The Exeter Bulletin, winter 2022

T H E E X E T E R

The Exeter Bulletin WINTER 2022

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Ever Equally Open

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A COMMITMENT TO NEED-BLIND ADMISSIONS

Join us for

Reunions 2022

Yesterday.

Today.

Together.

MAY 6-8

15th Reunion Class of 2007 20th Reunion Class of 2002 25th Reunion Class of 1997 30th Reunion Class of 1992 35th Reunion Class of 1987 40th Reunion Class of 1982

MAY 19-22

50th Reunion Class of 1972

MAY 20-22

5th Reunion Class of 2017 10th Reunion Class of 2012 45th Reunion Class of 1977 55th Reunion Class of 1967 60th Reunion Class of 1962

MAY 24-26

65th Reunion Class of 1957 70th Reunion Class of 1952 75th Reunion Class of 1947 Please note that reunion plans are subject to pandemic conditions.

REGISTER TODAY www.exeter.edu/reunions

The Exeter Bulletin Principal William K. Rawson ’71; P’08 Director of Communications Robin Giampa Executive Editor Jennifer Wagner Contributing Editor Patrick Garrity Class Notes Editor Cathy Webber Editorial Coordinator Maxine Weed Creative Director/Design David Nelson, Nelson Design Contributing Designers Rachel Dlugos Jacqueline Trimmer Photography Editor Christian Harrison Communications Advisory Committee Daniel G. Brown ’82, Robert C. Burtman ’74, Dorinda Elliott ’76, Alison Freeland ’72, Keith Johnson ’52, Yvonne M. Lopez ’93 Trustees President Morgan C.W. Sze ’83 Vice President Deidre G. O’Byrne ’84 Wole C. Coaxum ’88, Suzi Kwon Cohen ’88, Mark A. Edwards ’78, Elizabeth A. “Betsy” Fleming ’86, Claudine Gay ’88, Peter A. Georgescu ’57, Scott S.W. Hahn ’90, Jacqueline Hayes ’85, Ira D. Helfand, M.D. ’67, Jennifer P. Holleran ’86, Cia Buckley Marakovits ’83, Sally J. Michaels ’82, William K. Rawson ’71, Genisha Saverimuthu ’02, Peter M. Scocimara ’82, Sanjay K. Shetty, M.D. ’92, Serena Wille Sides ’89, Kristyn A. (McLeod) Van Ostern ’96, Janney Wilson ’83 The Exeter Bulletin (ISSN No. 0195-0207) is published four times each year: fall, winter, spring and summer,

by Phillips Exeter Academy 20 Main Street, Exeter NH 03833-2460 Telephone 603-772-4311 Periodicals postage paid at Exeter, NH, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA by Cummings Printing.

The Exeter Bulletin is printed on recycled paper and sent free of charge to alumni, parents, grandparents, friends and educational institutions by Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH. Communications may be addressed to the editor; email bulletin@exeter.edu.

Copyright 2022 by the Trustees of Phillips Exeter Academy.

ISSN-0195-0207 Postmasters: Send address changes to: Phillips Exeter Academy Records Office 20 Main Street Exeter, NH 03833-2460

WINTER

“TODAY, WITH THE DECISION TO BECOME NEED-BLIND, WE ARE POSITIONED TO HONOR OUR FOUNDERS ...

BY ENSURING THAT FAMILY INCOME NEVER BECOMES A BARRIER OF ACCESS TO AN EXETER EDUCATION.” —page 36

IN THIS ISSUE

Volume CXXVI, Issue no. 2

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Features 36 A Momentous Decision Trustees usher in a new era with commitment to need-blind admissions.

42 Modern Science From the lab to the table, Exeter nurtures innovators of the future.

By Sarah Pruitt ’95

48 Catching Fire In the hot zone with wildland firefighter Kate Tirrell ’11

By Jennifer Wagner

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Departments 6

Around the Table: Heard in Assembly, new faculty impressions, Bear Atwood ’77 honored

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Inside the Writing Life: Elizabeth Ricker ’03

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Sports: Mike Lynch ’72 tells of Exeter’s epic triumph over Andover, E/A weekend

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Connections: Meghan Riordan Jarvis ’92, Oishi Banerjee ’14, Greg Thompson ’71 and Bob Rubin ’69

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Class Notes

102 Memorial Minute: Donald C. Dunbar 104 Finis Origine Pendet: Maeve Kennedy ’24 COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTIAN HARRISON

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Students catch the lamplight outside the William Boyce Thompson Field House.

PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTIAN HARRISON

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AROUND THE TABLE

What’s new and notable at the Academy

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Beyond the Book

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50 Years of the

Class of 1945

Librar y

Letters to the Editor ONE FOR THE BOOKS Jack Herney really did a fantastic job pulling together all the aspects of the library (and there is only one “Library”) over the past 50 years. I will treasure this copy of the alumni magazine and look back at it and reread the article. Thank you.

— Jane Boesch ’83 What an excellent article in the Bulletin. Loved every sentence of it. So chock-full of wonders and history — as is its subject.

Makes me want to get back to exploring!

— Todd Hearon, instructor in English I just devoured your article on the library. I can’t think of anything that has brought me so much joy.

