of media life as an intern with Bloomberg News. “Behind the headlines on the Middle East — the war in Syria, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the underlying humanitarian crises — there are people,” Liautaud says. “There are authentic stories waiting to be uncovered and inspire positive change.” Liautaud went on to earn a master’s degree in reporting and short-documentary filmmaking from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2017 and took a job as a reporter and an associate producer for HBO’s VICE News Tonight covering both domestic politics and foreign conflicts. Today, she is a
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My personal opinions are much less important than my ability to shine light on how others see and experience the world. It’s rewarding to spend time with people and listen to their stories, with all of their complexities, caveats and nuances. Being involved with Seeds of Peace improved not just my empathy, but my ability to actively listen to those I did not agree with — two key qualities necessary to succeed as a journalist. What do you see as the future of journalism?
The question is, can we, as journalists, be nimble enough to capitalize on new platforms and technologies while our institutions evolve their ethical policies and business models in tandem? It’s a privilege to be a journalist focused on a young and savvy audience, without pressure to sacrifice quality and accuracy. While I may have complained in the past about my generation’s attention span, it’s actually been an incredible gift for me as a correspondent, as I’ve been forced to improve my writing. Platforms will undoubtedly evolve, as will the mechanisms through which we capture the news, but if journalism is the act of seeking truth, then I believe it will continue to exist. E
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A Bibliophile’s Gift By Debbie Kane
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University, where he received a bachelor’s treasures connections, especially degree in economics the friendships he formed with and later an MBA. (He classmates and teachers during jokes that his most his time at Exeter. Those relationships lasting connection to encouraged him to organize and attend Cornell was meeting alumni events for years after he gradhis late wife, Caroline.) uated, volunteer with Exeter’s General He went on to become Alumni Association, and serve six years an officer in the U.S. on the Board of Trustees, where his Navy Medical Service goal was to strengthen bonds between Corps and then earned the Academy and alumni from around a doctorate in busithe world. For his extensive community ness from Saint Louis efforts, Loughlin received the school’s University. He entered Founder’s Day Award in 1996. academia in 1976 and One of his most enduring friendtaught economics and ships was with Polly MacMullen ’76, an finance at Maryville instructor in modern languages and a girls University for 23 years. lacrosse coach. The two met in 1991 at her Philip Loughlin III ‘57 gestures toward the During that time, he 15th Exeter reunion. “I was struck by how Class of 1945 Library’s pre-digital card catalog. also served on the board many interesting experiences she had — of directors of the St. Louis Mercantile Library. traveling around the world to France and New Zealand,” After retiring from Maryville, Loughlin delved Loughlin recalls. “She was a pleasure to talk to.” into Chinese history, an interest sparked during his When MacMullen passed away in 2019, Loughlin honeymoon, when he and Caroline toured East Asia. wanted to remember her in a meaningful way. Inspired He transformed his academic interest into a learning by her passion for literature, he established a permanent opportunity for Exeter students and faculty. While on the fund in her memory: the Priscilla (Polly) MacMullen, board of directors of the East-West Center Foundation Class of 1976, Library Fund. His gift supports Overdrive, in Honolulu, Loughlin worked with the center to orgathe Academy Library’s new digital reading platform, nize programs bringing Exeter faculty to East Asia. “It offering the Exeter community online access to a range of was so successful we did a subsequent trip to Korea and ebooks and audiobooks, from the classics to bestsellers. Japan together with other high schools,” he says. An “It’s state of the art,” Loughlin says. “I think it’s a perfect authority on Hong Kong and Macao, he’s lectured about way to remember Polly.” Hong Kong and co-authored several scholarly articles on Loughlin’s own lifelong fascination with books and Chinese economics and geography. libraries began at Exeter. “My English teacher, Jack Through the years, Loughlin stayed up to date with Heath, introduced me to interesting novels,” Loughlin changes at the Davis Library, and then the Class of 1945 says. “We read a lot of Dickens and Shakespeare. I was Library. He and Caroline contributed to the library’s particularly drawn to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I purchase of Biblion, a computerized catalog, in the early was fascinated with that book. Even today I reread some 1990s. “Being exposed to such a wonderful facility of the literature we read in that class.” The former Davis Library became a draw for the young and the lifelong friendships I made with classmates and alumni like Polly — that’s what has made Exeter so reader. “I’d never seen a library that large,” Loughlin important to me,” he says. “I hope, through my work over says. “I was just pulled into it. I’d go there to do research, the years, that I helped alumni connect with Exeter the but I discovered reading fiction for entertainment.” way I did. … I hope I’ve had some lasting effect.” E After graduating from Exeter, Loughlin attended Cornell hilip Loughlin III ’57; ’76 (Hon.)
