Family, friends and faculty celebrate graduating seniors in the Academy’s 244th year.
Sarah Pruitt ’95 32 Shared Space, Shared Future
The renewal of Exeter’s Academy Building and venerated Assembly Hall. Adam Loyd 40 Supply and Demand
The puzzles and potential of studying economics at Exeter.
Sarah Pruitt ’95 46
“If you stay true to your principles, your sphere of influence will continue to grow; you will be asked to take on more responsibility.”
Principal Bill Rawson ’71; ’65, ’70 (Hon.), p. 34
Tejas West ’25 gets a little bit of help with his tie before the graduation procession.
Cover: Photography by Amanda Sagba
Mud Room
Off the loading dock of the Phelps Science Center lies an unassuming, yet vital, utility room. Inside, racks of black rubber boots line concrete walls. Nets, rakes and shovels nestle in an aluminum trash can beside pruning loppers, shears and baskets of gardening gloves.
For Exeter science students, learning begins here, where they pull on boots and gather tools for a day of field work.
“We’ve got several biology and chemistry electives using the room on a regular basis, making it a packed space some mornings,” Science Instructor Sydnee Goddard says.
Goddard took her marine biology class on nine field trips during spring term, each time meeting in the utility room to gear up for the adventure, whether it was exploring rocky intertidal habitats at Odiorne Point State Park, estuarine habitats edging Great Bay or the beaches and dunes along the Atlantic Ocean.
“When I ran field trips from Thompson Science 25 years ago, it took me many trips to lug all the equipment to a red dragon bus before heading out. In ‘the old days’ students wore sneakers for our marine biology field trips. After carrying the students through mud flats, salt marshes and tide pools, the shoes were not worth keeping.”
Emma B. Ward
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Vera Aimunmondion ’24 used the directory to land 30 “pre-interviews” with alumni working in elds and at companies of her interest.
Around the Table
For the Record Instructor in Music Eric Schultz cues up some vinyl for a class on the Beatles. P. 16
Students discuss the Fab Four in MUS202: History of American Popular Music.
Letters to the Editor
“The Secret Societies” (spring 2025) was an interesting bit of Exeter history and one I don’t believe my father or uncles knew about, first arriving in 1947. It made me wonder about other clubs which survived at least into the 1980s. The Southern Club, for example, was a club defined only by a regional criterion. This was an important association for a minority of students who were often mocked for their accents and what those apparently implied in the minds of other students about our intellect. A review of PEAN photographs point to the ubiquity of the Confederate battle flag, highlighting a show of pride by that minority. (The flag was not then so closely associated with hate groups.) I imagine now that use of the flag is no longer permitted.
I know of at least one Black classmate who is embittered by actual or perceived racism that was not and still has not been satisfactorily addressed by the Exeter community as a whole. Transparency about this history would probably be a good exercise as we recognize how we have all changed the last 50 years.
Wes Edwards ’82
The Bulletin is one of four alumni magazines I get, and I can say that it is the best of the lot. Twenty years as class correspondent (“Recorder of the Ages”) certainly deflated me a bit. Nice article. Also, since my 31-year-old son just recently was identified as “on the spectrum,” the article
on autism (“Searching for a Cure”) was also amazing. Tom De Lancey ’71
“Searching for a Cure” (spring 2025) sums up my experience of being autistic in the first phrase: “For parents of children with autism.”
Not all autistic people want to be “cured” regardless of what our parents, spouses, bosses, children and others may want.
Autism is a spectrum disorder in that it affects every individual as uniquely as our fingerprints. Some of us struggle with sensory challenges, some of us struggle with language, some of us struggle with socialization, and all at varying levels. I think it’s great to search for ways to ease these challenges, whether it’s easing dietary challenges with probiotics, using mental health therapy to teach emotion regulation or social skills, using occupational therapy for addressing sensory needs or, most important, building social supports that make the disability less disabling systemically.
We have challenges and we can benefit from supports, but many of us see the world in wholly different and beneficial ways because of the way our brains are wired. I personally would love to have fewer challenges with eating (I have a common co-occurring diagnosis of ARFID, an eating disorder, which anyone who ate dinner with me in Elm or Wetherell would probably recognize from my surviving almost entirely on breadsticks during
I was surprised as I was reading through the Bulletin to see the photo on Page 18 and my name and class in the caption (“All Aboooooard!,” spring 2025). May 16, 1942, was a Saturday. As I recall, it was the day of the Southern Club’s annual Spring Ball to be held that evening in Thompson Gym.
The photo was taken after the Boston & Maine train from Boston had just stopped before opening the car doors to discharge a bevy of lovely young ladies from sundry schools and colleges in the Boston area (and perhaps beyond). Those Exonians expecting dates were anxiously looking for their gal to step out and down from the train.
Why I took the picture, I do not know; but there it is.
David Nimick ’42
my time at Exeter). But I wouldn’t trade the benefits I get from my autism (pattern recognition, high levels of empathy and perspective taking, high interest and focus, among others) for anything in the world. Stephanie Lane ’12
I was deeply troubled by the piece on James Adams (“Searching for a Cure”). That title reverberates in my psyche, given the hurtful, eugenic rhetoric from RFK Jr. and his ilk. Your piece parrots those tropes: that autism is a scourge, a terrible tragedy, and a heartbreak for the families of autistic people.
I am autistic and this kind
of language hurts me. Autism is central to my selfhood, and is not somehow extricable from who I “really” am. It’s not a disease I have. It is an extraordinary way of being in the world and, at the same time, it is a very painful and hard way to be, in a world that is not, in any sense, built for people like me.
There are many good sources of information on autism that are run by autists, including The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network and Neuroclastic. We are not sick. We have always existed. A world without us in it would be an inferior world.
Sarah Courchesne
’98
We want to hear from you! The Exeter Bulletin welcomes story ideas and letters related to articles published in recent issues. Please send your remarks for consideration to bulletin@exeter.edu or Phillips Exeter Academy, The Exeter Bulletin, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833.
Heard in Assembly Hall
Sound
bites from this fall’s speaker series
“When you’re going down, you can just tuck and roll. It’s so easy. But when you’re going uphill trying to get to a goal, don’t give up. You may take a break. Go slow, go fast. Just don’t stop.”
Chris Dixon Footwear designer, founder of design organization CNSTNT DVLPMNT
“I said, OK, I want to become the first human being to swim all of Narragansett Bay. I want to do this for the ocean. But I also want people to know that alcoholism and being in recovery is my superpower, and by being sober and taking care of my body and doing all these amazing things, I can still go out in the world and make a difference.”
“When we think about life and about ecosystems, we tend to think about the things that we can see with our naked eye. I don’t need to persuade you that there’s life on land. You can see it. … But the existence of this third realm of life, what scientists call the aerobiome — it’s taken a long, long time for scientists to really recognize its importance.”
Carl Zimmer Journalist and author; Richard and Joan S. Strickler Exonian Fund Speaker
“We experience the world with our five senses, and grief is an energy that’s created inside our body on account of our loss. It’s not just the loss of a loved one. It can also be when Andover beats Exeter. It’s just an everyday experience.”
Ben Tuff Educator, counselor and ultramarathon swimmer
“When you visit the United States Supreme Court and you look at the pediment over the front doors, you see the phrase ‘Equal Justice Under Law.’ One former justice called that promise the most inspiring ideal in American society. But a sobering fact about American law is that that ideal is unattainable. … The reality is that we will never have enough lawyers to solve the problem of the justice gap — the gap between the huge need for help on behalf of people who are poor and struggling economically for access to civil justice and who’s available to help them.”
Lincoln Caplan ’68 Journalist, legal scholar and educator
Meghan Jarvis ’92
Clinical
psychotherapist and author
“Most of the time, [dictators] make dangerous decisions … because being able to come to the most rational conclusion needs being challenged. The more you’re challenged, the more you think, the more you see the other side of the problem. If you’re not challenged, you think you’re always right, and usually you come to the wrong conclusion.”
Nevşin Mengü
Journalist, media expert and digital content creator; Paul Klebnikov ’81 Memorial Speaker
Science Project
Instructor in Science Andrew McTammany ’04 explores the interplay between curiosity, assessment and student engagement
Our daughter ate a rock,” I told my spouse as he returned from crew practice one afternoon. “I tried to stop her, but she’d swallowed it by the time I got there.”
Curiosity is a strong, and sometimes uncontrollable, impulse. My daughter’s urge to taste a rock (honestly, it was a small pebble) is not much different from what piqued my interest in organic chemistry: the desire to know more about the world. Like my daughter — whose favorite phrase is “What’s this?” — I’m constantly asking questions. Mine are slightly different, and chemistry has been the lens that I’ve used to find answers. Why do fireflies flash at night? A reaction between luciferin and the enzyme luciferase. Researchers call this type of curiosity “joyous exploration” and have investigated its role in learning and motivation.
The most frequent response I get when I share that I’m a chemistry teacher is, “I hated that subject.” I never quite know what to say other than to list the course I dreaded most (history). But I often wonder, what is it about chemistry that elicits such a strong reaction, and is there any way to get students more excited to learn it?
“Why do fireflies flash at night? A reaction between luciferin and the enzyme luciferase. Researchers call this type of curiosity ‘joyous exploration’ and have investigated its role in learning and motivation.”
Each spring, Exeter’s Center for Teaching and Learning asks for project proposals from faculty looking to research a topic during the following school year. Usually, I am a bit of a dabbler, a stone skipping across the water’s surface. A yearlong project seemed like a great way to focus on a single topic, to dig into the research on curiosity, assessment and student engagement, and hopefully to find a way to combat chemistry’s PR problem.
During the fall term, I wanted to learn how students felt while completing chemistry homework, studying for exams and working at the lab bench. It came as somewhat of a surprise, but most students said they enjoyed learning the topic and some even found the subject interesting. They just weren’t too keen on studying for the tests. They reported feeling nervous, anxious and “cooked,” and constantly worried whether they
had studied enough. And most students wanted more practice — practice tests and problems to help build their confidence. Maybe chemistry wasn’t the problem, and it was the tests that left a bad taste. Perhaps a different type of assessment could improve student engagement.
Instead of tests and lab reports, I asked students to explore a topic of their choice and explain it the way a chemist would. For another assignment, students created a small art exhibition inspired by the concept of entropy. I hoped that they would enjoy these projects, worry less and feel more confident in themselves.
The students amazed me with their wide range of topics — such as coral, diet soda and ceviche — and their projects. One senior made a video of her interpretive dance of statistical thermodynamics. Another mixed and layered two songs to create an
acoustic interpretation of entropy and disorder. A third showed a video of lightning bugs blinking synchronously in an Appalachian forest and explained to the class how chemiluminescence can produce something so cool.
Before my partner returned from the boathouse, I Googled “what to do if your child swallows a rock.” I wasn’t too worried, only wanting to fill in a gap in my knowledge. This is called epistemic curiosity. Directionless curiosity, like shoving a handful of pebbles in your mouth, is known as diversive curiosity. Turns out, when you blend diversive and epistemic curiosity, work can seem like play.
Andrew McTammany ’04 is an instructor in science. He has coached water polo and swimming, and served as Exeter’s sustainability education coordinator.
AROUND THE TABLE / INSIDE THE WRITING LIFE
Second Acts
A conversation with debut novelist and former lawyer Kristin Koval ’88
Kristin Koval ’88 always wanted to be a writer but instead pursued a career in law. She attended Georgetown University and, after a year of travel, Columbia Law School. Traveling, Koval says, was “one of the best things I’ve ever done. ... Travel reminds you that there are eight billion different worlds on this planet.”
A few years ago, she decided to focus on her writing. The result, Penitence, is an assured, accomplished debut novel, a compelling tale of tragedy and forgiveness in a small Colorado ski town. In the opening pages, 13-year-old Nora is arrested after fatally shooting her 14-year-old brother. Ultimately, the effects of the shooting encompass not just their parents, but also the lawyers — formerly close friends of the family — who take on Nora’s defense.
We caught up with Koval to hear more about her new book and transition to the writing life.
I love how your characters have messiness in their lives; each one is such a complete, humane person. How did you manage that?
It was really important to me to write the novel from different perspectives. I thought that readers needed to walk in each character’s shoes in order to develop empathy for them. You need empathy in order to have mercy, and you need mercy to land on forgiveness, and forgiveness is where I want readers to land at the end of the novel.
Why is forgiveness so important?
I have had really impactful experiences with forgiveness, with being forgiven and forgiving other people. There was one instance where I forgave a couple of people that I’d been trying and failing to forgive for a really long time. One day, it happened in an instant, and I felt this sense of calm and peace. It was such a great feeling; it changed my life for the better, so I knew I wanted to write about it.
How did this particular plotline come to you as a way to write about forgiveness?
I came across news accounts of juvenile fratricide and decided this would be the way to write about forgiveness: by opening the novel with that situation, you are putting the parents in both the very easiest possible position to forgive — because if they don’t forgive the second child, they will lose that child — and the hardest possible position to forgive, because that second child killed their first child. It enabled me to explore how messy and complicated and hard forgiveness can be, and yet how beneficial it is.
You captured small-town dynamics impeccably. Your characters are thoroughly entangled, yet there are aspects of estrangement too. Well, I grew up in a very small town in central Pennsylvania. I also lived in New York City, which can have small communities within it, for eight years. Even schools can be small towns. I thought that placing the novel in a small town was a great way to show how judgmental and unforgiving people can be. I was also writing during COVID, and when I looked around at that time, it seemed like our world was very unforgiving. A small-town setting was one way to communicate the unforgiving nature of our world.