— Barry Lenson P’08 We also heard from Rabbi Tuvia Katzman ’75, who was able to add some context for the lost Dickey slip mentioned in Herney’s story: “Please note the date mentioned on the slip. This is a week after the reelection [of Richard Nixon as president]. I was not reading the book as part of a history class, but as background for current events (even though I had heard that it was ghostwritten), and in my own not-spare time. …

The implicit message in this Dickey slip is to look into the sources yourself.” E

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Exeter Salutes

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s a combat commander during two

tours in Iraq, Zach Iscol ’97 fought with and led American Marines in battle. As a private citizen, Iscol has continued to fight for former American servicemen and -women at home. In 2012, he launched the Headstrong Project, a nonprofit that provides free health care to a thousand veterans monthly in 35 cities across the United States. He also founded Hirepurpose, a hiring platform for veterans and their spouses that provides career guidance and matches them with potential employers.

Iscol was awarded the John and Elizabeth Phillips Award in 2017 and returned to campus in November to headline “Exeter Salutes,” the Academy’s annual Veterans Day tribute to Exonians who exemplify non sibi through military service. In a conversation at the Elizabeth Phillips Academy Center with emeritus chair of the History Department Jack Herney ’46, ’69, ’71, ’74, ’92, ’95 (Hon.), Iscol recounted how he found his way from Exeter to the Marines and eventually to the streets of Fallujah, where he commanded a platoon throughout the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War. Iscol also shared how his military experiences have shaped his life since those harrowing times and lamented how the nation’s political and military leadership have failed to adapt their approach to warfare in the 21st century, with tragic results. “If you look at the military today … it’s not that different than it was 20 years ago,” Iscol said. “And I think that begs the question as to how have we not evolved?

How have we not met the challenges of today by adapting the military to the requirements that we have?”

Some 150 alumni, students and community members attended the reception and Zoom social following the live event. E

“If you look at the military today … it’s not that different than it was 20 years ago. And I think that begs the question as to how have we not evolved?”

More than 700 current Exeter alumni, faculty and staff have served or are serving in the U.S. armed forces. Scores more have died in combat or in active service to the country. Please add your military status to Exeter’s official record at exonians.exeter.edu/veterans.

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“I am deeply grateful for everyone who challenges us to imagine, and helps us achieve, the Exeter of tomorrow.”

CHRISTIAN HARRISON

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Building on Strength

By Principal Bill Rawson ’71; P’08

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TOM KATES

almost didn’t attend Exeter. When I showed my acceptance letter to my father, he told me that the financial aid award was not enough and he was unable to make up the difference.

I had not applied to any other school — I wanted to go to Exeter, and my father, a school teacher, thought Exeter was the only school that had the resources to provide the financial aid that we needed. Happily, with additional information, the Academy adjusted the award, and I arrived as a new lower in September 1968.

Financial aid was handled differently back then. Scholarship students, as we were called, were expected to contribute several hundred dollars to the cost of tuition each year through summer earnings, and we held nonpaying “scholarship jobs” on campus that took a few hours each week.

I waited on faculty tables in the dining hall and served as an admissions tour guide. Like many scholarship students, I also held paying jobs to make some additional spending money. I was very happy with these arrangements. I was at Exeter.

We’ve come a long way, in so many ways, since my student days, including with our financial aid policies. When I arrived at Exeter, there were just 217 students receiving financial aid. Since then, we have more than doubled that number, and today we have over 450 students supported through financial aid. We long ago stopped expecting students to contribute from their summer earnings or hold nonpaying jobs on campus. Our financial aid awards meet the full demonstrated need of each family, and we provide additional assistance where necessary to ensure that every student has access to the full Exeter experience.

This increased attention to access has reduced a financial barrier in the admissions process, but did not eliminate it. Students requiring financial aid still faced a more challenging admissions process due to the number of spaces available for financial aid students. That is not what John and Elizabeth Phillips intended when they founded Exeter as a free school.

Now, with the Trustees’ momentous decision in October, we can and will operate fully needblind and realize our founders’ vision that “The Academy shall ever be equally open to youth of requisite qualifications from every quarter.” This milestone builds on the generosity of successive generations of Exonians who have contributed to financial aid endowment — most recently through the tremendous generosity of alumni and parents who have stepped forward and made this bold commitment to being need-blind a reality.

This commitment means that no child will be turned away because of a family’s inability to pay. And it is one way we more fully realize our vision of a school where youth from diverse backgrounds and perspectives come together to learn from one another and prepare to lead purposeful lives.

I cherish the Exeter I attended. It changed my life. But we know that Exeter has never stayed excellent by staying the same. I am deeply grateful for everyone who challenges us to imagine, and helps us achieve, the Exeter of tomorrow. I’m grateful that financial need will no longer be a barrier to students who dream of attending the Academy. E

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Ancient Futurists V I S I T I N G S C H O L A R M A K E S T H E P A S T, P R E S E N T

By Jennifer Wagner

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Stanford Professor Grant Parker with his former student Lina Wang, now a teaching intern in Exeter’s Classics Department.