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The Stuntman By Adam Loyd
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n an average day, Brian Donahue ’81 goes to
work expecting to be thrown down a flight of stairs, jump from a moving vehicle or dive out of a burning building. For the New York Citybased stuntman and actor, it’s all part of the job. With his 6-foot-4, 285-pound frame and even thicker Boston accent, Donahue effortlessly inhabits “tough guy” characters, often with one thing in common — a sensational demise. “It rarely ends well for me,” he says with a laugh that instantly softens his gruff exterior. Donahue’s path to his current career began in his home state of Massachusetts, where he was an accomplished shot-putter at Archbishop Williams High School. Noting his talent, Donahue’s coach recommended he consider a postgraduate year at Exeter to train under legendary track and field coach Ralph Lovshin. The pair hit it off and set to work in the Thompson Cage, combining weight lifting and throwing exercises with some of Lovshin’s more unorthodox methods. “One day he said, ‘I’ve got a surprise for you, the maintenance guys found this.’ And he rolled out a 25-pound cannonball,” Donahue recalls. “When I went back to throwing the 12-pound shot, I could barely feel it.” Donahue capped a successful season by traveling to Naperville, Illinois, to compete in the high school national championship. There, he took home first place with a throw of 66 feet 1 inch and a track and field scholarship from the University of Texas. In his sophomore year at Texas, Donahue doubled up
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in his athletic pursuits, playing on the defensive line for the Longhorns football team. After two years of school, he left Austin and returned to the Northeast to train with Olympic throwing coach Tony Naclerio. Next came stints with the NFL’s New York Jets and Green Bay Packers, and then the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts. Ultimately, injuries forced him to look for a new livelihood off the field. While Donahue was working a factory job in New York, a co-worker with ties to the professional wrestling world suggested he give wrestling a try. With his natural athleticism and gift of gab, it wasn’t long before he, as his character the Dublin Destroyer, was being booked in matches for the biggest name in the industry — the World Wrestling Federation. In wrestling, Donahue found a place where he could utilize his strength and agility while learning how to be a performer. Despite his less-than-stellar win-loss record, he relished the opportunity to entertain packed arenas and an international television audience. “People used to say to me, ‘You get beat all the time.’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah, but you watched it, didn’t you?’” Donahue went on to accept a position at Walt Disney World, performing in the live-action Indiana Jones show, where he further refined his acting chops. In search of more regular work in television and film, Donahue, his wife, Lori, and the couple’s daughter returned to New York, where he booked jobs on TV staples like “Law & Order,” “Blue Bloods” and “The Sopranos.” He also landed a role on the “Late Show with David Letterman” in a recurring sketch that found him roughing up unsuspecting announcer Alan Kalter. Soon he became known as “the guy,” a name bestowed upon him by Letterman and the title of a recently released documentary short about Donahue’s life. Donahue continues to work as a stuntman and actor, but jokes about how he’s noticed his roles changing as he ages. “They must think I’m getting older because I started out a couple of shows already dead this year,” he says with a chuckle. E
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Parenting at Sea By Genny Beckman Moriarty
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uthor, sailor and adventurer Kate Ford Laird ’86
sees boredom as essential to nurturing a child’s imagination. That’s one of the many benefits of raising her now teenage daughters on the open sea, in an electronics-free environment. Along with Hamish, her husband, and her family, she lives aboard Seal, a 56-foot aluminum yacht designed to withstand harsh conditions at extreme latitudes.