You were a lawyer. How did you make the transition to author?
I tried to write books several times before this one! The first time, I was on maternity leave with my first son, and I thought, “I have three whole months. Why don’t I just write a book?” As you can imagine, that didn’t happen. I was an overwhelmed first-time mother. Ten years later, with both kids in grade school, I tried again. But I did not have the energy to be a full-time lawyer, a full-time mother and a writer. I know that there are lots of people who can make that work, but I was not one of them. Then one day, when the kids were in high school, I happened into a free writing class, just a two-hour class in this little garden, and I came out of it totally rejuvenated. I realized that the reason I had been trying and failing for so many years was partly because I had never taken a creative writing class and didn’t have a writing community. So, while I was still a lawyer, I set about fixing that. I started taking evening classes, took the idea of a novel off the table, and focused on short stories. I realized that I could sit down on a Saturday and do my writing homework, focus for 12 hours, and be perfectly content. But if you took a picture of me in my office while I was lawyering, I was clock-watching all day.
A sign, perhaps?
I was at a point in my life where I needed to not be a lawyer anymore. I needed to do something different. I didn’t want to wake up when I was 80 and say, “Gosh, I wish I would have tried to write that book.” I wrote this novel pretty quickly: Start to finish, including my research, took about 11 months. I was ready. I had everything in my head, and writing was what I did that year.
“I didn’t want to wake up when I was 80 and say, ‘Gosh, I wish I would have tried to write that book.’”
Were there particular experiences at Exeter that shaped you?
So many! I recently came across a journal that I kept during a prep-year English class. (I did not save my chemistry and math notebooks, but I saved all my English notebooks.) In this journal, I had to write about something that was important to me, and I wrote about my grandparents’ basement, and I remember trying to be creative as I wrote. All my Exeter English teachers shaped my writing, my analysis of texts and my willingness to think creatively; that has been a huge help for my writing and my communication skills. And Exeter made me a very independent person. It shaped me into someone willing to take risks. You have to do that at Exeter: you’re on your own to some extent as a young person, and you have to make decisions, try new things. I pursued activities totally new to me, like water polo and weightlifting. Exeter was about making choices to always do something new.
Did your background in law inform your writing?
I was a trust-and-estates lawyer, not a criminal defense lawyer, so I had to do quite a bit of research to write the novel. That included perusing the websites of various juvenile detention centers and reading the handbooks they give to the juveniles they house. I connected with two criminal defense attorneys who represent juveniles — they answered question after question — and I watched the trial of a juvenile for assault. Also, my own legal work was complicated, so clarity was important — clarity and efficiency with words. I became known as the person who could cut more words than anybody else. I love words, effective words — that’s definitely been incorporated into my novel.
What are you working on now?
I’m writing my next novel, and I’ve started a Substack about second acts because I’ve had so many people come up to me and say, “How did you have the courage to do something different?” I didn’t need courage; it was more that I would have been afraid to not do this new thing. I encourage people all the time to not be afraid of doing something in the second — or third, or fourth — act of their life. You can be 25 and decide, “I think I want to go down a different career path.” You can make that decision when you’re 38 or 47 or 55. Having that freedom to really grow and change and evolve — that freedom is a good thing.
— Daneet Steffens ’82 is a books-focused journalist. She has contributed to The Exeter Bulletin since 2013. Penitence, by Kristin Koval ’88
A 50th Reunion Reflection
Laurie Hays ’75 remembers her post at
The Exonian
Exeter was where I first experienced freedom, having been released by my parents from an all-girls private school where I felt suffocated. I’m pretty sure I used that exact word back then. The Academy was also the first place I experienced panic attacks, took up smoking and
“I remember looking around the newsroom and feeling for the first time empowered to shape ideas.”
looked at the possibility of being a total failure as I got to know all of my classmates.
Laurie Hays ’75
I found my life’s passion, and a good way to hide from academics, at The Exonian . I vividly remember the day that Roy Cohn ’74 said to me, “We have chosen you to be the first woman chairman of The Exonian because it’s about time for a woman to lead the paper.” (He might have said “girl.”) He made sure to clarify that this was not a DEI decision, adding, “We also think you are the best person for the job.” Thank you, Roy!
During my 40-year run as a professional journalist, I always looked back on my time at The Exonian as the best chance that anybody ever gave me to develop a vision and share it with others. I remember looking around the newsroom and feeling for the first time empowered to shape ideas and try to be inspiring. Most people don’t think of their high school newspaper as a big deal, but it was to me!
We were a great team and, as the announcement stressed, we shared duties equally. Bill Bradley was editor in chief; Eric Nordell, managing editor; Mary Gotschall and Edward Eliot, editorial and features editors. And Paul Bentel, the business manager, saved us from bankruptcy as the ad market deteriorated.
Laurie Hays ’75 has worked at Bloomberg News as a senior executive editor and also at The Wall Street Journal for 23 years as a reporter, Moscow correspondent and editor. She worked on a team that won a 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting on corporate corruption scandals.
This reflection was first published in Exeter Memories from the Class of 1975, a collection of remembrances put together and shared by members of the class in honor of their 50th reunion this spring.
The January 19, 1974, edition of The Exonian announces Laurie Hays ’75 as the newspaper’s first female chairman.
WORKS
Exonians in Review
The latest publications, recordings and films by Exeter alumni
Henry James Comes Home: Rediscovering America in the Gilded Age
Peter Brooks ’56 New York Review Books, 2025
Northern Lights, movie
John Hanson ’60, writer and director with Rob Nilsson
Rerelease of 1978 film on May 23, 2025, at Lincoln Center in New York, followed by a national theatrical and digital streaming release
“The Insanity of Violence,” art exhibition
Gordie Chase ’66
The Landau Gallery, Belmont Hill School, Belmont, Massachusetts, February 24 to April 4, 2025
Letter to General Franco, by Fernando Arrabal
Peter Thompson ’66, translator Diálogos, 2025
The Unraveling: Reflections on Politics Without Ethics and Democracy in Crisis
Bob Bauer ’70
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2024
Racquets at Rest: Remembering 40 Lives That Shaped the Game of Squash in America
Rob Dinerman ’72
Self-published, 2024
Old White Man Writing
Joshua Gidding ’72
Mascot Books, 2025
Rules of Living, movie
Greg Dale ’77, writer and director
Mirus Pictures, 2024
Becoming You: The Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career
Suzy Welch ’77
Harper Business, 2025
Correlations: Life + Work
Peter Bentel ’78 with Carol Bentel, Paul Bentel and John Morris Dixon
The Images Publishing Group, 2024
Polaris and the Secret City
Tom Hassell ’89
Self-published, 2025
Myth & Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection, exhibition and catalog
Lisa Cakmak ’96, curator and editor
The Art Institute of Chicago, March 15 to June 29, 2025
Securing the Biological Frontier: The Biodefense Imperative
Matt McKnight ’01
Self-published, 2025
Submit your work
Alumni are encouraged to advise the Bulletin editor (bulletin@exeter.edu) of their own publications, recordings, films, etc., in any field, and those of their classmates, for inclusion in future Exonians in Review columns. Please send a review copy of your published work to the editor to be considered for an extended profile in future issues. Works can be sent to: Phillips Exeter Academy, The Exeter Bulletin, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833.
AROUND THE TABLE / STUDENT MEDITATION
Value in Silence
Alex Field ’25 shares his personal story of finding his voice at the Harkness table
Each winter and spring, members of the senior class take to the lectern in Phillips Church, in front of peers, instructors and friends to deliver meditations. There is no template or paradigm for a meditation. Most are personal and evolve from thinking about life and one’s place in it. Here is an excerpt of the meditation Alex Field ’25 shared with the community this spring.
Eighth grade brought two new speech therapists. The first therapist’s waiting room brimmed with children no older than 9 — a quiet reminder of my own small voice. Ms. Schmidt, the therapist I saw, offered tips. “Stand more confidently,” she’d say, as if I knew what that looked like. We practiced whispering “ha” before every word, ran through the alphabet on an endless loop, and then did it again. It felt as though our sessions, too, had fallen into a loop. My voice would not be set free by standing with my hands on my hips, nor by sounding as if I were on the edge of laughter before each word. But the second therapist that year brought something new.
Dr. Levine’s office stood apart; there was no waiting room, just a maze of identical offices in a complex filled with doctors, lawyers and brokers, each space resembling a cell. He was tall and
lean, with a nose that drooped slightly, causing his glasses to rest perpetually low on his face. His skin was pale — uncommon for California — and his almond-brown eyes hinted at a quiet sharpness, framed by hair streaked with gray. He wore his watch facing inward and held a clipboard, pen ready. We sat on heather-gray furniture: I on a couch, he in an oversized chair. My gaze swept the room for the typical signs of speech therapy —posters of syllables, alphabets — but instead, I found shelves adorned with trinkets from all over the world: little keepsakes from South America, Africa, Europe and Asia. His words tumbled out like confetti, light and unexpected, each one vivid and free. He even swore on occasion, which, strangely, made him feel more relatable. In that first session, we didn’t even touch the word “stutter.” I wondered, Is this guy even a therapist?
By the fourth session, we hadn’t touched the alphabet. I finally asked him why.
“I’m not here to change the way you pronounce letters,” he said. “I’m here to help you find out why you stutter.”
“Why I stutter?” I echoed, surprised. “What does that mean?”
“Well,” he said, “if you had a reason for stuttering, and we found it and removed it, would you still stutter?”
“I … don’t think so?” I answered, uncertainty lacing my voice.
It was in that cell of an office that hope first took root. It wasn’t about phonetics or practice drills but an excavation of why my voice betrayed me, why fear strangled words in my throat. For the first time, I believed my stutter was something I could overcome. The fortress I’d built around myself didn’t feel impenetrable anymore. The 1% suddenly seemed less isolating.
The focus of our work shifted, not to erasing the stutter but to loosening its grip, loosening my own grip on the shame that came with it. Bit by bit, I released my old habits, taking mindful steps: My hand wandered away from my mouth; I held eye contact a little longer when I spoke. Each small shift felt momentous.
Then, the next year, Phillips Exeter Academy loomed — a place where speaking wasn’t just inevitable but required, where Harkness tables filled with the country’s brightest minds waited for every word. Here, speech was graded, each voice weighed in the balance. I could feel judgment in the air, sharp as glass, pressing in from all sides. The stutter, a familiar burden, was suddenly magnified. It was no longer just about speaking but about being seen and, ultimately, evaluated for every slip, every pause, every missed beat.
Those five seconds it took for my first word to form felt like an eternity, each heartbeat filled with the start of three different points from other people — some who had already spoken multiple times. Who could blame them? Each of us was desperate for recognition, a tally mark. A toothpick or a piece of candy, we tossed into the middle of the table each time we spoke, small tokens of
participation measured against the silence. We all glanced at the teacher after speaking, hoping to see our voices acknowledged with a scribble in their notepad, to feel that our words had weight.
By the end of class, I’d always have extras — untouched toothpicks or candy — clear markers of how little my voice was valued compared with my classmates’.
Comparison was the pulse of Exeter, a constant obsession. I compared myself endlessly: my voice, my grades, my place in the social hierarchy. Even in my prep fall I knew everyone’s GPA, how athletic they were, whom they liked. Later in Exeter it turned into their SAT scores, and, in the coming months, where they’d go for the next four years. It was almost impossible not to judge, to make silent comments, to wonder what others thought. If I was dissecting someone else’s value, then surely they were doing the same to me. And when it came to my voice, I knew where I stood. Even though I never heard the judgment out loud, the silence in my classmates’ faces when I spoke in class made me think I shouldn’t risk speaking at all. These actions mirrored the feedback in my prep fall comments: “I would love to hear more of Alex’s thoughts at the table.” “If he could articulate a little better and make his points clearer.” “If he just spoke more.” By lower year, I stopped reading the comments altogether.
I tried to return to what I’d learned from Dr. Levine, that my fear of speaking was rooted in a universal fear of judgment. But this time, it was more than social anxiety. My fear was tangled up in a web of academic pressure, the looming threat of lower grades, and the constant awareness that I was being measured. The strategies Dr. Levine had given me felt powerless against this reality. The fortress I’d tried to dismantle began to rebuild itself, stone by stone.
I recall how my fortress began to build itself rapidly during prep spring, just after I realized how every teacher critiqued my speaking ability. It was my first English class of the term, and the teacher had handed out a poem for us to read aloud — a warm-up exercise in Harkness discussion to help us get comfortable. My stomach knotted, the tension rising to my throat, as Mark Strand’s “Eating Poetry” fluttered onto the scuffed wood of the Harkness table in front of me. As the class began to read, others underlined key phrases and noted repetitions, finding patterns to analyze. I, however, was counting heads, marking the line I’d be assigned. One, two, three … six. Sixth line — where was it?
Instead of looking for themes, I scoured the text for words that might trip me up, rehearsing filler words to patch over silences. When I reached “she walks with her hands in her dress,” I dissected the line. “Hands,” I thought. My tongue could fumble the “h.” What if I stuttered? Um, hands. I repeated it twice in my head. But “dress” — that would be the real challenge. Words with hard “d” sounds were treacherous, and I knew no amount of filler words could save me if I faltered. As my
“The focus of our work shifted, not to erasing the stutter but to loosening its grip, loosening my own grip on the shame that came with it.”
turn approached, I accepted defeat. When I finally spoke, the rehearsed words tumbled out as if I were a lagging Netflix show, but my mind echoed with critiques I’d received before. The judgment, real or imagined, silenced me for the rest of class.