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hat can Vergil, the Greek Magical Papyri of spells and King Croesus of Lydia’s visit to the Oracle of Delphi tell us about the future? A lot, says Grant Parker, a Stanford professor who led a series of student seminars in November called “RetroFutures: Ancient Perspectives on Times Ahead.”

“It was a mind-bending look at how the future looked to people in the past,” says Matt Hartnett, chair of the Classics Department. “It felt very relevant to the current moment, where there is considerable anxiety and uncertainty about what the future holds. Over the intervening millennia we have come up with different ways of divining what we think will happen in the future, but all motivated by the same desire the ancients had to try to make the unknown known.”

It’s clear Parker’s words inspired those who gathered in the Elting Room of Phillips Hall for discourse. “Most Exeter Classics students read or will read Vergil at some point, and Professor Parker’s presentations not only introduced two Vergilian texts outside of the syllabus but also gave me a new perspective on the Aeneid, which I read last year at Exeter,” says Alexandra Wang ’23, who attended three of the four seminars. “At the start of his second seminar, he quoted a writer’s complaint that ‘Vergil is history written in the future tense.’ The quip is shockingly accurate: The story of the Aeneid is propelled by prophecies, but these predicted futures are the reader’s past. … Professor Parker’s seminars showed us that in all literary traditions, the text doesn’t change, its audience does. And each new reader is a new interaction.

Each new reader grants the text a new meaning.” E

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First Impressions S O M E N E W T E A C H I N G A N D A D M I N I S T R AT I V E F A C U LT Y S H A R E THOUGHTS OF THEIR FIRST TERM

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1. “I’ve been exploring the campus trails with my dog since the summer.

After the autumn peak dried the leaves there has still been plenty of color, especially rose gold. Everyone I encounter is mindful and acknowledging of others.”

— Susan Park, instructor in science 2. “I was welcomed with open arms by the girls soccer team and staff. My colleagues in the Physical Education and Athletics Department have gone out of their way to make sure I am mentored in all aspects of the role. The immediate sense of community has been a blessing for my family.”

— Kerry McBrearty, instructor in physical education 3. “My first term at Exeter has been enlightening. One student asked me how to get detergent out of his sweats. It wasn’t detergent; his clothes bled onto each other in the wash. I didn’t think I would be giving laundry advice here. I have surprisingly enjoyed my time living in a boys dorm with young men who are respectful, kind and responsible.”

— Christina Zeigler, instructor in science 4. “In returning to Exeter, I’ve been so impressed with the students at PEA: their sincerity, kindness and brilliance inspire my work on a daily basis.”

— Matt Callahan ’09, assistant director of admissions

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5. “Before working at Exeter, idea generation for events, programming or initiatives seemed limited to dialogues in formal settings. My time here has taught me that most often casual conversations provide the moments for creative, meaningful and worthwhile creativity. Whether I am getting a haircut at the Hair Emporium or hanging out in the Office of Multicultural Affairs, I know my colleagues will provide a space for both intellectual rigor and care.”

— Kevin Pajaro-Mariñez, assistant director of equity and inclusion 6. “The first term could have been stressful and overwhelming, but my experience was a combination of fun and challenge. I would not have been able to have [that experience] without the continuous support from my mentor and the rest of the biology team. I enjoyed the Harkness discussions and the amount of life and energy my students brought with them every day. Harkness discussion is not only the backbone of Philips Exeter’s learning system, but it also encourages [students] to think critically and articulate their thoughts, as well as respect and listen to opinions different from their own.”

— Shimaa Ghazal, instructor in science

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CAMPUS LIFE AT A GLANCE

CHORUS OF CHEER: Valentina Zhang ’24 and Angela Zhang ’23 strike a chord singing at Langdon Place, a local senior living community.

HEALTH’S ANGELS: Ciara McNamara ’23 smiles during a positive psychology event sponsored by the teams from CAPs and Health and Human Development to promote self-care and well-being on campus.

FORCES IN MOTION: A collection of paintings, drawings and largescale sculpture by artist and educator Gordon D. Chase ’66 graces the Lamont Gallery.

STANDUP EXETER: Student comics like Blake Simpson ’23 take the Assembly Hall stage for a night of laughs.

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Thanks to a new program launched this year by Academy leadership and Dining Services, every student’s Lion Card gets loaded weekly with six points, or $12, to purchase food and drinks at Grill.

MAKING PROGRESS: Students gather in Bancroft Hall’s common room for a meeting of their Core Values Project, “Windows and Mirrors: Multimedia representations of antioppression, community values and justice at PEA,” co-facilitated

by Adam Hernandez, director of athletic training services.

P H O T O G R A P H S B Y Y O O N S . B Y U N , P AT R I C K G A R R I T Y, C H R I S T I A N H A R R I S O N A N D W I L L I A M P A R K ’ 2 2

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In Contemporary Company B A C K S TA G E W I T H E X E T E R ’ S N E W E S T P L AY E N S E M B L E

By Sarah Pruitt ’95

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTIAN HARRISON

lythe de Oliveira Foster ’97 sits cross-legged atop a rehearsal cube in the Actors Lab of The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance as a group of about 20 students face her in the rows of black-and-white patterned seats. All are members of the New Play Reading Ensemble, a theater opportunity launched this year that focuses on exploring contemporary plays by a diverse array of BIPOC, LGBTQ+, women and intersectional playwrights.