Laird and Hamish have logged well over 100,000 miles together and close to 85,000 miles with their daughters, reaching nearly as far north and south as it is possible to go. “As far as we know,” Laird says, “Helen and Anna were the youngest kids since the whaling days to sail from the Arctic to the Antarctic.” It’s a lifestyle at once intensely adventurous and marked by long stretches of isolation. “We’ve spent much of our time where you really can’t see any traces of human civilization,” Laird says. “Helen said recently that when she was little, she thought the entire world was wilderness with only a few scattered settlements of humans along the edges. … Some days, we just watched the wind lift the water into the air in 70-knot williwaws and didn’t accomplish anything else.” With so few distractions, Laird recalls, the girls developed tools to cope with occasional boredom — “whether that was playing outside in driving snow or drawing pages of cartoons when we were at sea for weeks at a time.”
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Weeks at a time, indeed. The family sailed to Greenland when the girls were 3 and 4; reached Antarctica when they were 4 and 6; and spent the next five seasons doing charter work in Antarctica and on South Georgia Island. They then set off for New Zealand, then Japan, and finally to Alaska. Since 2013, they have been running charters for mountaineers, tourists, backcountry skiers and scientists in the remote Aleutian Islands, Alaska Peninsula and Prince William Sound. If the charter season provides opportunities to commune with nature, winters near Cordova, a town of 2,000 off the road system in Prince William Sound, bring connections with people. In between homeschooling and working hard to retrofit Seal for the summer months, Laird family members have joined science teams, community theater, even a local band or two. Kate, who participated in Exeter’s Washington Intern Program and once imagined a life in the foreign service, has been involved in local politics and outreach in Cordova. “The community time is busy and social, so the two seasons balance each other well,” she says. Always attracted to the sea, Laird learned to sail dinghies as a child in New Hampshire, worked during college on a New England Aquarium whale watch boat, and cultivated her wanderlust as a new Harvard grad by taking a job as tutor and crew for a family of five out on the Pacific Ocean. Joking that she’s “still on that gap year,” Laird says she “wandered” in and out of writing about other people’s adventures before seizing the opportunity to reach Antarctica by sailboat. She convinced a photographer friend they could sell articles to pay for the trip after their return. “I had already sailed halfway around Antarctica and owned my own boat, but this trip was life-changing,” she says. “For starters, I ended up marrying the captain.” She and her sailing partner just celebrated their 20th anniversary, and while their daughters prepare to row out on their own, Laird has one wish: “I hope wherever Helen and Anna find themselves, they will be ambassadors for the fragile wilderness where they were able to spend their childhoods.” E
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FROM EVERY QUARTER E XO N I A N S M A K E C O N N E C T I O N S AT H O M E A N D A R O U N D T H E WO R L D Please note, all photos are identified left to right unless otherwise indicated.
EXETER LEADERSHIP WEEKEND 2019 Volunteers were invited back to campus to hold business meetings and plan for next year; hear an Academy update; and enjoy good company and conversation. More than 260 alumni, parents and their guests participated. One highlight of the weekend was the alumni/senior class dinner, where the President’s Awards for recent and exemplary service to Exeter were presented.
Bert Keidel ’64; P’21, Gene Meredith, Nat Butler ’64 and Carl Goodwin ’64; P’96
GAA President Ciatta Baysah ’97 with President’s Award recipients Susannah Clark ’84 and Emily Gray Stone ’03, Principal Bill Rawson ’71; P’08 and President’s Award Committee Chair Katherine (Post) Calvert ’91
Liz (Brisbin) Mullard ’77; P’11, P’13, Peg Aaronian P’94, P’97 and Science Instructor Rich Aaronian P’94, P’97
Alumni volunteers enjoyed dinner on Friday with the class of 2020.
Our STARs (student volunteers) ready to hand out the senior class nametags
The Parents Committee met to plan the year ahead.