My strategies for safety — the filler words, the avoidance — spilled into other parts of my life. Words that caused my stutter were quietly removed from my vocabulary. Even with my friends, I avoided speaking for fear of failure, steering clear of jokes or storytelling. Soon, I withdrew entirely, dodging hangouts and leaving group chats unread, afraid my words might be critiqued there, too. I locked the doors and buried the key, sealing away what I believed to be my greatest weakness: silence.
To build trust in my own words, I knew I had to fundamentally shift how I approached the Harkness experience. By senior fall, my annotations evolved. They were no longer rehearsed arguments scrawled in the margins, designed to be spoken flawlessly in class. Instead, they captured my genuine reactions to the text — my thoughts, my questions, even the occasional “HAHA” next to a passage I found funny. For the first time in a Harkness setting, I was myself. A quiet person by nature, I spoke less, but when I did, my words carried weight. Slowly, my trust in my own voice began to dissolve not the fear of judgment from others, but the judgment I so often directed at myself. And with that shift, my stutter began to decrease. For the first time, I discovered moments of joy in speaking. I stopped fixating on the teacher’s reactions, on whether my classmates would lower their heads to avoid watching me struggle through syllables during read-alouds, or on the comments I might receive at the end of the term.
That fall also brought another revelation: gratitude. How could I not feel thankful for something that had shaped my growth, offered me a unique perspective, and given me countless opportunities to practice becoming the person I wanted to be?
Yes, I still stuttered through senior fall, but I didn’t hide behind my hand or lose myself in frantic scribbling, drowning in shame. Trust anchored me, and gratitude helped me grow, allowing me to keep speaking.
Would I wish away my stutter? Absolutely. But to see my journey as fruitless would be to ignore the resilience, growth and courage it fostered in me.
Alex Field ’25 was a member of the varsity lacrosse team and co-founder and co-head of the mental health club on campus. Alex will attend NYU in the fall; he plans to major in business.
To read the full meditation, visit www.exeter.edu/ FieldMeditation
For the Record
Beatlemania and 100 years of American Popular Music
Late in the spring term, students trickling into the round room on the second floor of the Forrestal-Bowld Music Center are greeted by the sounds of side one of the Beatles’ Revolver. The iconic album, the group’s seventh full-length release, is the focus of the period’s discussion in MUS202: History of American Popular Music.
Manning the turntable, Instructor in Music Eric Schultz lifts needle from vinyl as the class
Schultz weaves in the historical context of Beatlemania and the immeasurable influence on not only pop music, but ... Western culture.
reaches critical mass. This is the second of two periods devoted to the biggest act in pop music history and, more specifically, the album that cemented the change of the band’s image from boy-next-door pop stars to long-haired psychedelic pioneers.
This senior-level course explores trends in popular music in the United States and how that music reflects the cultural and political landscape in which it was made. Students are graded on “needle-drop quizzes” in which a song from a previously discussed album is played and they must name the artist, title and the year it was released. Schultz says he has been teaching some version of this class for more than two decades. The class syllabus covers a period of nearly 100 years, and he laments being able to give the Beatles only two days of conversation, noting that the University of Liverpool offers a master’s degree program on the so-called Fab Four.
Throughout the period, Schultz weaves in the historical context of Beatlemania and the immeasurable influence on not only pop music, but also the fabric of Western culture. He cues up archival footage of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr arriving in the U.S. for the first time, landing at New York’s newly named John F. Kennedy International Airport in February 1964, greeted by thousands of frenzied fans.
“What was the major event in U.S. history that happened before this that had a real impact on people?” Schultz asks.
“November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, a very popular president, assassinated in front of onlookers in Dallas,” Schultz continues. “So, then trauma, drama, bad vibes. Then Christmas. Then the new year. Then the winter. People want to be happy and the country is sick of not being happy, and then these guys show up. Look at these guys: matching haircuts, matching suits, all designed to make your dad want to hang out with them. And — it worked.”
Schultz chronicles two other important Beatlescentric cultural waypoints: the group’s first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show — estimated to have been watched live by half the country — and their chance encounter with Bob Dylan in a New York City hotel.
The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.
“We’ve talked about the drug culture of the ’60s,” Schultz says, “and this is where we really start to see that come to the fore, because Bob Dylan shows up and gives the Beatles their first marijuana joint.”
Schultz plays The Ed Sullivan Show performance as heads around the Harkness table begin to bob and feet begin to tap to the beat of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” “This is 1964,” he says. “There are no hallucinogens involved in this. This is clean as a whisper.”
“The biggest change happens between these two albums,” Schultz says, motioning between projections of 1965’s Rubber Soul and 1966’s Revolver
“The song ‘Yellow Submarine’ is on Revolver; you should know that yellow submarine is street slang for a type of illegal drug in London — think of the shape of a pill,” Schultz says to stunned students.
“My kindergarten class sang that song,” one replies.
Schultz goes on to explain that the change in style wasn’t the only massive shift in the band’s output. As the complexity of their sound continued to expand with the 1967 release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band , the group had not played a concert for nearly a year and would play live only once more — in 1969 on the rooftop of their recording studio in London.
“The Beatles spent eight hours recording their first album. They spent 900 hours in the studio for this one,” Schultz says, holding up a copy of Sgt. Pepper’s. “This is them saying: ‘We’re not doing live music anymore. We’re only going to make albums in the studio. And that way, we don’t have to worry about whether or not we can play it live.’”
With the final minutes of class dwindling, Schultz races through the band’s final albums and slow unraveling, again lamenting, “There’s never enough time to talk about the Beatles.” ●
Music Instructor Eric Schultz grades students with “needle-drop quizzes” in which a song from a previously discussed album is played and they must name the artist, title and the year it was released.
Beatles albums: Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Hill Bridge
The Hill Bridge has spanned the Exeter River for a century. What memories does it hold for you?
I was “baptized” by some kind seniors as a prep. I remember walking back to Merrill after and thinking that the bridge would forever be my favorite place. Jumped every spring that I was there. Then at our 10-year, a few of us jumped again.
Libby Nunez Houghton ’93
I was a senior, living in Peabody in the fall of 1975. I was just getting to know a classmate who lived next door in Soule. As a sort-offlirtatious dare, I asked if she might join me for a very early morning jump off the Hill Bridge. She was game. With campus dark and silent at 6:00 a.m. on a cold November morning, we met outside, ran out to the bridge, climbed up on the south (upstream) parapet, held hands and jumped. Yikes! It was the coldest water I’d ever swum in. We stumbled up onto the bank, threw on our sneakers, and raced back to our dorms for hot showers. The outside door of Peabody was still locked at that hour, so I had to throw pebbles at a window to
wake a dormmate to let me in.
It was my good fortune that my jumping partner became my girlfriend very soon thereafter.
Tim Borstelmann ’76
Don’t remember which science class it was, but once I was shown the lamprey, the allure was gone.
Hassan Adams ’01
Security lining us up in a row with headlights on us after they caught us bridge jumping in the dark before check-in.
Catherine Mao ’13
Kept a postcard picture of the bridge on my office bulletin board for about ten years. Think it’s in my desk drawer as we speak. Jumping off one single time my senior year was a big fear-conquering moment for me.
Victoria Levin ’01
A late-night plunge with Ann, Sue, Alison, Linc and Fred after enjoying beverages at Ho Kong’s.
Jono Cobb ’75
Do You Remember?
Inviting Andover’s cycling team to jump with us after E/A!
Josh Hemintakoon ’17
As a rule follower, it took a little convincing to finally get this 4-year senior to jump off the bridge. I remember the exhilaration — and then coming up for air in that ICY COLD still wintery water despite the “spring” appellation to the term, trying to catch my breath.
Scott Finn ’73
Jumped off that thing about 20 times, 1977 to ’81. Probably not the brightest idea.
Troy Miksen ’81
Used to jump off after soccer. Edward Pfeiffenberger ’74
Most vivid memory: the sound of dozens of cleats crossing the bridge. Treasured memory: jumping once every spring each of my 4 years.
Terry Cowdrey ’78
Responses originally emailed or posted on social media
From the Editor: When the Plimpton family purchased and gifted the 250-acre Gilman Farm in 1911 for playing fields, the only route to the parcel from campus was a long walk through town — or a swim. George Hill, class of 1865, solved that by donating $5,000 (about $165,000 today) to construct a bridge over the river. The reinforced-concrete structure stretches 100 feet and was completed in 1914. Almost immediately, leaping off its walls into the black water below became a rite of passage for Exonians. Every leap broke the rules. The school prohibited the practice in the E-Book, and scofflaws risked reprisal. The custom ended with the removal of the Great Dam downriver in 2016.
The dam’s elimination drastically dropped the water level; the river is just a few feet deep most days. Today, bridge crossers must be content with keeping their shoes dry on the way to the game. ●
Station Manager LeRoy Little ’65 announced the Academy’s first radio broadcast at 9:25 p.m. on Sept. 10, 1964. Do you recall those early broadcasts? Do you have a fond (or funny) memory of listening to WPEA or being a DJ? Email your reminiscences to bulletin@exeter.edu Responses will be published in the next issue of the Bulletin
Completed in 1914, Hill Bridge stretches 100 feet across the river.
The Academy
Founders’ Day Award The Weatherspoons are honored for nearly 40 years of service. P. 20
Russell Weatherspoon, Jackie Weatherspoon and Principal Bill Rawson
Russell and Jackie Weatherspoon
THE ACADEMY / SERVICE
Founders’ Day Award
Russell and Jackie Weatherspoon share gratitude for a life spent at Exeter
Over nearly 40 years, Russell Weatherspoon ’01, ’03, ’08, ’11 (Hon.); P’92, P’95, P’97, P’01 and Jackie Weatherspoon P’92, P’95, P’97, P’01 left an enduring mark on Exeter’s campus and community. In honor of their longtime service to the Academy, Sam Brown ’92, president of the General Alumni Association, presented the Weatherspoons with the 2025 Founders’ Day Award in an Assembly Hall packed beyond capacity with excited students, faculty, alumni and Trustees.
“In the classroom, in the dorm, in the dining halls or along the paths, your warmth, wisdom and generosity have earned you the enduring respect and affection of your colleagues and the devotion and gratitude of generations of students,” Brown said while reading the award citation.
Russell and Jackie Weatherspoon arrived at Exeter in 1987 with their young children, all future Exonians: Ben ’92, Rachel ’95, Clarke ’97 and Rebekah ’01. In addition to teaching religion, English and drama, Russell took on many administrative roles,
“Other people shape you. We are grateful for the opportunity to be shaped by this place and, specifically, by you.”
including dean of residential life, dean of multicultural affairs, director of Exeter Summer and — from 2020 to his retirement in 2024 — dean of students.
“With your fair-minded, steady presence — and a seeming ability to be everywhere on campus at once — you assured students that wherever they were, and whatever was going on in their lives, someone was looking out for them,” Brown said.
Jackie expanded greatly on the role of faculty spouse and dorm parent for more than a decade in Cilley Hall. “From ensuring that Black hair care products were stocked at local drugstores to helping students shop for dresses and style their hair for prom, you were a source of steadfast advocacy and support for Black girls and women on campus,” Brown said.
She later served as associate dean of Exeter Summer and held positions in admissions, the Lamont Gallery and the Class of 1945 Library, among others. Off campus, she built an impressive career in public service and human rights advocacy that took her from the New Hampshire House of Representatives to the U.S. State Department and beyond. Jackie brought that experience to her longtime role as adviser to students in the Democratic Club, encouraging them to engage in political life at the campus, local, state and national levels.
“This is a magical place,” Jackie said while accepting the Founders’ Day Award. “I want to thank you so very much for allowing two teenagers from Brooklyn who wanted to serve people to be a part of your journey.”
After his wife received a standing ovation — one of several during the assembly — Russell took to the podium. “One of the great blessings of having been asked to have a variety of roles is that it multiplied for me over the years my understanding, appreciation and gratitude for that wide range of people who are doing so much, so much of the time, so much of it unseen,” he said.
Of two all-important decisions in life — work and marriage — he said he had been lucky. “You will spend most of your life in the work of love and with the hope that you’ll love the work that you do,” he said. “So you want to choose as carefully as you can. We are grateful because we got the chance to do a work life with you.”
Near the end of his remarks, Russell recalled a moment last spring, not long before he retired. “I woke up to the fact that this is where we had spent the majority of our adult lives, and that we had spent them among people who had the capacity to make us better people,” he said. “Other people shape you. We are grateful for the opportunity to be shaped by this place and, specifically, by you.”●
Established by the Trustees in 1976, the Founders’ Day Award is given annually in recognition of longtime service to the Academy. It was renamed in 2019 to honor Elizabeth Phillips’ role in forming the Academy alongside her husband, John Phillips.
Faculty Farewells
Dean of Faculty Eimer Page delivers tributes to instructors retiring with the distinction of emeritae
Dale Braile Instructor in Mathematics
Dale first joined the math faculty at Exeter in 1987 before moving to St. Thomas Aquinas High School. On her return to Exeter in 1998, a colleague wrote that “her true vocation [is] that of a boarding school teacher, interested and ready to be engaged in every facet of a residential school. … Dale is a very special person.” Those of us who have shared this boarding school life with Dale would wholeheartedly agree.