De Oliveira Foster starts rehearsal with a brief check-in. One student is tired. One is anxious about a chemistry test. Another is “hungry but happy.” However the students were feeling when they arrived, they bubble with energy and laughter as de Oliveira Foster sends them away for 15 minutes to work in pairs on the day’s scene — a heated exchange between the two lead characters in L’intrico Del Lupo Mannaro, by Nico Grelli.

The New Play Reading Ensemble grew out of a reading series led last year

by Instructor Emerita Sarah Ream ’75 and Hadley Camilus, associate dean of Multicultural Student Affairs. It’s also an extension of the Theater and Dance Department’s yearlong focus on the theme of “identity.” “We really want to honor the traditions of the school, that canon that the school has paid such close attention to,” says Lauren Josef, chair of the Department of Theater and Dance. “But it’s important that we bring in new voices, that we create an inclusive department where we’re telling stories from people of all identities.”

“As an actor with a new-plays background, I was thrilled when I learned they were actively looking for someone who was excited about this,” says de Oliveira Foster, who joined the faculty this year.

De Oliveira Foster curated a special selection of texts for the ensemble — including both published and unpublished pieces by living playwrights, most of them written within the past three years — and built on that list based on student input.

Beyond reading and performing the plays, students will have the opportunity to interact with the playwrights. Grelli, a trans/genderqueer, Italian American filmmaker, writer, visual artist and performer, is one of four playwrights who will join the ensemble via Zoom to discuss their work. “I’m excited to connect the students with these specific playwrights as artists and human beings, and for them to engage in conversations about writing and new play development as a dynamic, collaborative process,” de Oliveira Foster says.

Students read from Nico Grelli’s L’intrico Del Lupo Mannaro in the Goel Center for Theater and Dance.

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Back in the Actors Lab, three pairs of students take the stage, each choosing a markedly different approach to the same lines of dialogue. After each reading, the performers remain onstage for some discussion and feedback from the group.

“Talk to us about your physicality — physical choices, vocal choices,” de Oliveira Foster asks the first pair, Ava Zhao ’24 and Priya Nwakanma ’23.

“The staging said ‘Donnie. 30s. Very Cowboy Elvis. Sincere, romantical, mustachioed as all get out,’” Nwakanma says. “So, I imagined myself with a mustache and took it from there.”

“I was constantly going away, coming back to confront him,” Zhao says of her performance as Alexa May, who discovers something awful about Donnie on their wedding night. “Just trying to be really active, like the drama queen that she is.”

Avalon Marlin ’22 and Niall Bardorf ’24 take a more subdued and less humorous approach, with explosive outbursts at key points. “We saw a little more anger between them,” Marlin explains. “But then toward the end we were maybe starting to reconnect a little bit.”

De Oliveira Foster asks the group what they learned about the scene, based on this interpretation. “I really like the relationship between you two onstage,” offers Stellan Aalto ’23. “You [Avalon] were more tied down to reality, whereas Niall’s just like unraveling, spiraling down.”

After checking in with Zhao, the ensemble’s stage manager, de Oliveira Foster confirms there’s time for two solo readings: Nwakanma has prepared a monologue from Fairview, by Jackie Sibblies Drury, while Sinna Oumer ’23 will read from work by Sahar Ullah, a playwright and new instructor in Exeter’s English Department.

Nwakanma sits in a bright red chair placed center stage, but quickly hops up and begins moving around as she reads. Her monologue, which comes near the end of Drury’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, features a stunning moment where her character, Keisha, breaks the fourth wall and asks white audience members to switch places with the Black cast members. “Could I say, ‘Hi, white people’?” Nwakanma asks. “‘Let me and my family go out to where you always sit.’ Could I say that?” Amid slightly nervous laughter, a few students join her onstage.

“This was really emotional for me … when I was first reading it, and I wanted to have that come across,” Nwakanma tells the group after she finishes. She thanks her classmates for coming up onstage with her.

“When this play has been performed and people do this monologue, often the white people stay in the audience,” de Oliveira Foster says. “It’s a testament to the earnestness and the quality of your asking that people joined you — and to the trust that we’re building in the group.” E

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Above: Theater Instructor Blythe de Oliveira Foster ’97 chats with members of the New Play Reading Ensemble. Below: Two students practice lines.

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Heard in Assembly S O U N D B I T E S F R O M T H I S F A L L’ S S P E A K E R S E R I E S Compiled by Maxine Weed

Mary Tuomanen ’99, writer and theater artist “[Generation Z] has as a sense of care around identity, a willingness to defend identity, to defend one another, to rise to accountability needed for that learning. … [Gen Zers] put skin in the game, create movements, create new language, acknowledge the trauma, respect tears, create space for sorrow and rest, use sarcasm as a tool and not a philosophy … [use] art as it should be used — that is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable, amen. That’s you guys.”

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NATHANIEL KAHN

William Whitaker, curator, University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, Architectural Archives “The [Academy] Library captures time in the way that it shapes natural light and brings into focus the world around and our place in it. It’s particularly sensitive to the changing mood of the day and the seasons. Just thinking about looking out those windows every day that you’re in the building, it’s giving you something there.