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2020 REUNION DATES If your graduation year ends in 0 or 5, mark your calendar for reunions in May 2020! Join your classmates back on campus to reconnect with old friends and discover new ones.
May 1-3 (Children’s Program) 40th | Class of 1980 35th | Class of 1985 30th | Class of 1990 25th | Class of 1995 20th | Class of 2000 15th | Class of 2005
SAN FRANCISCO Alumni, parents and friends met to cheer on Big Red. Pictured here are hosts Wende and Tom Hutton ’73, Jorge Alvarez ’06, Chris Downer ’06, Yasmin Bashirova ’13, Allie O’Keefe ’13 and (front) Trustee President Tony Downer ’75; P’06, P’06, P’07.
May 14-17 50th | Class of 1970 May 15-17 60th | Class of 1960 55th | Class of 1965 45th | Class of 1975 10th | Class of 2010 5th | Class of 2015
EXETER/ANDOVER WEEKEND School spirit was on display in cities around the U.S. and in Canada.
May 19-21 75th | Class of 1945 70th | Class of 1950 65th | Class of 1955
Liam Collins, Susan Lai ’77 and Scotch Scocimara ’82; P’16, P’18
NEW YORK CITY Exonians gathered at Park Avenue Tavern, including class of ’15 alums Sam Yoo, Katie Liptak and Zoha Qamar.
MARYLAND In Silver Spring, Lisa Jacobson ’81 and Andrew Hayden ’85 cheered on the teams.
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Oliver Everhard, Tyler Harden, Aaron Reuben, Nick Weigel and Chris Keating, all class of ’13
TORONTO Hosted by San Eng ’88; P’21 and Sophia Choi P’21 (far right), the revelers included Marianne Burnett (Andover) and Chloe and Bella Eng.
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SEACOAST Alumni had opportunities to connect on campus and in the Boston area for a variety of events, including an art show, receptions, a whale watch cruise and the exclusive showing of an Academy Award film.
RYE, NH Dan Brown ’82 (right) opened his home for an Exeter Seacoast Regional reception. Dan was joined by Alan and Kelly (Gittlein) Lewis ’96 and Tom Christie P’16, P’19.
Jeff Baillargeon ’03, Nate Baillargeon ’01, Kathryn Kalogerou, Bill Rawson ’71; P’08 and Byron Kalogerou ’79
EXETER The Exeter community was invited to an exclusive showing of Free Solo, an award-winning film produced by Evan Hayes ’98. Pictured here are Jason BreMiller, English instructor and sustainability education coordinator, Evan Hayes and Rob Richards, chair of the Department of Theater and Dance.
BOSTON Members of Exeter’s Science faculty accompanied a group of alumni, family and guests for a whale watch cruise to Stellwagen Bank Marine Sanctuary. Joining the fun were Catherine Moore ’13, Sarah Hannigan ’14, Julia Hobbie ’13 and faculty members Alison Hobbie P’13, P’15, Chris Matlack P’08, P’15 and Rich Aaronian ’76, ’78, ’97 (Hon.); P’94, P’97.
Young alumni enjoyed connecting at a College Night event. Attendees included Emily Cloonan ’19, Russell Weatherspoon P’92, P’95, P’97, P’01, instructor in religion and director of Exeter Summer, Amelia Lee ’19, Jeremy Xu ’19 and Liz Williams ’19.
Edgewater Gallery was the site for an Exeter reception and talk featuring the work of artist Kate Gridley ’74. Here, Kate discusses her collection “The Language of Objects: A Few True Things.”
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EAST COAST
PHILADELPHIA Alumni enjoyed an Exeter end-of-summer tradition, the garden party, at the home of Cletus Lyman ’63 (center). He is joined here by Steve Mullin and Steve Robinson, both class of ’73.
Additional events bid farewell to summer and welcomed fall with oysters, social gatherings and a historic tour.
Henry Bonner ’82, Bruce Hallett ’67; P’02, P’06, P’11 and Rich Podos ’81
NEW YORK Exonians were treated to an evening of oyster tasting with Peter Stein ’00, oyster farmer and owner of Peeko Oysters. Here, Julien Vernet ’00 gets a lesson from Peter.