Prior to Exeter, Dale worked as an intern at Choate and St. Paul’s, and taught math at The Stony Brook School and Andover. The math chair at Andover wrote, with perhaps a modicum of resentment: “I would have been pleased to offer her a permanent job if we had one to offer. … She is professional, caring and thorough.” She actually spent a term teaching at both schools. I’m delighted to report that she has said, “Exeter’s pedagogy won, hands down.” Dale received her bachelor’s degree from Williams College and her master’s degree in liberal studies from Dartmouth.
Dale has been involved with the Exeter Math Institute for many years. A colleague who has worked with her at various EMIs told me that all teachers comment on her endless patience and positivity, adding, “She has made a profound impact on school districts around the U.S. through her work with teachers who teach mathematics at all levels.”
Dale has served on the Math Placement
Committee and as coordinator for the American Mathematics competitions. She’s been a member of the Orientation Committee, the Advising Committee, the Agenda and Faculty Affairs Committees, the Curriculum Committee, the Community Connections Group, and the Schedule and Calendar Working Group. She has been a mainstay as an admissions reader and assistant girls varsity cross-country coach for over two decades. She has been a supportive mentor to new faculty and also served as a class adviser.
A colleague says, “Students trust and confide in her, knowing she is a caring and supportive adult. She is perceptive and generous with her time and talents.”
Dale’s dorm assignments tell an unusual story. She spent most of her service in Hoyt and Bancroft, and in the latter she served as dorm head. But Dale has also lived in Ewald, Main Street, Peabody, Wheelwright and Williams. This came about because of her willingness to move in for a term to allow colleagues to lead off-campus programs or to cover leaves. Her flexibility contributed greatly to the professional growth and goals of colleagues across campus.
A former chair of the Math Department says: “What has always set Dale apart from other faculty has been her willingness to volunteer and do any job needed to help the school, our department and ultimately the students … While being a ‘triple threat’ was not rare for someone starting their boarding school career in the ’80s, sustaining it for their entire career of 40-plus years is
indeed rare. Dale has always understood that classroom teaching, residential life and coaching are the cornerstones of schools like Exeter, and she has done this with success and her ever-present smile.”
Dale received a Brown Award in 2007 and again in 2020, and a Radford Award in 2013.
Thank you, Dale, for the ways in which you brought to our attention the needs of our students, looked out for your colleagues, enhanced our curriculum and proved to be a wonderful colleague.
Katherine “Kitty” Fair Instructor in Modern Languages
Kitty Fair joined the faculty in 1984 as a French teacher after completing her Ph.D in French at the University of Michigan, making her the longest-serving instructor in our Modern Languages Department. She has instilled a love of French language, culture and landscape in the many students she has taught and the many students she has chaperoned on their term-abroad travels in France. An organized, conscientious, caring, energetic and skilled instructor, Kitty represents the best in our teaching of language and culture.
Kitty’s philosophy of teaching includes an empathetic and supportive attitude toward students for whom the study of a second language is a struggle. Her belief in growth and potential has led her to say, “It’s not necessarily students who show capacity right off the bat who become most fluent in a language.” As a colleague says: “One of her lasting contributions
“Dale, you have been ‘a great school woman’ who has left an indelible mark on Exeter, the Math Department and the thousands of students you interacted with over your long career. Your skill, wisdom and terrific demeanor will be sorely missed by all of us who have known you well.”
— Math Instructor Eric Bergofsky
“Madame
Fair is such an amazing teacher and person. I have had her multiple times, starting with my very first class at the Academy. She helped me get settled in and was always patient when I struggled with material. She makes every activity fun, engaging and worthwhile. Some of my fondest memories from my time here are from French with Madame Fair. I will miss her (and her chocolate banana bread).”
— Andrew Voulgarelis
’25
was her firm advocacy for the lower-enrollment languages in our department during her time as department head. She made sure that these programs were protected, valued and given a space to thrive.”
My own impressions of Kitty really formed when I moved into the role of Director of Global Initiatives. Colleagues often asked me what I most enjoyed about moving into an administrative role, and I found myself saying again and again how impacted I had been by the relationships I formed with colleagues from outside my home department. Kitty was the person I always pictured as I said this. We talked at length during those years when she led the term abroad in France, under significant stress at times, at odd hours for one or the other of us due to the time difference, and always with the student experience at the forefront of our thinking. She’s an extraordinary colleague and I feel so fortunate to have forged that relationship with her.
An endurance athlete, Kitty has completed dozens of marathons, an Ironman Triathlon, and served as Exeter’s assistant girls cross-country coach, along with coaching running, cycling, fitness and track. A colleague who coached girls cross-country with Kitty for many years, says: “She was an inspiration, running workouts with the team as she trained for the Boston Marathons that she ran. One year after a long bus ride to Interschols, one of the girls realized that she had forgotten to pack her running shoes. So, she ran the championship race in Kitty’s shoes — literally.”
She completed dorm service in Main
Street and Ewald and occasionally stepped back into dorm life to allow her residential colleagues in Modern Languages to lead off campus programs with our students. She has been involved in EJC, ESSO and the Francophonie Society, as well as serving on the Community Conduct and former Discipline committees, and the Admissions, Agenda and Curriculum Committee. She also served more than one term as the department chair in Modern Languages.
Kitty was awarded the Steyer Distinguished Professorship in 2011. She used the support afforded by this professorship to continue her own growth as an instructor, and an impactful trip to Martinique and Guadeloupe led to the creation of a wonderful trip for students to Martinique in 2019. Kitty has continued to read widely and diversify her curriculum, bringing guest writers such as Kim Thuy to meet with her classes over Zoom.
Kitty, you have been such a steady, constant and caring presence in the lives of our students since you joined the Exeter community. Countless colleagues have benefited from your banana bread, your mentorship, your example, your “thoughtful approach to instructional practices” and your kindness. In keeping with your patience with the slow and reluctant French learner, I offer “meilleurs voeux pour votre retraite et merci pour votre gentillesse.” ●
These citations were delivered by Dean of Faculty Eimer Page at faculty meeting in June.
THE ACADEMY / READING Borders, Kitchens, and the Cosmos: A Senior Book List
Each spring, the Class of 1945 Library invites seniors to contribute a short list of books they would recommend to others to read. These lists are then turned into bookmarks. Forty-eight seniors answered this year’s call.
We asked Phin Gibbs ’25 to tell us about the titles that made his list.
“This bookmark represents why I read: to expand both the radius of my knowledge and the circumference of my ignorance. My reading has taken many directions over the years. Together, these books reflect how I try to understand the world.”
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
“This was the first book I truly loved — its humor and rawness pulled me in.”
Orientalism by Edward W. Said In the Presence of Absence by Mahmoud Darwish
“These connect to my interest in culture, language and the Middle East, especially after spending time in the region.”
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
“These books have shaped how I think about power, colonialism, longing and illusion.”
Lesabéndio by Paul Scherbart
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
“Both explore freedom — one through an alien fable, the other through physical constraint.”
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
“This title continues to shape how I think about meaning and choice.”
Sign Me Up!
A few of the most popular elective courses requested by seniors
HIS568: History Through Food
What started as an experimental Exeter Innovations course quickly became a permanent fixture in the course catalog. Taught by Troy Samuels, this class is scheduled into a double block to provide time for a weekly food lab. As it says in the Courses of Instruction, “Come hungry to learn and to eat!”
SURPRISE DAY OFF
Principal’s Day
INT550: Sports Science
Seniors and PGs sign up in droves for Don Mills’ survey course on exercise science and athletic performance. Students spend time in discussion around the Harkness table and “in the field” at the Downer Family Fitness Center engaging in hands-on experiments and real-time biometrics.
BIO460: Ornithology
Often taught by beloved veteran science teacher Chris Matlack, students look forward to weekly offcampus birding adventures. At the end of the term, students vie for a spot in the “Hall of Fame,” awarded to the rare few who score 100% on the species identification final exam.
On February 28, 1953, as students made their way to 8 a.m. chapel, Principal William G. Saltonstall quietly made a decision — one that would become a beloved Exeter tradition. Without advance notice to faculty or students, he declared the day free of classes, a “Four S Day”: dedicated to sun, snow, sleep and surprise.
As The Exonian reported, “Although the principal did not commit himself, he stated that the policy of having one free day each winter term would probably be continued.” It has, though it has shifted to the spring and taken on a new name. Once known informally as St. Gurdon’s Day (a nod to Saltonstall’s middle name), it’s now celebrated as Principal’s Day.
Over the decades, principals have found increasingly creative ways to announce the day off. This April, Principal Bill Rawson revealed the sweet surprise with fortune cookies served at Elm Street Dining Hall. ●
MAT690/790: Selected Topics in Math
Each term, in response to student interest, the Math Department offers a variety of advanced electives. Topics include Billiards and Surface Geometry, Financial Math and Number Theory.
ECO502/ ECO510/ECO520: Economics
These are wildly popular electives, and we often staff upwards of five sections of economics each term! New this year is a place-based, three-week intensive summer section of ECO502 in Berlin with Instructor Aykut Kilinc.
What about English electives? Long waitlists are de rigueur for the following courses:
ENG573: Beats, Rhymes and Narrative
ENG578: Children’s Literature
ENG582: Science Fiction and Fantasy
ENG588: Crime Fiction
—Sarah Herrick
Music
Sylvia Guarracino ’26 was one of eight students whose songs were presented or performed in May during the “concert of finalists,” the culminating event in the Pittman Family Student Composition Competition — an initiative focused on original works written by Exonians. In all, 29 pieces of music were submitted to this year’s competition. The Pittman Family Student Composition Fund was established in 2021 by Joan and Fred Pittman ’51 to inspire student composers and music creators at Exeter.
Dance
The Spring Dance Concert was a celebration of cultural and artistic legends. Themed Icons, the 18 dances choreographed by students, faculty and guests paid homage to visionaries who shaped history and the collective psyche, including Elvis Presley, Sylvia Plath and Princess Diana. The concert was a powerful reminder that the figures we revere — whether rock stars, poets or royalty — remain alive in our memories and in our movements.
Theater
The Theater and Dance Department staged D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls at the Actors Lab in The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance in May. The 11 cast members “worked hard on this production all term, to say nothing of their classes and other commitments,” says Instructor in Theater and Dance Rob Richards, the show’s director. “I have to believe that acting in a drama based on the story of young, innocent and heroic American women inspired their motivation and commitment. Empathy is a vital element in theater, and that is especially true when the parts we play are based on onceforgotten human beings who bravely lived and died. May we never forget them.”
Learning From the Land
Students reconnect with nature on Climate Action Day
As the global community celebrated Earth Day, the Academy took the day to “pause, step outside and connect” with local ecosystems and our place within them, says Patrick Kelly, an instructor in the Religion, Ethics and Philosophy Department and the school’s
sustainability education coordinator. Kelly designed this April’s Climate Action Day programming and urged the student body at a brief assembly to “slow down, recalibrate and reconsider ourselves” as parts of the surrounding natural world.
Before scattering across southern New Hampshire and nearby Massachusetts
The Class of 1964 Sustainability Prize
Created and endowed by members of the class of 1964 during their 60th reunion last spring, this new award is to be given annually to three to four students who have made outstanding contributions toward achieving the goals set forth in the Academy’s Sustainability and Climate Action Plan, or who have otherwise promoted the principles of sustainability and environmental stewardship at the Academy. Xavier Chang ’25, Erin Chen ’25 and Adam Tang ’25 received the inaugural honor at Prize Assembly in June.
and Maine, the students were reminded by Principal Bill Rawson ’71 that Climate Action Day is one way the Academy lives up to the goals of its Sustainability and Climate Action Plan. The plan, adopted in 2023, aims in part to “ensure that every student graduates from Exeter with a fundamental understanding of the principles of sustainability and the issues posed by climate change.”
Split up by advisory groups, some students took a crash course in aquaponics at the University of New Hampshire or visited a fishermen’s collective in the Boston Seaport. Others fed goats or did plantings to block nutrient runoff from entering the Exeter River. Most simply took a walk in the woods, soaking in the outdoors while dozens of Harkness tables around campus were given the day off. ●
CLUB NEWS
Entrepreneurship Competition
Exeter hosted its first Entrepreneurship Competition in April with four teams delivering five- to 10-minute pitch presentations in Phillips Hall. Mazin Sihweil ’26 took home first prize for TruShot, a blockchain-based system that verifies image authenticity at the moment of capture. TruShot, Sihweil says, would help overcome the proliferation of fake images and the damage and controversy they cause.
Entrepreneurship club co-heads Dushant Lohano ’26, Tristan Zhang ’25, Steph Handte ’25 and faculty adviser and Modern Languages Instructor Ning Zhou awarded the winning certificate based on originality of idea, feasibility and potential impact, clarity of presentation, and team dynamics and engagement. ●
Steph Handte ’25, Mazin Sihweil ’26, Dushant Lohano ’26 and Tristan Zhang ’25
It’s feeding time for Science Instructor Anne Rankin’s goats.
The Music of Coaching
Brandon Newbould on playing trombone and building successful cross-country and track and field programs
Brandon Newbould’s career does not fit into a tidy box.
Over 15 years, he has helped Exeter athletes achieve record-breaking performances and has collected numerous championship trophies as the head coach of cross-country and associate head coach of the track and field program. He is also the principal trombonist in the Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra and runs his own music contracting business.