And it’s very special for that. It does this through the way materials are chosen and how they are detailed into walls, arches, windows and volumes. It is a complicated and exquisitely made thing. Nothing is superfluous. Everything is considered. It grounds us here in this place.”

Chris Do, director, designer, founder of The Futur “Even in a group of outcasts, I was an outcast in the outcasts.

I loved everything about skate culture and that is how I got into design. Most kids will pick a skateboard and a team because of the rider, their style, or maybe the way the shape of the board fits under their feet. For me, it was like, ‘Those graphics are cool’ and ‘That logo is really interesting.’ I’m reminded of something a friend of mine says, that the thing that makes you weird as a kid will make you great tomorrow.”

James Nestor, author, journalist “Our breath is this extremely powerful tool that allows us to access full functions in our bodies [in a way] that nothing else can. About 30 pounds of air enters in and out of our lungs every day. How we take that air in and how we exhale it determines so much of our mental well-being, our physical health and even our life span.”

CHRISTIAN HARRISON

Kim Coleman Foote, writer, Bennett Fellow “I think for writers, it’s great to have other interests outside of writing. This one story really depressed me when writing it, so I had to go off and do other things. I didn’t just focus on it for four years. Just do something else, and then maybe the inspiration will come to you.” E

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Civil Rights Champion Honored B E A R H A I L E Y AT W O O D ’ 7 7 R E C O G N I Z E D W I T H T H E 2 0 2 1 J O H N A N D E L I Z A B E T H P H I L L I P S A WA R D

By Jennifer Wagner

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tudents rose for a standing ovation this October as Bear Hailey Atwood ’77 accepted

the 2021 John and Elizabeth Phillips Award, conferred annually upon an Exonian whose life contributions exemplify the nobility of character and usefulness to society that the founders sought to promote in establishing the Academy.

For nearly 40 years, Atwood has defended constitutional rights and advocated for social justice through litigation, legislation, education and community organizing. She is currently the vice president of the National Organization for Women and has served at every level of the organization since becoming a member at age 17. In 1998, the National Women’s Hall of Fame inducted Atwood into its Book of Lives & Legacies.

In delivering the award citation, Trustee and GAA President Janney Wilson ’83 said, “There are two kinds of activists: the kind that goes to conferences and gives speeches, and the kind that gets in the street to help people. Bear is both.”

Atwood took to the Assembly Hall podium and, in an emotion-filled moment, first acknowledged her mother, seated alongside sister Lesley Atwood ’75; P’03 in the front row. With a

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wavering voice she said, “She, along with my father, taught me from an early age to believe in equality and justice and particularly to value education.”

Atwood continued to speak with passion and purpose to the gathered students, faculty, staff and trustees about the right to vote, the promise of a truly inclusive America, and how Exeter prepared her for work as an advocate. “It was at Exeter where I first became politically engaged,” she said. “I learned at Exeter that if you want to act on your most deeply held values and beliefs, nothing has to stand in your way.”

Atwood arrived at Exeter in 1976 in the middle of her upper year during the Academy’s transition to coeducation. “Being at Exeter in the early years of girl students,” she said, “certainly helped forge my identity as a radical feminist.” Atwood went on to study political science and Spanish, earning a joint degree from Denison University, and, in 1984, graduated from Columbus School of Law at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. For eight years she worked as a public defender in Keene, New Hampshire, before accepting positions with a policy-level focus.

As New Jersey’s deputy attorney general in the division of civil rights, Atwood helped draft policy to protect battered women, designed anti-bullying initiatives and led community outreach efforts to heighten overall awareness of civil rights. In the late ’90s, while president of NOW New Jersey, she advocated for same-sex marriage. Many called her efforts “crazy,” saying, “Not in our lifetime.”

They were wrong. Atwood was instrumental in adding gender identity to New Jersey’s law against discrimination.

After a move to Mississippi, Atwood took up her advocacy work at the Southern Poverty Law Center as director of the Mississippi Youth Justice Project.

Her tenacity helped reform the juvenile justice system in the state. One of her biggest accomplishments was forcing the closure of the Columbia Training School, a notorious youth detention facility.

Next, as legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, she canvassed, ran phone banks, wrote, and spoke on radio shows and at forums in support of many causes, among them racial justice, women’s rights, criminal justice, voter rights, LGBTQ rights, pay equity and free speech.

Wilson concluded her remarks saying, “Your name, ‘Bear,’ is short for ‘Boo Boo Bear,’ a term of endearment coined by your elder sister and now your legal name. When people ask you, “Is your name bear like teddy?” you say, “No, bear like grizzly.” We are ever grateful that you live up to your namesake and never back down from a tough battle. Bear, the world is a freer, more equal and more just place because of you.”

Atwood shared her sincere gratitude for her Exeter experience, saying, “At Exeter I thrived in an environment where you were expected to push back, ask questions, and hold true to moral and ethical ideals. This award, forged in the crucible of those ideals, honors the values I learned from Exeter, so thank you.”