Jono Cobb ’75, Yelstin Fernandes ’09 and Serin Varghese
WASHINGTON, D.C. Alumni, parents and friends toured the historic National Park Seminary.
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NEW YORK Members of the Campus Master Plan Steering Committee and consultants Byer Blinder Bell engaged attendees in a conversation on upcoming campus projects and planning. Pictured here are Kasey Colander ’10, Alexandra Bowie ’75, Daniel Kim ’12 and Ben Shute ’55.
WASHINGTON, D.C. A Harkness discussion and celebration in memory of Dolores Kendrick, Vira Heinz Professor and instructor in English emerita, was led by Jessie George ’04, a history teacher at Episcopal High School. Participants included (back row) Suzi (Rosenblum) Guardia ’86, Victor Frye ’77 and Lori Lincoln ’86; (front row) Jessie George, Laura Browning ’87 and Adam Browning.
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CHICAGO The annual reception in Chicago featured an Academy update by Principal Bill Rawson ’71; P’08.
Bill Rawson with Patrick Ahern ’77; P’13, P’17, P’22, who graciously underwrote this event at the University Club.
André and Nicole Smith ’05
Roger Shen ’17, Prady Dayal ’18, Eva Herget ’19, Harry Ditullio ’18, Isadora Kron ’19 and Emily Pelliccia ’18
Alex McLaughlin ’14, Sima Shah ’14, Lake Vitton ’14, Nancy Wilder ’75, Robert Baldi ’03 and his wife, Elena
SOUTHWEST Exonians in Colorado and Texas welcomed Trustee President Tony Downer ’75; P’06, P’06, P’07 to their annual receptions.
DALLAS Nicole Weeldreyer ’90; P’21 (center) hosted this event with her husband, John P’21. She is joined here by Sanjay Shetty ’92; P’23 and Monty Montgomery ’93. Steve Penrose ’62, Ori Evans ’18 and Dan Haley ’92
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HOUSTON Gilbert Ontiveros P’02, Toby Li ’03, Yan Xu and Cliff Pearson ’78 attended a reception hosted by Tricia and Charlie Neuhaus ’79; P’19. Ellis Moss ’75, Liena and Bill Morrison ’70, and Darcie and Jeff Schlegel P’23
Tony Downer, pictured here with Buzz Walker ’64, provided an Academy update.
UPCOMING EVENTS DENVER James Burgess, Sekhar Paladugu ’08, Ace Ohira ’06, Meredith Altenhofen and Tad Stebbins ’06
Exonians enjoy reconnecting through numerous activities and events, including large receptions and small socials; sports competitions; cultural and educational opportunities; and non sibi projects. You can view and register for events at www.exeter.edu/alumni or call the Alumni and Parent Relations Office at 603-777-3454. Please join us:
Jane Feldman ’74, Andrew Weinstein ’09, Allison Stiles, Noah Glick ’06 and Taye Sanford ’76
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February 5 London Reception February 8 Atlanta Reception March 11 San Francisco (Peninsula) Reception March 12 San Francisco (City) Reception March 14 Los Angeles Reception April 7 New York City Luncheon April 16 Washington, D.C. Reception April 16 Philadelphia Reception April 23 Minneapolis Reception
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WEST COAST Events included receptions; a Harkness discussion on diversity, equity and inclusion; and a panel presentation by Exeter Alumnae Circle (EXAE) members on their respective industries. LOS ANGELES Exonians met at Avec Nous to plan events for the next year.
SAN FRANCISCO The Exeter Association of Northern California held their annual holiday party. Attendees included Russell Weatherspoon, instructor in religion and director of Exeter Summer, and host David Tsai ’93.
LOS ANGELES Alumni, parents and guests in Newport Coast were welcomed to brunch at the home of Robert Chai-Onn P’19, P’22 and Cathy Han ’87; P’19, P’22. Joining the fun were Robin Jones ’88, Jennifer (Ripel) Scott ’95, Tony Downer ’75, Valerie Kosheleff ’95 and Leah (Fraser) Ersoylu ’95.