“I used to keep it all compartmentalized,” he says. “Music and coaching — and everything else. I thought it was better that way, but over time I’ve come to realize it is good for the kids to know what I do. I want them to see you don’t have to choose just one thing.”
Newbould grew up in Alaska, where there are few roads. “My mom introduced me to running when I was in seventh grade,” he says. “Running opened up all kinds of opportunity to explore. In high school we ran through the mountains and bear country on backpacking trails, horse trails, off trail, wherever we wanted to go. I use that experience now to show the kids here what that can look like, while keeping them safer than we were back then.”
At Soldotna High School, which is roughly 150 miles south of Anchorage, Alaska, Newbould was an accomplished Nordic skier and runner. His track coach, Mark Devenny, proved to be a lifelong mentor and major influence on his training technique.
“Coach Devenny was right out of a Rocky movie,” Newbould says. “He grew up in Philadelphia and was one of the only real track guys in Alaska. He devoted his life to us, and that’s my model of a coach.”
Newbould’s teams are driven by that same culture of toughness, unity and belief. “What I loved growing up was the adventure,” he says. “I try to bring that to our training. How can we incorporate a sense of adventure through our practices? That’s the best thing, sharing with the kids and watching them learn what they can do, how to compete and what they’re capable of. It’s incredibly rewarding.”
Newbould continued running at
Messiah College and beyond. He followed a disciplined schedule, logging 120 miles a week as a competitive runner while pursuing a career as a professional trombonist. Newbould would often start his days in the early morning with a 20-plus-mile run, then sneak in another five miles between rehearsals and performances.
Throughout, mentors and peers urged Newbould to choose one path: music or something else. Instead of conceding, he kept his dual pursuits mostly private. His foot-on-the-gas persona, driven to defy that either-or mindset, has become something of a rebellious calling card. “Watch me or don’t — I don’t care,” he says. “But I can do this.” And he has.
Newbould, who won the Baystate Marathon in 2009 and 2017, was the top New Hampshire finisher and placed in the top 50 at the 2013 Boston Marathon. He is also an accomplished trail runner. With his guidance, Exeter’s cross-country and track and field programs have become some of the most successful athletic programs in New England. And he continues to play the trombone in some of the most elite musical groups in the area.
When Newbould is not on the track or on the stage, he can be found deep in the woods or out in the fields with his wife and two sons where they hunt, fish, forage and tend to a lively homestead full of crops and chickens. ●
WASHINGTON INTERNS Capitol Hill
For 10 weeks over spring term, selected seniors work in the Congressional offices of senators or representatives. The interns log mail, answer phones, give tours, research issues, attend briefings and deliver bills for signature. They attend special events too.
Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado and his wife, Robin Hickenlooper ’96, treated the students to breakfast in the private Senate Dining Room, where they met Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, among others.
DEDICATION Hall of Famer
Stewart Lindsay ’52 donated his National Lacrosse Hall of Fame plaque to Exeter in April. “Exeter is where this plaque belongs because this is where I became a lacrosse player and learned my love for the game,” Lindsay said as he addressed boys lacrosse team members, alumni and faculty.
Lindsay set the Academy’s lacrosse goal-scoring record with more than 100 goals over his three years. He was a threetime All-American at Syracuse University. When he was inducted into the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1976 he held the Syracuse records for most goals in a game, season and career.
Coach Brandon Newbould with his trombone
Sen. John Hickenlooper
The Art of Engineering
Ideas take shape at MakerFest Showcase
The MakerFest Showcase at the Lamont Gallery this spring featured work by the Academy community made in the Design Lab using precision tools often controlled by computers. The exhibition, supported in part by the Lynda K. Beck Design Thinking Fund, “seeks to highlight creative problem-solving and methods of making that intertwine research, education and innovation with engineering, design and manufacturing,” Design Lab Coordinator and Instructor in Computer Science Sean Campbell writes in the exhibit’s catalog. “These creative endeavors, while perhaps not immediately celebrated as modes of artmaking or creative expression, reveal themselves to be tools and/or explorations of topical themes that identify the potential for innovation and solutions that can spark social impact.” ●
Scan this QR code to view the entire show.
Tubulum, 2025, PVC pipe, wood, by the Design Lab team: Anika Sivarasa ’26, Avaninder Bhaghayath ’26, Peter Morand ’25, Byran Huang ’25, Sofiya Goncharova ’25, Altan Unver ’25 and Instructor in Computer Science and Design Lab Coordinator Sean Campbell
→
Deriving the Sum of Squares Formula, 2025, 3D printer, filament, OnShape, paint, by Evan Chen ’28 and Arisa Yoshino ’28
↓ Exeter Rocketry Team Competition Rocket, 2023-24, cardboard tubing, 3D-printed nose cone, fins and other pieces, by Jackson Lyle ’25 and the Exeter Rocketry Team
Spring Highlights
→ BASEBALL
Record: 6-15
Head Coach: Tim Mitropoulos ’10
Assistant Coaches: Mike Hicks, Panos Voulgaris
Captains: Caspar Bailey ’25, Dana Mussulman ’26, Sam Roberts ’25
MVP: Saahi Jetti ’25
↑ BOYS CREW
First Boat: Second in New England, 13th in the U.S.
Head Coach: Albert Léger
Assistant Coaches: Tyler Caldwell, Townley Chisholm, Eric Olson
Captains: Mason Cotter ’25, Arian Khichadia ’25
MVP: Montgomery Wood ’25
← GIRLS CREW
First Boat: New England
Champions, seventh in the U.S.
Head Coach: Peter Cathey
Assistant Coaches: Steve Carr, Maegan Moriarty, Melinda Neale, Greg Spanier
Captains: Victoria Mabardy ’25, Sophia Slosek ’25, Sophia Turner ’25
MVPs: Ava Cathey ’25, Evangeline Gaylord ’25
↓ CYCLING
NERCL Champions
Head Coach: Don Mills
Assistant Coaches: Gwyn Coogan, Jeanette Lovett, Jeff Palleiko, Tim Whittemore
Captain: Elle Perry ’25
MVP: Luvy Danielson ’27
Charles Clavel ’25, Brian Muldoon, s ports Graphi C s
→ GOLF
Second at Pippy O’Connor Girls Tournament Record: 7-8
Captains: Maria Fotin ’25, Paige Sweet ’26, Paris Tran ’26
MVP: Paige Sweet ’26
←
GIRLS LACROSSE Record: 9-6
Head Coach: Alexa Caldwell
Assistant Coaches: Kristen Kjellman Marshall, Kerry McBrearty
Captains: Allie Bell ’25, Grace Benson ’25, Hannah Hoyt ’25
MVP: Grace Benson ’25
↑
GIRLS TENNIS Record: 4-4
Head Coach: Nancy Bulkley
Captains: Cassia Lee ’25, Nadia Sondrini ’25
→
BOYS LACROSSE Record: 15-6
Head Coach: Bill Glennon
Assistant Coaches: Jim Breen, Travis Glennon, David Huoppi
Captains: Ryan Erghott ’25, Shane McDonell ’25, Cole Meyer ’25, Will Murphy ’25, Rand Shepard ’25
MVPs: Shane McDonell ’25, Cole Meyer ’25
↓
BOYS VOLLEYBALL Second in New England Record: 7-2
Head Coach: Bruce Shang
Assistant Coaches: Suzan Rowe, Sophia Scola
Captain: Bodie Woods ’25
MVP: Bodie Woods ’25
↓
GIRLS WATER POLO Record: 6-6
Head Coach: Meg Blitzshaw
Assistant Coach: Steve Altieri
Captains: Sophie Phelps ’25, Maya Scott ’25
MVP: Bella Bueno ’25
↑
BOYS TENNIS Record: 8-4
Head Coach: Ron Rodriguez
Captains: Steven Chen ’25, Leo Zhang ’25
MVP: Joshua Mullen ’27
↓
GIRLS TRACK & FIELD
Second in New England
Head Coach: Hilary Hall
Associate Head Coach: Brandon Newbould
Assistant Coaches: Marvin Bennett, Steve Holmes, John Hoogasian, John Mosely, Makhtar Sarr, Levi Stribling, Xiana Twombley
Captains: Melani Dowling ’25, Jannah Maguire ’25
MVPs: Jannah Maguire ’25, Gianna Phipps ’25
←
BOYS TRACK & FIELD
New England Champions
Head Coach: Hilary Hall
Associate Head Coach: Brandon Newbould
Assistant Coaches: Marvin Bennett, Steve Holmes, John Hoogasian, John Mosely, Makhtar Sarr, Levi Stribling, Xiana Twombley
Captains: Jaylen Bennett ’25, Pearce Covert ’25
MVP: Jaylen Bennett ’25
SENIOR WEEK!
Students enjoy some time-honored traditions leading up to graduation
PREP-YEAR TIME CAPSULE
Credit: Photogra P hs by Joanne Lembo and Christian h arrison
ALUMNI INDUCTION CEREMONY
SENIOR NIGHT
CONGRATULATIONS, CLASS OF 2025!
Family, friends and faculty celebrate graduating seniors in the Academy’s 244th year
BY SARAH PRUITT ’95
Photographs by Joanne
Lembo, Amanda Sagba and
Mary Schwalm
Sunshine bathed the Exeter campus in June as some 3,000 parents, family members, friends and faculty gathered on the Academy lawn to send off the 313 members of the graduating class of 2025.
Senior Class Marshals Rima Alsheikh, Max Albinson, Mya Scott and Altan Ünver led a spirited procession of their classmates and faculty members across Front Street, which was lined with well-wishers, as a string quartet played.
Ava Helbig, president of the senior class, began the school’s 244th commencement exercises with a warm welcome. “Congratulations, class of 2025,” she said. “It may have been a long road, but we’ve made it.”
Helbig expressed gratitude to all those who had traveled great distances to share in the joyous occasion. She also thanked members of Exeter’s staff, including the facilities and dining teams, who supported senior week and graduation day.
Helbig spoke of the inevitability of change in
life, and the human tendency to resist it. In the past weeks, she said, she had been conscious of doing various things for the last time at Exeter. “Why is it that we never treasure what we have until we’ve lost it?” she asked, then urged her fellow seniors to savor each moment.
“There is beauty in every soul on this lawn, in every moment we get to live through,” Helbig said. “If you feel even a little bit brave, you might even join me in loosening the reins you have ensnared time in and — even if only for a moment — letting time pass.”
Following Helbig’s address, Music Instructor Kris Johnson led the seniors in Exeter’s Concert Choir in a beautiful rendition of “The Road Home,” composed by Stephen Paulus.
Principal Bill Rawson ’71; ’65, ’70 (Hon.); P’08 then recognized the retiring faculty members seated onstage: Kitty Fair, who joined the Modern Languages Department 41 years ago, and Dale Braille, who taught in the Science Department for 28 years.
“There is beauty in every soul on this lawn, in every moment we get to live through.”
— AVA HELBIG ’25, PRESIDENT OF THE SENIOR CLASS
AVA HELBIG ’25
In his farewell to the class of 2025, Rawson congratulated the seniors. “You have seized every opportunity presented to you during your time here, and you have met every challenge,” he said. “Because of what you have learned and how you have grown, you are ready for what lies ahead, in college and beyond.”
Rawson spoke of the Academy’s core value of non sibi, and how the seniors had demonstrated a commitment to this principle in the ways they contributed to the life of the school and supported each other. “You have understood that when we balance our needs with the needs of others — that is when we are our best selves,” he said.
Rawson advised the class of 2025 to “stay humble and always act with kindness toward others” in their lives after Exeter. Such qualities, he said, would “make you more effective advocates for the kind of world you want to live in.” In addition, he said he hoped they would leave Exeter with a deep sense of gratitude, not only to those who had supported them during their time at the Academy, but also to the earlier generations of faculty and Exonians “who have helped create and shape the Exeter of today, and who have thereby made your experiences at Exeter possible.”
Living by the values of non sibi, humility, kindness and gratitude, Rawson acknowledged, “will not diminish the challenges of our day, which are considerable and many.” But those values would, he said, enable seniors to better confront challenges in their own lives, help lift people around them and live the purposeful lives for which Exeter had sought to prepare them.
“If you stay true to your principles, your sphere of influence will continue to grow; you will be asked to take on more responsibility,” Rawson said. “You will have opportunities to make a positive difference in the lives of others, in ways you cannot even begin to imagine now.”
In closing, Rawson expressed his affection for the class of 2025, as well as his excitement to see what paths they would follow and to hear the stories they would share with future generations of Exonians.
“You will always be the great class of 2025,” he said. “You will always belong to each other, and you will always belong here.”
Read Principal Bill Rawson’s full remarks at exeter.edu/2025-graduation-remarks
“You have understood that when we balance our needs with the needs of others — that is when we are our best selves.”
— PRINCIPAL BILL RAWSON ’71
Sarah Pruitt ’95 is a staff writer for The Exeter Bulletin.
“You will have opportunities to make a positive difference in the lives of others, in ways you cannot even begin to imagine now.”
— PRINCIPAL BILL RAWSON ’71
GRADUATION PRIZES
The Yale Cup, awarded each year by the Aurelian Honor Society of Yale University to that member of the senior class who best combines the highest standards of character and leadership with excellence in his studies and in athletics.
Jaylen Bennett, Laurel, Maryland
The Ruth and Paul Sadler ’23 Cup, awarded each year to that member of the senior class who best combines the highest standards of character and leadership with excellence in her studies and in athletics.