She also entreated the students saying: “Voting rights, civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, they’re all connected. Ours is an intersectional struggle. … We all need to learn how to watch for signs that democracy is in peril, but also how to show what’s happening to others.” E

“At Exeter I thrived in an environment where you were expected to push back, ask questions, and hold true to moral and ethical ideals.”

To watch the award assembly, visit www.exeter.edu/alumni/ honoring-extraordinary-service.

The John and Elizabeth Phillips Award was inaugurated in 1965 at the behest of the Academy Trustees and the Executive Committee of the General Alumni Association. The award honors Exonians whose lives and contributions to the welfare of community, country and humanity exemplify the nobility of character and usefulness to society that John and Elizabeth Phillips sought to promote in establishing the Academy.

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ON STAGE Theater This fall’s mainstage production of Qui Nguyen’s play, She Kills Monsters, brought the house down during three packed shows at The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance.

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Audrie Gonzales ’22

Andrew Carratu ’25

Amara Nwuneli ’25

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTIAN HARRISON

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ON STAGE

Co-concertmaster Sava Thurber ’22 warms up the ensemble.

Music The Class of 1959 Music Center Addition, “the Bowld,” opened its doors five years ago and launched a new era of musicmaking at the Academy.

On Nov. 16, Exonians filled the space with jazz, global rhythms and orchestral music in celebration.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOY CHI ’23 AND CHRISTIAN HARRISON

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Conductor Rowan Smith and Brian Son ’22

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Brooke Ottaway ’23 in the spotlight.

Dance The Fall Dance Company returned to the Goel Center’s Dance Performance Studio for a soldout performance of “Identity through Stories,” featuring original choreography inspired by the students’ own unique life stories.

Dance Instructor Amberlee Darling offers notes to the students.

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Behind the scenes in the recording booth.

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On The Road Again

By Adam Loyd

A MAXWELL LI EIMER PAGE

Students take in the sights of New York City (top) and Boston (bottom) over the Thanksgiving recess.

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s the Exeter student body

departed campus to spend Thanksgiving break with family and friends, 25 international students, whose travel home was made difficult or impossible due to COVID restrictions, stayed stateside to explore two of America’s most historic cities.

Eleven students traveled to New York City while 14 more set out for Boston in Academy-sponsored programs, each with its own topic of study. The New York group studied the influence of immigration on the culture of the Big Apple, while Alexander Rosen ’24 and 13 of his classmates spent the week in Boston learning about how urbanization of the Bay State’s capital has led to inequities among the city’s communities. “The week gave me a new perspective on Boston and the U.S. as a whole,” Rosen says. “I was surprised to learn about the workings and complexities of Boston’s transportation systems, particularly the public ones, and how they relate to economic and racial disparities.”

The trips were the Academy’s first travel programs to urban areas since the start of the pandemic. Director of Global Initiatives Eimer Page and members of the Exeter administration worked diligently to ensure students and chaperones adhered to COVID safety guidelines during the trips. “There’s so much to be thought about whenever we’re sending students out into more crowded venues, both the safety of our students and also us going into those communities,” Page says. “There was a lot of work done just to figure out the protocols to make these trips happen safely.” E

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Meet the 2021-22 Phillips Dissertation Year Fellows The fellowshp program was created in 2013 to support Ph.D. candidates in the completion stage of their dissertation and provide those who might not otherwise consider careers in a residential secondary school the opportunity to gain hands-on experience.

In alignment with the Academy’s equity and inclusion efforts, the Fellowship Committee sought candidates who are traditionally underrepresented in the graduate school environment and who express an interest in becoming part of an independent secondary school. The fellowship selection process also gave priority consideration to scholars researching topics related to race, identity and culture.

In addition to their dissertation work, the fellows deliver two online seminars per term and make themselves available to engage in discussions with students or groups interested in their fields of study.

“Our fellows will be largely remote this year,” Dean of Faculty Ellen Wolff says. “But we do hope to bring them to campus as scholars in residence for a week or two.” E

Nyesa Enakaya is studying chemistry at

California State University. Her research focuses on the synthesis of small molecules that interact with hemoglobin and the treatment applications for sickle-cell anemia and general hypoxia. She hopes to inspire students of color to pursue careers in science by communicating the real-life applications of chemistry.

Rachel Afua Ansong is completing her

doctorate in English and creative writing at the University of Rhode Island. Her dissertation, “The Text(tiles) of Adinkra Symbols: West African Art, Gender, & Poetic Translations,” explores what it means to be separated from your country and how art becomes a mode of survival, for redefining heritage and self.

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“I hope through this fellowship I can gain experience working with younger students, as all of my teaching experience is with undergraduate students. I also hope to learn from the faculty at Exeter. They have very unique teaching methods that I would love to implement in my own teaching. ... I am so excited to work with the student body!”

“I am looking forward to translating my research into poetic or visual art workshops that allow students to think about ways in which they can teach others about the work that drives them.

Oftentimes, younger students might think that research is complicated and mundane, but I hope to teach them ways to make literary and historical research personal and engaging. I hope that my work serves as an example for underrepresented students in higher education that they can make and take space.”