Lennon and Julia Cole ’06 and Teddy Anyansi ’06
SEATTLE Exonians gathered for a conversation with Stephanie Bramlett, Exeter’s director of equity and inclusion. Academy guests included Assistant Principal Karen Lassey P’14, P’16, P’18 (center), joined here by Mary Williamson ’81 (left) and Sarah Smith ’88.
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Ayotola Onipede ’15, Roshumba Llewellyn ’13, Carla Forbes and Takiyah Hartwell ’06
Ted Kutscher ’74, Jennifer Elkin P’11, Michael Eastman, Ed Jones ’64 and his wife, Marilyn
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SAN FRANCISCO The EXAE Circle panel included Kathy Mahoney ’78; P’13, P’14, P’17, Catarina (Norman) Schwab ’92, Veronica Juarez ’00, moderator Nicie Panetta ’84, Kristin Groos Richmond ’93, Camilla (Norman) Field ’93 and Christine Robson Weaver ’99.
Paloma Tamminga ’09, Donna Choi ’12, Erin Metcalf ’09 and Lauren Rawlings ’07
Katharine Leaning ’86; P’22, Kirsten Vernon ’84 and Kris Rosbe ’84
Charlotte Dillon ’16 and Ify Ikpeazu ’14
SAN FRANCISCO Barbara and Ben Rooks ’83 hosted a wine tasting at their home in Sonoma. Pictured here are Peter Carbone P’20 and Ben Rooks (back row), and in front, Peter Sauer, Veronica Juarez ’00, Diana Carbone P’20 and Barbara Rooks, holding Macchiato.
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C O N N ECT I O N S
PARENTS Across the country, Exeter parents opened their homes for parent gatherings with Academy faculty members. On campus, parents were welcomed with coffee and an Academy update by Principal Bill Rawson ’71; P’08 and a reception during Exeter/Andover weekend.
BOSTON A reception at the home of Dacia and Lanham Napier P’19, P’21 included Science Department Chair Alison Hobbie P’13, P’15 (standing, right).
NEW YORK CITY Sharmaine Griffith-Baker P’23, Patti Wu P’17, P’21 and Anne Van der Veer ’98; P’22 connected at the reception hosted by Susan Jang P’22 and Kenneth Lee P’22.
SAN FRANCISCO Parents gathered at the home of Ellie and Thomas Wehlen P’19. Pictured here are Brad Finkelstein P’23, Leigh Maurus P’23, hostess Ellie Wehlen, Gulzhanat Smagulova P’20 and Nurzhas Makishev.
WASHINGTON, D.C. David Lawson and Emiliana Vegas P’19, P’21 welcomed guests Coretta Bennett P’17, P’22, Ernest Nanor P’22 and Couro Janus P’23 to a recepton at their home.
EXETER Attendees at Coffee and Conversations included class of ’23 parents Alyson Van De Water, Elizabeth Rebeil and Heidi Hanson.
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Nidhi Khattri ’21, hostess Emiliana Vegas, Dan Horrigan P’21, P’23 and Abby (Walker) Horrigan ’83; P’21, P’23
Virginia Little P’18, P’20, Kate Machado P’20, P’22 and Kathleen Ferguson P’20
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EXETER During E/A Weekend, parents gathered for a reception. Pictured here are Lauren Saltman P’18, P’21, Lee Williams P’21, Jim Lieberman ’86; P’21 and Beth Lieberman P’21.
Heidi Hanson P’23, Debbie Quintal MacKenzie, Billie Audia P’23 and Sarah Brown P’18, P’21
INTERNATIONAL Exonians around the world had the opportunity to connect. DUBAI Hostess Azza El Farouki ’98 and Jae Hwang ’94 welcomed Academy staff to the Middle East.
STRATFORD A reception, hosted by Quincy Kresler ’99 gave Stratford Program students an opportunity to meet with alumni. Pictured here are Townley Chisholm, science instructor and Stratford Program leader, with Christina Murdock ’05 and Nick Schwarz ’20.