Grace Benson, Rumford, Rhode Island
The Perry Cup, established by the class of 1945 in honor of Dr. Lewis Perry, eighth principal of the Academy, and given annually to a senior who has shown outstanding qualities of leadership and school spirit.
Caspar Bailey, South Londonderry, Vermont
The Williams Cup, established in memory of George Lynde Richardson Jr. and given annually to a student who, having been in the Academy four years, has, by personal qualities, brought distinction to Phillips Exeter.
Byran Huang, Princeton, New Jersey
The Eskie Clark Award, given annually to that scholarship student in the graduating class who, through hard work and perseverance, has excelled in both athletics and scholarship in a manner exemplified by Eskie Clark of the class of 1919.
Jannah Maguire, Chicago, Illinois
The Thomas H. Cornell Award, based on a vote by the senior class and awarded annually to that member of the graduating class who best exemplifies the Exeter spirit.
Anna Holtz, Portland, Oregon
The Multicultural Leadership Prize, awarded annually to the member or members of the graduating class who most significantly contributed to educating the community about, and fostering greater understanding around, topics of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, ability, religion, spirituality or other aspects of identity.
Eliana Hall, Atlanta, Georgia
The Cox Medals, given by Oscar S. Cox, in memory of his father, Jacob Cox, are awarded each year to the five members of the graduating class who, having been two or more years in the Academy, have attained the highest scholastic rank. In alphabetical order, this year’s medalists are:
Alexandra Meyer, Pacific Palisades, California
Dhruv Nagarajan, Bridgewater, New Jersey
Jaansi Patel, Edison, New Jersey
Elizabeth Pratt, Far Hills, New Jersey
Shiqiao Zhang, Nanjing, China
The Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence, given to that member or members of the graduating class who, having been two or more years in the Academy, are recognized on the basis of scholarship as holding the first rank.
Alexandra Meyer, Pacific Palisades, California
Dhruv Nagarajan, Bridgewater, New Jersey
Jaansi Patel, Edison, New Jersey
Shiqiao Zhang, Nanjing, China
CASPAR BAILEY ’25
JAYLEN BENNETT ’25
Forever Exeter
Replacing lost diplomas and yearbooks
After the devastating Southern California wildfires in January, Lisa Liu ’13, regional president of the Exeter Association of Greater Los Angeles, sent letters to alumni in the area to offer emotional support. The responses she received were overwhelming.
“One of the messages I got back mentioned how they watched their house, and all their belongings, burn down through the security camera,” she says. “It felt like any empathy I could offer was trivial compared to the scale of loss.”
Liu grew up near Altadena, and the news hit close to home. “I was talking with my sister about how some of the places we used to go — with people we used to know — are just ... gone now,” she says. “Even though people enter and leave your life, knowing that the setting of those memories is still there, makes them real and permanent. When that’s lost, it feels like you’re grieving something more than a material loss.”
Moved to action, Liu partnered with Exeter’s Alumni Relations Office and the Principal’s Office to organize the reprinting of diplomas and the mailing of replacement yearbooks to alumni who had lost theirs in the fires.
“There are some items that are a lifeline to a certain time and place, and maybe even to a version of yourself that no longer really exists, except in memories,” Liu says. “When they’re gone, maybe you don’t consciously think it, but instinctively and emotionally, you know that you’ll never stumble upon that item while cleaning and be instantly thrown back into a memory.”
For Liu, the project was a way to offer something more than condolences. “Sending yearbooks and diplomas felt like a small, feasible thing that I could respond with … something better than being the millionth person to say, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’”
As one alumnus shared: “Wow, this means so much, thank you! I was just thinking about my diploma earlier this week. Appreciate you and everyone else helping make this happen for me.”
GRACE BENSON ’25
Lisa Liu ’13
BYRAN HUANG ’25
PACKED HOUSE
Students gathered in Assembly Hall for the final all-school meeting before the Academy Building undergoes a two-year renewal.
Shared Space,Shared Future
The renewal of Exeter’s Academy Building and venerated Assembly Hall
By Adam Loyd
The air was thick with anticipation of the school year’s end and the summer ahead one late-spring day when the temperature climbed above 90 degrees. As students gathered in the Academy Building for the last all-school assembly of the year, historical photos of Assembly Hall flashed on the projection screen. It was a clue that this assembly not only would feature the traditional student speakers and slide show celebrating the graduating class, but also would hold a deeper significance.
The concert choir sang two numbers that morning, including “Rest” by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The choice was appropriate for a space that would be “placed away, but returned to in a few brief months,” said choir director Kris Johnson, the Michael V. Forrestal ’45 Chair for Music.
This was the last assembly in the hall as the Exeter community has known it for more than five decades. A planned two-year renovation of Assembly Hall and the Academy Building began that afternoon.
ASSEMBLY HALL
The timeless hall features dark wood accents, ornate details and stately chandeliers.
“This room is about to change, but our purpose in coming to assembly will remain the same,” Principal Bill Rawson ’71 said. “We say goodbye to this room with some sadness because of the experiences we’ve had here and our familiarity with the room. We also are excited to imagine what assemblies will be like when all students and faculty can attend in person in a beautifully
Academy Building Over Time
From the time Exeter welcomed its first 56 students in 1783, an Academy Building has served as the center of academic and community life on campus.
1782-94
expanded and restored space and … with air conditioning.”
For the final time before the new Assembly Hall opens, Rawson dismissed students with a resounding “senior class!”
A Historic Hall
Interior demolition of the Academy Building began in earnest in June. The renovation will refresh nearly every space in the school’s flagship
Exeter’s first students and faculty share four classrooms in this two-story wooden schoolhouse on Tan Lane. It has expanded and moved several times, finally settling on Elliot Street in 1999.
building, but perhaps none more consequential than the venerated Assembly Hall.
Situated just below the iconic bell tower, Assembly Hall maintains a timeless aura with its dark wood accents, ornate details and stately chandeliers. Exeter legends who helped shape the school across centuries are immortalized in portraits that overlook the symmetrical rows of deep
1794-1870
As the school grows, a larger Academy Building is built along Front Street. The Georgian-style building serves the school for nearly 80 years before a fire destroys it.
red seats. This is where John and Elizabeth Phillips Award winners are celebrated, new principals are announced and Exonians come together to share space and consideration as a collective student body.
“It’s nice to be able to see everyone together,” Maya Hinrichsen ’27 says. “That’s why assembly is so important … having that shared experience, then we’re able to take what we’ve heard and talk about it together.”
The regular gathering of the community in Assembly Hall has long been an essential part of the Exeter experience. For generations, Exonians attended what was then called “chapel” every Monday through Saturday at 8 a.m. to hear administrative announcements, sing hymns, listen to lecturers or, when no other speaker was planned, a member of the faculty read from the Bible.
The name was officially changed to “assembly” in 1969, and the frequency of the meeting was reduced to four times weekly. In its current iteration, students and faculty convene twice a week to hear featured speakers, watch performances from student clubs or call for a
1872-1914
The third Academy Building is designed to replicate the second as closely as possible, but in brick. Academy chronicler Frank H. Cunningham describes it as “perfect in its proportions and graceful in its outlines.” The building nonetheless meets the same fate as its predecessor.
“sweep” over rival Andover at pep rallies.
“I feel really fortunate to have had the chance to be engaged with such a diverse breadth of speakers during my time at Exeter,” Rachel Baxter ’15 says. “That’s just not something you get once you leave.”
The frequency, the content and the name have changed, but not its objective. “Assembly is where we reflect on our mission and our values — where we celebrate our history, and also imagine our future,” Rawson says.
“Assembly offerings are a major part of our curriculum,” Instructor in Science Tanya Waterman says. “The expanded Assembly Hall will be crucial as we continue building community through shared experiences.”
Constructed as part of the fourth and current Academy Building, which opened in 1914, Assembly Hall was last renovated in 1969. The remodel was part of the “Long Step Forward,” a sweeping capital campaign and building project that included the construction of the Class of 1945 Library, Elm Street Dining Hall, Ewald and Main Street dormitories,
Fisher Theater, the George H. Love Gymnasium and hockey rinks A and B.
Among the architectural changes to the Assembly Hall were a rounded extension of the stage into the audience, the addition of a balcony and the replacement of straight-line pews with curved benches, increasing the seating capacity to more than 1,000. A feature on the project in the December 1970 issue of Progressive Architecture said, “A cherished room has not only been restored and preserved, it has been made into a new place that has character, definition and purpose.”
The RenewalBuilding
In an all-employee meeting in May, Director of Facilities Management Mark Leighton categorized the Academy Building project, designed by the architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle, as a renewal. “It’s really a reset,” he said. “It’s going to be almost a brandnew building, except we’ll have a lot of those original and restored features.”
The once-in-a-century investment will update
1915-2025
In the wake of another devastating fire, Exonians raise $200,000 — some $6.2 million today — for the construction of a fourth Academy Building. It incorporates nearly 1 million water-struck bricks and white Vermont marble. An addition to the north side is built in 1931. An update is completed in 1969.
Key Facts
Approximate number of required assemblies each year Nearly every day
Frequency each student attends class in the Academy Building
1,300
Seating capacity of the new Assembly Hall
2025-
Construction begins on a comprehensive renewal of the Academy Building that preserves its historic character while expanding and reimagining it for Exeter’s future.
Key Facts
2,600
Square feet of the new Design Lab
135
Number of geothermal wells serving the Academy Building, Phillips Hall and the renovated dining hall
INSIDE THE ACADEMY BUILDING (clockwise from left) The marble staircase and treasured portraits will be preserved and restored. A new 2,600-square-foot Design Lab will offer students an expanded and permanent makerspace.
45 Harkness classrooms; increase Assembly Hall seating capacity to 1,300 to accommodate the entire student body and faculty; offer spacious common areas for discussion, study and collaboration; upgrade audio and visual equipment; and replace the heating and cooling systems, which will connect to the Academy’s network of geothermal wells and align with our Sustainability and Climate Action Plan. The Latin Study, just outside the Assembly Hall, will be preserved and renovated while the Classics Department will move to the newly renovated Davis Library this fall.
Existing elements like the World War I and World War
II memorials, as well as the original plaster moldings and marble staircase and entryway will be restored and included in the redesign.
Other school treasures, including the 35 portraits that hung in Assembly Hall, will return to the new Assembly Hall when it reopens or be displayed in places of prominence in other Academy buildings. The portraits honor Exeter’s most respected leaders and benefactors, from founder John Phillips to the first woman to serve as principal, Kendra Stearns O’Donnell. The variety of the styles and subjects reminds us of the school’s long history and recognizes the legacy of
the individuals who have shaped the Academy.
“It’s a special room,” Rawson says. “We need an expanded Assembly Hall so that all students and faculty can be in the room together and we can really make the most of our assembly program and the community conversations our assembly should spark.”
Additionally, the orientation of the stage will flip 180 degrees to the south end of the room with windows overlooking the Academy Lawn. “I liken this project to heart surgery,” says Campus Planner and Architect Heather Taylor. “We are taking out the heart, turning it around and putting it all back together.”
Another large-scale project included in the Academy Building renovation is the creation of a 2,600-squarefoot Design Lab that will offer students an expanded and permanent state-ofthe-art makerspace with access to 3D printers, laser cutters and a dedicated robotics room. “The new location means a much more visible and accessible space,” Instructor in Computer Science Sean Campbell says. “We will be able to host more and larger groups and accommodate some tools and equipment that just won’t fit safely in our current space.”
Much of the financing for the project came from a fund established by the Class of 1959 to maintain the building and aid in its eventual renewal. “We knew it was an ambitious project,” Tucker Andersen ’59 says, “but we also knew how meaningful it could be.”
Alumni and parents continue to come forward to support the project.
The exterior of the building will also get a makeover, with fixes to the masonry and new roofing, gutters and windows. Assembly Hall is scheduled to reopen in September 2026. In the interim, the assembly program will continue uninterrupted in the Love Gymnasium. The entire Academy Building project is set to be completed by August 2027.
Construction throughout the building will be done in phases to minimize the number of unusable classrooms and spaces.
“When we’re done with this building in two years,” Leighton says, “it will be a tremendous improvement for the campus and one that we can check off for 100 years. That is our goal.”
Adam Loyd is a digital content producer for the Office of Communications.
Behind the Lectern
The politicians, writers, scientists and luminaries who have graced the stage
For decades the Academy has hosted a who’s who of speakers on the Assembly Hall stage. Tastemakers from the world of politics, writing and business have recited tales of accomplishments or provided messages of inspiration for the impressionable audience. “What is consistent with the assemblies I love wasn’t the topic, but the speakers’ energy,” Morgan Momen ’27 says. “Being exposed to great speakers in high school gives us a head start and allows us to take note of what works in other people’s speeches and apply it to our own.”
In the lead-up to his successful presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter spoke to Exonians in February 1976. Eight days later, his successor, Ronald Reagan, did the same. Presidential runners-up Michael Dukakis and Bob Dole each made appearances in the late ’80s. Others from the political sphere like civil rights leaders John Lewis and Julian Bond, Carol Moseley Braun and Ron Paul have all spoken at assembly.