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EXETER DECONSTRUCTED T H E S C H O O L W E L O V E I N D E TA I L

By Patrick Garrity

Why Big Red? In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes and

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Exeter athletes wearing (at least some shade of ) red.

The first Academy athletic team, a baseball team, took the field in red.

On April 13, 1878, ahead of the first game against Andover, The Exonian reported: “The uniform of the school nine consists of the following: kneebreeches, sweat-shirt, square cut blouse, of white flannel trimmed with cardinal red, cardinal red stockings and a white flannel cap.”

The PEA football team also wore red for its inaugural clash with the Blue that fall, with The Exonian noting, “This bright color and the color of the Andover suits will make a very pretty contrast.” In 1884, the newspaper reported that the same Cambridge outfitter designing Harvard’s crimson varsity football jerseys “will furnish the uniforms for our 11.”

The “Big” part of “Big Red” came much later. Exeter teams were known as “the Red and Gray” through the 1950s. “Big Red” wasn’t popularized until the ’60s, when The Exonian sportswriters began using the term.

As for what color “Big Red” is, uniformity has proved challenging over the years. In 1964, a committee of the head coaches voted to standardize the “E” that varsity athletes would wear, “because 17 different letter designs varied in color from maroon, white, black, gray, and ‘20 shades thereof,’” Physical Education Instructor Nicholas Moutis said.

“The varsity players could all be from different schools, for all you can tell from their letters.”

Today, Exeter athletes play in PMS 201 in the Pantone Matching System, a standardized color-matching system of more than 1,100 hues that is widely used in print and fashion design around the world. The Department of Athletics unveiled new uniforms for several teams this year, each featuring this consistent “Big Red” color intended to best represent those earliest Exeter teams. E

A poster depicting the 1903 E/A games; the 2022 girls varsity basketball game jerseys; and a vintage baseball uniform held by Donald “Mac” McElreavy, Exeter’s athletic equipment manager.

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The Science of Self-Empowerment A C O N V E R S AT I O N W I T H S C I E N T I S T A N D W R I T E R E L I Z A B E T H R I C K E R ’0 3

By Daneet Steffens ’82

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re you ready to

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In a field flush with self-help books, what makes yours stand out?

It’s funny, I didn’t intend to write a self-help book. I was originally writing a popularscience book, but I wondered if I could stitch together the strengths of science and self-help and avoid some of the pitfalls that each of the disciplines run into. I’m hoping that it will start a new trend of what I’m calling “scientific selfhelp.” You take the premise of self-help, which is intended to provide the reader with tools that will help them improve their life, and you combine that with deep rigor and sound scientific research. Then I go a step further, introducing self-experimentation — in the research literature we call it single-case experimental design. That teaches you how to run experiments on yourself in the same way as pharmaceutical companies or large biomedical research institutions run randomized control trials. At its core, neurohacking is saying, “I’m not going to leave my brain up to my doctor or my teacher or my boss. My brain is my own responsibility and I’m going to do the best that I can to optimize it.”

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seriously upgrade your brain? In an electrifying debut book, Elizabeth Ricker ’03 presents a host of hands-on experiments — from physical exercises like “comedy cardio” to guzzling a drink direct from the Pacific Islands, and, yes, even a (gentle) electrical brain stimulating — that just may boost your mental capacity.

More self-enhancement than self-help, Smarter Tomorrow: How 15 Minutes of Neurohacking a Day Can Help You Work Better, Think Faster, and Get More Done draws deeply from Ricker’s professional experience in technology and neuroscience: Ricker received her undergraduate degree in brain and cognitive sciences from MIT and a master’s in mind, brain and education from Harvard.

She also worked in tech startups spun out of Stanford, Harvard and MIT research labs before deciding to make more time for her writing. Currently, she runs NeuroEducate, a citizen-focused neuroscience organization, and Ricker Labs, through which she is a science adviser, speaker and consultant.

Curiosity is key in Ricker’s book — you have to be not just a willing participant, but a focused one. The underlying premise is that neurohacking is about empowering yourself by developing and improving your individual abilities. In other words, the book is what you make of it.

And neurohacking is a combination of neuroscience and biohacking?

Yes. You’re using specific components of neuroscience.

Some of the principles that are most relevant would be our relatively recent knowledge of neuroplasticity and all of the incredible things that even the adult brain is able to do to adapt to its environment. You’re taking

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this science and combining that with life hacks — quick shortcuts — where you gain better access to your mental performance. That’s really what I’m going for. I take the distilled crystalized nuggets of neuroscience research that I’ve pulled out from years of poring through this material, and present the reader with useful, accurate science that they can apply to their daily lives.

What’s a good example of that?

The concept of personalization is key: asking a question like, “If I’m going into a meeting and I want to be well prepared, would I be better off drinking coffee or meditating for five minutes?” That seems like a simple question but the answer is potentially different for every person.

Neurohacking gives you the tools to answer such questions in a really rigorous way so that you go into any given situation and have exactly the tool kit that best suits your unique brain.

You wrote this book while working full time and starting two businesses. What were the biggest challenges?

Did you always want to be a writer? Were there teachers at Exeter who shaped your trajectory?