TOKYO Principal Rawson was welcomed by Toshi and Junko Mizuno P’17, P’21, hosts of this Exeter gathering.
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Alumni and Stratford Program students at the Lévy Gorvy Gallery
SHENZHEN Alumni and parents at this reception were greeted by hosts June Huo P’23, Amy Zhang P’19, Dan Liu P’23 and Lan Lou P’09, P’15, P’19. Principal Rawson offered an Academy update.
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Adaptable Harkness —continued from page 43
helped train 60 Pinkerton teachers in Harkness for the humanities and STEM. Pinkerton also trains teachers in two other research-based instructional methods: reciprocal teaching and the Question Formulation Technique (QFT), both of which Soroko says help “build us toward Harkness.” In reciprocal teaching, students take on specific roles, such as clarifier or questioner, in smaller group discussions within a class. “As these kids develop the skill sets that are under their role, they’re learning how to facilitate this small-group discussion and look at purpose and intent or focus within that discussion,” Soroko explains. With QFT, a strategy originally developed by the Right Question Institute, students focus on learning to form their own questions and on using those questions to pave their own learning path. Because Pinkerton’s class sizes are larger than Exeter’s, with 20 to 28 students, “We might end up breaking up into two Harkness circles and having kids facilitate those discussions,” Soroko says. “But they need to be trained on how to do that first.” To train teachers, Soroko works with eight instructional coaches across different disciplines, and each coach then becomes the go-to expert for their department. Some early adopters embrace Harkness immediately, Soroko says, while other teachers are less comfortable with moving from a more teacher-directed classroom style. Soroko makes it clear that the school doesn’t force Harkness on anyone, but gives teachers the freedom to choose which techniques they adopt in their classroom. “We’re making it actionable by breaking it down into smaller components, and allowing teachers to choose what is most appropriate for their content and their personality,” she says. “The reality is when you have 275 faculty, autonomy becomes extremely important, and [enabling] teachers’ personalities and authenticity in being with kids.” Sometimes she gets pushback from those who say Harkness won’t work with students who struggle to perform at their grade level, or are less self-motivated academically. But Soroko doesn’t buy it. “Harkness works in all levels with all W I N T E R
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different types of kids,” she says. “I think it allows for perspective and diversity to come to the table and actually have those conversations, which is so important for our empathy and for allowing kids to learn empathy.”
THE HARKNESS LEADERS CONFERENCE
Early in her work with Harkness Outreach, Foley talked with Ethan Shapiro, then Exeter’s dean of faculty, about the idea of a conference focused on the people who are leading the implementation of Harkness in their schools. EHI and other summer conferences are “totally teacher-oriented,” Foley says; they aim to share techniques used to successfully practice discussion-based teaching in the classroom. By contrast, “Ethan and I thought it would be an interesting idea to have the leaders come together and talk about the challenges of bringing Harkness to their schools.” In October 2019, Abbott-Jones, Soroko and nearly a dozen other educators from five schools traveled to Exeter for the pilot Harkness Leaders Conference. Attendees were invited to visit classes on the first day, before the conference officially kicked off with a dinner at Dean of Faculty Ellen Wolff ’s house. Over the next two days, the participants gave and heard presentations on their experiences with Harkness on their campuses, followed by seminar discussions. In addition, several current PEA students presented about how students feel the burden of representation in Harkness classes. The students undertook their research last year as part of the School Participatory Research Action Collaborative (SPARC), a collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. “I’d never really thought much before about how students feel at the table,” Abbott-Jones recalls. “I walked away just thinking so much more about how they’re represented at the table, how they might feel about certain topics that we’re discussing, and how as a teacher, my role is to manage that situation and read it a lot better than I ever had before.” Soroko emphasizes the feeling of connecting for the first time with fellow educators from far-flung schools. “It was lovely just hearing stories of their journey