Authors who have spoken at Exeter include James Baldwin, Arthur Miller, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jorge Luis Borges, Gwendolyn Brooks and poet and four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost, who was a regular assembly speaker throughout the first half of the 20th century. Alumni authors Gore Vidal ’43, George Plimpton ’44, John Knowles ’45, John Irving ’61, Dan Brown ’82 and Roxane Gay ’92 have graced the Assembly Hall stage, with Brown delivering an annual address to preps in recent years. Academics Noam Chomsky, Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West and scientists J. Robert Oppenheimer, Jane Goodall and Sylvia Earle are all part of the storied list of assembly speakers.
“If you were to think about the people who have spoken onstage, and the impact they have had on student lives, it’s really powerful,” Principal Bill Rawson ’71 says.
Which assembly speaker do you remember? Share your memory with us at bulletin@exeter.edu
SUPPLY AND DEMAND
The puzzles and potential of studying economics at Exeter
BY SARAH PRUITT ’95
Twelve students enrolled in ECO520: Microeconomic Theory and Policy formed teams in May to debate the pros and cons of globalization. The next time the class met, the students asked History Instructor Aykut Kilinc which team had won the debate. Instead of answering, Kilinc presented them with two alternatives:
He could announce the winning team, and the members of that team would receive a 10% grade increase on the next test, while the losers would be docked 7%.
Both teams could forgo knowing the results of the debate and agree to have 2% deducted from their next test scores.
“Think like an economist,” Kilinc told the students. “Which option would you choose?”
To decide, the students confronted a version of the prisoner’s dilemma, a metaphor for situations in which individuals (or nations or businesses) acting in their own interest can sometimes lead to worse outcomes for everyone.
In the classic example, two suspects in a crime, held in separate cells, are offered a choice between confessing or staying silent. If both confess, they each will receive a moderate sentence. If both stay silent, they each will receive a lighter sentence. But if only one confesses, the confessor will receive a light sentence — or even go free — and the silent one will receive a harsh sentence.
Each suspect has a strong incentive to confess, given the possibility that the other will do the same. Therein lies the paradox, as both suspects could achieve the best outcome by staying silent.
Students in History Instructor Aykut Kilinc's class explore how financial markets work.
Students in Kilinc’s class, like all who enroll in the five economics-focused courses Exeter offers, explore how financial markets work, including key concepts like scarcity, supply and demand, and opportunity cost. But as the prisoner’s dilemma illustrates, the core of economics is the study of human behavior: how people and institutions manage and use their money, time, labor and other resources. By studying economics, students gain financial literacy, a better understanding of their spending habits, and training in the analytical and problem-solving skills that will serve them well in nearly every professional field, as well as in daily life.
Perhaps that’s why economics consistently ranks high among the nation’s top college majors, including The Princeton Review’s recent list of the 10 best majors in terms of job prospects and alumni salaries, and USA Today’s ranking of majors that offer the best return on investment.
With the increasing popularity of economics in colleges has come a corresponding rise in demand for economics and personal finance education in high schools. Economics has long been viewed as applicable to many professional fields and pursuits, including finance, public policy, engineering and climate science.
Exeter, like many of its peer schools, has met this growing demand by greatly expanding its economics programming over the past several decades. Today, Exonians seeking exposure to economics can find it through a robust slate of popular classes, a highly competitive student-led economics club and two international trips focused on business and entrepreneurship.
THE ORIGINS OF EXETER’S CURRENT economics offerings date to the late 1970s, when History Instructor E. Arthur Gilcreast took over an existing business course and helped develop an economics-focused history course, HIS45E: Understanding the American Economy. The two courses aimed to help students understand how the U.S. economy works and the origins and workings of the free enterprise system.
courses.
According to a 1980 article in The Exonian, the business course had been offered at Exeter since the 1830s. It was taught by one of the Academy’s financial officers, usually the treasurer, before Gilcreast took over. “Many people in this school are going to be businessmen, and it’s important they learn what it’s all about now,” Gilcreast told the student paper.
In 1981, as Exeter celebrated its bicentennial, Gilcreast received the newly created Arthur A. Seeligson, Class of 1913, Professorship in Business, Economics and History. Two years later, Principal Stephen Kurtz formed a committee (headed by Gilcreast) to undertake a comprehensive review and overhaul of the Academy’s curriculum. The “New Curriculum,” fully implemented for the 1986-87 school year, included a switch to a trimester calendar and a robust new slate of senior-level courses.
Among those were the first two courses offered under the heading of Economics in the Courses of Instruction catalog — Contemporary Economic Issues in the United States and Government and
BY STUDYING ECONOMICS,
STUDENTS GAIN ... SKILLS THAT WILL SERVE THEM WELL IN NEARLY EVERY PROFESSIONAL FIELD, AS WELL AS IN DAILY LIFE.
Business in the United States — and a new economics-focused history course, now HIS506: Capitalism and Its Critics. In a similar spirit, the Religion Department introduced what is now REL460: Ethics of the Marketplace that year.
The economics curriculum at Exeter has since been honed and expanded. History Instructor Meg Foley, who assumed the Seeligson Professorship in 2008, helped develop her department’s second economics-focused course, now HIS556: Why Are Poor Nations Poor? Former History Instructor Giorgio Secondi helped refine the existing economics courses and introduced a course in microeconomics.
ECO520: Microeconomic Theory and Policy is now one of Exeter’s three dedicated economics courses, along with ECO510: Macroeconomic Issues in the United States and ECO502: Principles of Economics and Business, an overview course that covers principles of both macroeconomics and microeconomics.
Although they meet no department requirements for graduation, Exeter’s economics courses are among the most popular electives in the course catalog, with enrollment often filling five or more sections per term when they are offered. “I love that because they’re not required, the students are in the course because they really want to learn about these topics,” says Foley, who has taught all five economics-focused courses.
Kilinc, the current Seeligson professor, attributes some of the popularity of the economics courses to the ups and downs of the U.S. economy in recent decades,
History Instructor E. Arthur Gilcreast helped develop Exeter’s early economics-focused
including the 2008 financial crisis. “I think students want to understand how the marketplace works, how money works and, in so many ways, even how people work,” Kilinc says.
Foley and Kilinc agree that students also see economics as a great way to combine mathematical and analytical skills with an interest in social science, not to mention as a practical choice in terms of college studies and career aspirations. “Even if people specialize in different areas or different fields, they are still required to understand business and economics,” Kilinc says.
WHAT EVAN SOLTAS ’12 SAYS HE remembers very clearly from economics classes at Exeter is “a sense that you were being approached as an equal in the conversation. That you were all there to think through a challenge together, and that these questions were hard, important, interesting and real.”
By the time Soltas came to Exeter as a new lower in 2009, he had developed a keen interest in studying economics. At his former high school, he was involved in the Fed Challenge, a national competition for high school students run by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
“It really felt at the time, and still does to me, that economic challenges are really important,” Soltas says. “This is where it feels like research and evidence and discussion are actually valuable — that they’re going to have some contribution to social progress.”
At the Academy, Soltas studied macroeconomics and microeconomics with Secondi, who became an influential figure in his academic life. As a senior, Soltas started the blog “economics & thought,” in which he shared daily commentaries on various topics in economics. After the blog caught the attention of Slate and other national news organizations, as well as prominent economists, Soltas became a regular contributor to Bloomberg News and The Washington Post .
“In retrospect, [the blog] quite quickly took off into something that I was completely unprepared for,” Soltas says. “In many ways, I’ve been riding that wave ever since.”
Soltas majored in economics at Princeton and led the university’s Fed Challenge team. After graduation, he spent two years at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, earning his M.Phil. in economics. In 2024, Soltas completed his Ph.D. at MIT, then spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Microsoft Research
in New York City before returning to Princeton as an assistant professor of economics and public affairs.
He traces his interest in his primary field of study — urban economics and policy, particularly housing markets — to his years growing up in New York City, as well as his time at Exeter. For his U.S. history term paper (or “333”), Soltas wrote about New York City’s urban decline from the 1950s to the 1970s.
“I’ve always been fascinated by cities,” he says. “There’s great data to study, and the economics are complicated and interesting. Cities make concrete so many theoretical roles for the government, confronting us with its real-world failures and successes and challenging us to learn from them.”
UNLIKE SOLTAS, HOAI-LUU NGUYEN
’03 came to Exeter with no affinity for economics. That changed when she took Foley’s Capitalism and Its Critics class. Based on that history course and the two economics courses she took at Exeter, Nguyen decided to major in economics at MIT, where she earned her B.S. and Ph.D. in the subject.
Nguyen says she was drawn to economics as “a study of people, and of the institutions that people create,” an idea she absorbed through Harkness discussions. This broad view of the discipline, she says, includes everything from solving huge global challenges to investigating basic questions about human behavior.
“That’s not always a view of economics that comes across very strongly in undergrad econ courses like Micro 101 or something,” Nguyen says. “Those courses necessarily start with fundamentals of economic theory, like supply-demand models and models of trade.”
Formerly a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, Nguyen is the founder of econimate, a YouTube channel aimed at making economics research accessible and engaging. For the channel, Nguyen creates and narrates animated summaries of the papers being written and published by top economists on topics like the consequences of losing a low-wage job or the cost of political corruption, to name two recent examples.
“These papers are not written to be consumed outside of academic circles,” Nguyen says. “Yet precisely because economics asks so many questions that have direct impact on people’s lives, I think what we learn from this research can be of broader interest than just to other professors.”
ENTREPRENEURSHIP ABROAD STUDENTS LEVERAGE BUSINESS SKILLS IN STARTUP-FRIENDLY BERLIN
In June, a group of Exeter students and faculty headed to Berlin — a vibrant, culturally diverse city that has become a hub for startup businesses in Europe — to study supply and demand, equilibrium, opportunity cost and other key economic concepts.
The Berlin program, started in 2022, is one of two international trips offered through Exeter’s Global Initiatives curriculum that is focused on business and entrepreneurship. Students have also traveled to Singapore.
Beginning this summer, students in Berlin are earning course credit during the three-week intensive version of ECO502: Principles of Economics and Business. The course explores the same principles and macroeconomic and microeconomic questions as the on-campus version but with some focus on the German economy. In addition, students also take German language classes and meet with local entrepreneurs to talk about sustainable business practices.
For Ally Rubin ’26, the trip was an exciting blend of studying business and economics and gaining on-the-ground experience, such as touring the BMW factory and talking with members of the German Parliament to learn more about the country’s economic and political structures. “This trip has furthered my passion for economics and allowed me to gain a new perspective about Germany, and the culture and history that makes it what it is today,” Rubin says.
Students on the 2025 Berlin trip
Nguyen credits Foley’s class and the others she took at Exeter with helping her choose a field of study before she enrolled in college — earlier than many of her peers. Viewed through the broad lens she embraced at Exeter, she sees economics as appealing to a wide range of students with differing career aspirations.
“If you’re interested in the climate crisis, or inequality, or poverty, or how the government works, or how public policy gets made … these are all questions that are studied in fields of economics,” Nguyen says.
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM, CURRENT Exonians can pursue an interest in economics through the Exeter Economics Association, a thriving student club, as well as Global Initiatives summer trips to Berlin and Singapore, both bustling hubs of business and entrepreneurship. (See “Entrepreneurship Abroad,” p. 49]
Dhruv Nagarajan ’25, the most recent co-head of the Exeter Economics Association, was first drawn to economics while watching financial news during the pandemic lockdown. “I’ve always been
contributions to the field of mathematical economics and game theory.
Paul Romer ’73 was a co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for demonstrating how knowledge and innovation can drive economic growth.
big into puzzles,” he says, “and I like to view the economy as one big puzzle, where there’s a lot of cause and effect.”
For Nagarajan, the club’s twice-weekly meetings strike a balance. Monday’s curriculum sessions are dedicated to serious study. The Sunday gatherings over dinner in the Seabrooke Room at Elm Street Dining Hall are more casual.
“We have this competitive aspect, and there’s definitely demand for that at a school like Exeter,” he says. “But we also have the more low-key, chill dinner discussions that I and a lot of the competitors also regularly attend, to remind us that it’s not all just about the competitions.”
Students from the EEA regularly enter prestigious competitions like the Northwestern Economics Tournament, the Harvard Pre-Collegiate Economics Challenge and the National Economics Challenge, run by the Council for Economic Education. To prepare for competitions, club members use a 60-plus-page textbook they have created over the past few years. Nagarajan says the text covers both AP material and more advanced theory in macroeconomics and microeconomics.
At the most recent NEC in Atlanta in May, Exeter teams placed second in the Adam Smith Division, for returning, advanced and honors economics students, and the David Ricardo Division, which includes first-time competitors who have taken no more than one economics course.
Nagarajan recalls another proud moment at the Northwestern tournament in 2024, when Exeter’s A team defeated Exeter’s B team in the final quiz bowl round to capture first place. “When I was sitting there, it felt like it was no different from our Monday morning meetings in the Forum at EPAC,” he says. “Only this time it was onstage at the Northwestern competition.”
In addition to his extracurricular economics activities, Nagarajan took Exeter’s macroeconomics course, as well as the two economics-focused history courses. “I really enjoyed the balance of integrating macro with the Harkness method,” Nagarajan says. He gained new perspective discussing the work of influential political economists throughout history — such as Smith, Ricardo, John Maynard Keynes and Karl Marx — around the table with his classmates in Capitalism and Its Critics
“I knew from studying for these competitions which thinkers had written which texts and postulated which theories,” Nagarajan says. “But I hadn’t yet fully unpacked the actual writing and what they were talking about, to the extent that I did in that course.”