and struggles, victories, things that they’ve come up with,” she says. “The stories were similar, even though the people at the table were extremely diverse.” In addition to INA and Pinkerton, the conference included presentations from Vermont’s Harwood Union High School, where History Instructor Katherine Cadwell and her colleagues have trained 36 student leaders and 27 teachers in Harkness methods over the past two years, and where classes of more than 30 students are often split into three sessions of Harkness running simultaneously. A group of educators from Little Rock Christian Academy in Arkansas presented on their experiences in establishing Harkness in a Christian school setting, while Noble Academy’s Assistant Principal Jessie Weingartner shared stories of the school’s Harkness learnings and challenges over the past five years. Finally, Aida Conroy ’09 led a session about how to support students and teachers in their Harkness journeys. Conroy taught history and mentored colleagues at Noble from 2014 to 2019. Of the educators she works with through Harkness Outreach, Foley says, “They just feel rather isolated, and they’ve got this set of challenges that they’re bumping into all the time when they’re trying to roll out Harkness.” At the conference, she believes, the participants “felt a camaraderie that was very deep.” Soroko recalls that the group held their own Harkness circles during the conference, in which they shared ideas and stories, asked questions, and challenged one another. “I didn’t want to leave,” she says. “I was still learning. I was still on my journey of learning, and being completely engaged and empowered to partake in this space.” Going forward, Abbott-Jones has plans to travel to Noble, while Soroko wants to visit Harwood, in Vermont. Both of them look forward to future experiences with Harkness Outreach, whether at conferences or in ongoing collaboration with Foley or educators from the other schools. “We came out of the conference having created so many links, and also a shared area of resources,” Abbott-Jones says. “[Everyone was] just really open and collaborative, and I feel like there’ve been some relationships created there that will benefit everybody going forward.” E T H E
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F I N I S
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The Adorned Fathomless Dark Creation By Matt W. Miller
That a woman calculated light could be drawn from collected radio frequencies so that this world could see the shadow, the sink, the portal out of our observable universe, PETER JAMES FIELD / AGENCYRUSH.COM
that this was all over the headlines the day we would wake the man that had been husband, father, grandfather to two children, that tiny bees were found in some other woman’s eye, feeding off her tears after she’d been plucking weeds from graves during Qingming, that, before today, black holes existed only as gaps in data, as engines that turned existence around their absence, that before today his absence was never a presence and none of us knew about the sweat bees that nest near graves, inside fallen trees, subsisting on pollen and nectar but also, on our salt, so that as our children kneel beside his casket, maybe it’s not the loss, not the gut empty sick that only death can gift, not the singularity that swallows all, everything, even light, maybe there’s no weeping, maybe it’s only some bees blurring their sight.
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Matt W. Miller is an instructor in English at Phillips Exeter Academy. This poem was originally published in the Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry and took second place in the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry.
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Exeter for Educators Exeter hosts professional development programs for secondary and middle-school teachers. Select conference programs provide college credit, and many provide an introduction to teaching in the Harkness tradition. Learn more at www.exeter.edu/conferences2020.
June 21-26, 2020 • ANJA S. GREER CONFERENCE ON MATHEMATICS AND TECHNOLOGY
• EXETER DIVERSITY INSTITUTE
• BIOLOGY INSTITUTE
• WRITERS’ WORKSHOP
• ENVIRONMENTAL LITERATURE INSTITUTE
• EXETER HUMANITIES INSTITUTE
EXETER HUMANITIES INSTITUTE WEST JULY 6-10, LA JOLLA, CA
PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY 20 Main Street Exeter, NH 03833-2460
Parents of Alumni: If this magazine is addressed to an Exonian who no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, please email us (records@exeter.edu) with their new address. Thank you.
A LIFE-CHANGING EXPERIENCE HONORING IN ONLY FIVE WEEKS
EXTRAORDINARY SERVICE
EXETER SUMMER JULY 6-AUGUST 8, 2020 Grades 7-12
Joh
llips Award is
bestowed upon an alumnus or alumna for outstanding contribution to the welfare of community, country and humanity. Founders Day Award
exeter.edu/summer2020