IN KILINC’S CLASSROOM, HIS microeconomics students had to reflect on the problem he had posed before moving on to discussing the rise in counterfeit goods in the global marketplace, the effects of technology on the price of chicken and other topics. Did they demand the results of the globalization debate or choose to forgo a verdict in favor of attaining the best test results for the entire group?
“Let’s take a vote,” Kilinc said. “Do you want to know who the winner is?”
A few hands went up around the room.
“Who would rather take the dominant strategy, or the winning strategy?” Kilinc asked, perhaps tipping the scales a little.
More hands went up, far outnumbering the first group. “Losers,” one outvoted student muttered, drawing laughs from the rest of the room.
“They’re not losers,” Kilinc said. “They’re real economists.”
Sarah Pruitt ’95 is a staff writer for The Exeter Bulletin
Lloyd Shapley ’40 received the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his
Economics Club members Steven Chen ’25, Dhruv Nagarajan ’25, Eli Orbach ’27 and Drona Gaddam ’27 took first runners-up at the 2025 National Economics Challenge in May.
Connections
Machine Learning Conservation technology scientist Ian Ingram ’95 communes with nature through art. P. 54
Ingram's “Woodiest” the robot translates the territorial drumming of two woodpecker species that might cross paths for the first time in millions of years due to habitat disruption.
Reporter at Large
Sarah Varney ’91 tells stories at the intersection of law and women’s health
As a youth in the early 1980s, Sarah Varney ’91 spent hours lying on her living room floor, listening to New Hampshire Public Radio. Radio was the sole entertainment at home and, unlike most contemporary media, it featured women’s voices: Linda Wertheimer, Susan Stamberg and eventually Nina Totenberg, “the founding grandmothers of NPR,” she says.
“It wasn’t just that I was hearing their voices,” she says of NPR’s women. “It was that the stories they were interested in were totally different than the stories men were interested in. … I didn’t know exactly what a journalist was. But whatever it was they were doing, that’s what I wanted to do.”
taking on these big ideas,” she says, “then rooting them in actual day-to-day stories.”
For one segment, she interviewed a woman who, prevented by Tennessee law from ending her pregnancy, delivered an infant with organs outside the body. It was a profoundly poignant tale. “Even for people opposed to abortion, I think hearing this woman’s story couldn’t not be moving,” Varney says.
After studying public policy and political science at Brown, she covered news and health for public radio, ultimately becoming a special health care correspondent for PBS NewsHour and a contributing health reporter for NPR. Collectively, her reportage covers modern American medical history, including the HIV and opioid epidemics and the Affordable Care Act.
Her pieces put personal narratives within a larger context, taking into account the broader chessboard at play. “We’re
At the same time, the story highlighted the intersection of state law and women’s health. “We talk about abortion bans in the abstract,” Varney says. “I’m in the field trying to find real people impacted by these policies.” Because some 2 million viewers watch NewsHour nightly, including members of Congress and Supreme Court justices, she can “share these stories with people who make really important decisions.”
Varney sees her role as a “collector of stories,” entrusted with people’s experiences at moments of extreme vulnerability. “I think human beings are inherently wired to want to listen,” she says. “Hearing people’s stories and why they make the decisions they make, or believe what they believe, then sharing these stories with [others] is extremely important. It’s how we’re connected as human beings,
through storytelling.”
Reporters must also ask difficult questions. For one piece, Varney interviewed an influential anti-abortion activist who didn’t want to discuss her opposition to contraception. “That’s why it’s even more important,” Varney says, “to have a journalist sit down and say: ‘Your logic is that if a form of contraception prevents a fertilized egg from possibly implanting in the uterus, that’s an abortion. Under Texas law, that makes any form of birth control an abortifacient. Is that true?’ It’s up to them to say, ‘Yes, that’s my logic.’ I think the reason journalists are really important at this moment is we’re not activists.”
Last year, after completing a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, Varney created Fountain Productions, a nonprofit dedicated to independent journalism on the consequences of the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Roe v. Wade established the constitutional right to abortion in 1973.
“There’s been a lot of great journalism about the seismic shift in reproductive rights in American life in print and radio, but [no] consistent place to do this on television,” she says. She and her small team produce NewsHour segments and are creating two podcasts, Caged: The Origins of Patriarchy and Body and State, based on NewsHour interviews.
Varney is also gathering stories of women affected by abortion bans into a multimedia repository that will be available to news organizations. “You’ll have extraordinary reporting done about one person in Texas, then another powerful story about one person in Tennessee,” she says. “How do you start to pull them together?”
Her work may help to inspire the next generation of reporters covering women’s health. —Juliet Eastland ’86
“I think the reason journalists are really important at this moment is we’re not activists.”
Sarah Varney ’91 conducts an on-camera interview for PBS NewsHour at the Texas capitol.
Sarah Varney ’91
The Heartbeat of Alumni Relations
Jan Woodford retires after 38 years
During the last week of her nearly 40-year career at Exeter, Jan Woodford ’40, ’41, 44, ’49, ’51, 52, ’53, ’59, ’60, ’62, ’70, ’71, ’78 (Hon.), senior advisor of campus events, is doing what she does best: serving and connecting with alumni.
In between cleaning out her desk and saying goodbye to colleagues, Woodford, who retired in June, pens an obituary for Bissell Jenkins Middleton ’44, recalling “he was a delight to work with” on reunions. “You’d never know he was a high-powered lawyer,” she says. She pauses hours later as Beth Dutton ’79 ducks into her office and requests a selfie.
It’s all in a day’s work for Woodford, who managed logistics for 14 reunion classes as a key Alumni Relations team member. Now an honorary member of 13
of those classes — the most of any community member — Woodford worked closely with alumni volunteers and departments across campus to ensure events were flawlessly executed all while keeping calm under pressure. Nancy Smith Douglas ’79 likens Woodford to “a beautiful swan gliding effortlessly over the surface of the water while paddling madly beneath.”
For Woodford, relationships are at the heart of the alumni experience. She maintained personal connections with hundreds of alumni through handwritten notes and phone calls, always remembering the smallest details about their lives. “She has a genuine interest in alumni stories,” says Michelle Curtin, director of Alumni Relations and Woodford’s supervisor. “Jan always had alumni in her office. With her extensive knowledge of Exeter and her
“A beautiful swan gliding effortlessly over the surface of the water while paddling madly beneath.”
connections, there was a level of security that people working with her knew she’d get things done, find answers and make something work.”
An Air Force veteran, Woodford came to Exeter with her husband and young son, Billy (their daughter, Kati, was born later). “I wanted to work locally and a relative worked at Exeter and highly recommended working here,” she says. Woodford initially joined the annual giving office but soon moved to Alumni Relations, starting as the primary staff member supporting reunion classes. “We eventually grew,” Woodford says, “expanding into alumni events, building dedications and groundbreakings. I became involved with everything to do with bringing alumni back to campus.”
Woodford was the driving force behind Exeter Salutes, a program launched in 2019 to honor members of the Exeter alumni community who currently serve in the armed forces or are veterans. Through assembly and in-person programs that connect veterans and current students, Exeter Salutes is “a wonderful example of non sibi,” Woodford says. “It’s a joy to watch students get excited to meet the veterans and learn more about the military and its contributions.”
Many special reunion memories stand out for Woodford, including: working with the class of ’59 to help raise money for the renovation of the Academy Building; welcoming female members of the class of ’71, part of Exeter’s first co-ed class, back to campus; and planning the gala celebration for the opening of The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance. “I couldn’t have done this for 38 years on my own,” Woodford says. “Staff in Institutional Advancement, facilities and dining all supported me throughout as I learned this job and grew into it.”
As she looks forward to spending more time exploring New Hampshire during retirement, Woodford recalls her Exeter memories fondly. “Seeing alumni connect with each other and the school warms my heart,” she says. “It’s a testimony to what a great place Exeter is and how important it is to people’s lives.” —Debbie Kane
STAFF EXCELLENCE
Jan Woodford speaking during a reunion event in 2025.
Jan Woodford
Machine Learning
Ian Ingram ’95 communes and communicates with animals through technology
As a teenager, Ian Ingram ’95 was fascinated by the Loch Ness monster. His desire to find it is partly what inspired him to pursue a bachelor’s degree in ocean engineering, studying underwater robots at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then earned his master’s degree in ocean acoustics, with the hopes of one day communicating with whales. During grad school, he designed robots
for animal studies and began to use them in unconventional ways.
After a stint as an engineering consultant, Ingram enrolled in an M.F.A. program at Carnegie Mellon. There, he became a de facto spokesperson for robotic art as a discipline. He has since exhibited internationally, including at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.
Ingram’s latest installation, Reduced
Rabbit Juice, the first in a planned series called Herbivore Semaphore, explores the vigilance of prey animals and the gestures of ears. It’s part of a summer “AI Ecologies” exhibition at the Artphy contemporary arts center in Onstwedde, Netherlands. The show looks at how people, nature and technology coexist and the ways artificial intelligence continues to affect our relationship with nature.
The exhibition is a natural fit for Ingram professionally and personally — he spent
Ian Ingram'95 installs robotic artwork.
“I frame my work around the idea that I’m helping create a different origin story for future full sentient robots to look back on.”
part of his childhood in Copenhagen, Denmark. Through his unique viewpoint, which is critically layered with wit and humor, he reveals how much we know about our planet’s nonhuman species, including backyard squirrels and ants, and the Western fence lizard, yet how little our society seems to contemplate the value of that understanding.
“We exist in increasingly narrow portals of interaction with the world,” Ingram says. “We are at risk of losing sight of what’s truly out there, and might not work to protect it because we don’t fully grasp how much more valuable the real things are than the simulacra.”
To bring the installation to life, Ingram developed a machine-learning model that runs on an acoustic feed using microphones embedded in a set of faux rabbit ears. The robotic ears move to scan the environment just as a real rabbit’s ears would. When they “hear” a threat — the sound of a predator, say — they relay the information with a signature Ingram twist: The ears communicate the warning using traditional flag semaphore rather than by mimicking actual rabbit gestures.
“It’s about the intent to communicate on the part of the robot,” Ingram says, “but the communication is wrapped up in so many layers that it’s a presumed failure.” This failure is repeated in many works, such as Nevermore-A-Matic (2016), a device that uses coded human language
to attempt to tell apocalyptic stories to ravens. But much is also gained through Ingram’s work, as his avatars uncover things we never knew before while they cohabitate, commune and communicate with animals in their own places.
During his alumni reunion in May, Ingram attended one of the Academy’s robotics courses and met with the Robotics Club, neither of which existed during his Exeter tenure. He regards his work — both as a conservation technology scientist with the San Diego Zoo and as
an artist — more closely tied to what the robotics field is trying to achieve.
“Back in the early- to mid-2000s,” he says, “it still felt as if the legacy we were leaving for robots was coming from the worst parts of human activity. So I frame my work around the idea that I’m helping create a different origin story for future fully sentient robots to look back on. I hope the things I’ve done direct some energy toward other ways robots can be, and other ways robots can look.”
—Danielle Cantor
Ian Ingram's Danger Squirrel Nutkin! communicates with squirrels by tail flagging; the robot in Nevermore-A-Matic excessively wipes its plastic beak causing a disquiet ravens can sense.
Ian Ingram ’95
Tejo y Sapo
1. Tejo
We were finally old enough my brother and I to join our cousins in the game of tejo
They drank beer ate empanadas and chicharrón under the glow of a disco-ball light
Neon pink and red bulbs flickered
The walls of la tiendita were sticky with the remnants of clay and burnt plastic
We split into teams and then we threw the metal disc at the gunpowder chips
The sizzle and smoke the strike and pop! muted by the “oye!” and “epa!” of winning
One point for each mecha two if you hit the chip in the middle none if you miss the clay board
We played three games to 25, then ran out of pocket money
The sun was still the king of the sky when we stepped outside and took a breath
High-school boys honked and whistled at girls crossing the street reggaeton blaring from their Toyota Shirtless workers sat on the sidewalk licking their fingers as they shared rellenas and salchipapas
It was Sunday and the night was alive with vallenato and samba and alegría
2. Sapo
Outside la tiendita street lights flickered on one by one
We returned after dinner to launch metal rings at a tower with holes on the top and on the front Wood colored blue red yellow
Standing as a semi circle a crescent moon we took turns throwing the rings straining to get them into a slot
We hit the crate of Coke bottles beside the wall
one too many times.
The store owner laughed at us from the other side of the glass window
Teens in hoods and girls in heels picked up the rings that rolled away skittered in between wheels of bicycles and fell flat beside a gum wrapper. My phone rang “vuelvan que ya oscureció”
Above la tiendita the stars twinkled And we were kids again.
Alicia Medina ’25 was awarded first place among this year’s Lewis Sibley Poetry Prize recipients. The prizes are given annually for the most promising collections of original poems.
October 10-11, 2025
Come visit the Exeter student in your life this fall and share in the richness of their Academy experience. Program details to come!
Why not extend your stay? There are no classes on Monday.
Recipient: If this magazine is addressed to an Exonian who no longer maintains a permanent address at this home, please email us (records@exeter.edu) to update our records. Thank you.
“None of this would’ve been possible without donor support. Touring with the concert choir was unforgettable — and made me realize how special Exeter is and why I want to give back.”
LUCY JUNG ’25
“A thousand students, a single campus and a rhythm of life that never quite slows down. In that rhythm, I grew not just as a student, but as a person. And for that, I’m deeply grateful.”