I fell in love with writing when I was 10, writing a poem about a lake and unicorns. The Exeter teachers who really stuck out were history teachers, Mr. Pruitt and Mrs. Merrill. They emphasized the importance of primary sources and of making a clear, cogent argument that took the other side into consideration. Miss Pettigrew, in English, was phenomenal: We read The Bluest Eye and had these discussions around empathy and about handling the discomfort of reading about a character who you find abhorrent but fascinating. I really came to admire the power of the written word to transport the reader into entirely different mental states. And then, of course, Mr. Chisholm, my AP bio teacher, gets a lot of credit for why I fell in love with neuroscience.

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Yes! One was discovering that you can cram a lot of homework into the 25-minute break before class — the power of adrenaline to focus the mind, that was definitely an interesting early insight. And I developed some neurohacks there — one was working in sprints, which I later discovered is the Pomodoro method, a form of work where you focus intensely on one specific thing for, say, 25 minutes and then you take a five-minute break. I coupled that with exercise in those five minutes, doing jumping jacks, push-ups, sit-ups or by having a dance break with friends. I even ran experiments with a friend to see how effective our study was before versus after these short exercise breaks.

“I’m not going to leave my brain up to my doctor or my teacher or my boss. My brain is my own responsibility and I’m going to do the best that I can to optimize it.”

The practical aspects were the hardest, like figuring out how to fund it. Initially, I tried to work on the book on the side — my day job was working as a manager for tech companies, basically doing science and technology in industry — but I found that I didn’t have enough mental force left for writing at the end of the day. So I left my original career track to start NeuroEducate and Ricker Labs. A big appeal in working for myself was being able to carve out chunks of uninterrupted writing time during the hours of the day when I was freshest. Also, entrepreneurship enabled a more flexible schedule — when inspiration knocked, I could finally answer.

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Do you recognize early versions of neurohacking that you applied at Exeter?

Did neurohacking help write this book?

Absolutely! Writing the book was very challenging, not just because of the pandemic, but also because I became a parent for the first time. One thing that helped was what I call “treadmill typing.” I placed my laptop on a piece of an old bed that I slung across the treadmill, then I walked very slowly as I worked. I found the activity was stimulating, as effective as coffee for me, since I wasn’t drinking as much caffeine as I previously had. Another effective neurohack was discovering the time of day that I was most productive — that turned out to be somewhere after midnight.

Another one was watching stand-up comedy while doing some form of cardio. There are well-documented benefits to laughter, and combining that with exercise gave me a double boost. Mood is linked to creativity, so I knew I had to stay positive, otherwise I probably wouldn’t get the book done. Now that it’s published, my goal is to encourage as many people as possible to get into self-experimentation and neurohacking. E

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

ALUMNI 1946—David Purdy. “Keelboats and Their Ilk,” article. (Nautical Research Journal, Autumn 2021) 1956—Michael Dobbins, with Leon S. Eplan and Randal Roark.

Atlanta’s Olympic Resurgence: How the 1996 Games Revived a Struggling City. (The History Press, 2021) 1958—Winslow Myers, contributor. Walter Tandy Murch: Paintings and Drawings, 19251967. (Rizzoli Electra, 2021) 1959—Jan Schreiber, translation. The Poems of Paul Valéry. (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021) 1967—Ted Folke. “Congo: Mission Impossible? The Evolution of the UN Mission in DRC,” podcast. Viewable on YouTube at youtu.be/ fyXdrRrgZPo. 1968—Tony Seton. True Tens: Seven Women of Beautiful Character. (Self-published, 2021) —Thought So, screenplay. (Selfpublished, 2021) 1971—Douglas S. Brown. Home and other Foreign Lands: Poems and Stories. (Self-published, 2021) 1972—Andrew Rowen.

Columbus and Caonabó: 14931498 Retold. (All Persons Press, 2021) 1974—Julie Scolnik. Paris Blue: A Memoir of First Love. (Koehler Books, 2021) 1975—David McKean, with Bart M.J. Szewczyk. Partners of First Resort: America, Europe, and the Future of the West. (Brookings Institution Press, 2021)

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—Watching Darkness Fall: FDR, His Ambassadors, and the Rise of Adolf Hitler. (St. Martin’s Press, 2021) 1981—Claudia Putnam. The Land of Stone and River. (Moon City Press, 2021) 1988—W. Niel Brandt.

“Surveys of the Cosmic X-ray Background,” article. (Handbook of X-ray and Gamma-ray Astrophysics, 2022) 1983—Doug Mayer with Brian Metzler. Trail Running Illustrated: The Art of Running Free.

(Mountaineers Books, 2021) 1997—Susie Suh. Invisible Love, album. (Collective Records, 2021) 2017—Ellena Hyeji Joo. Into the Unknown: Human Curiosity, Politics and Prejudice in the True Space Age. (Barnes & Noble, 2021) FAC U LT Y Todd Hearon. Do Geese See God, novella. (Neutral Zones Press, 2021) Kent A. McConnell. Review of At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion, edited by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan. (Journal of American Studies, fall 2021) Ralph Sneeden. Surface Fugue: Poems (EastOver Press, 2021) —“Skiff Hill,” “Language,” “The New Bathymetry,” “Poem About Walden Pond Without Any Mention of Thoreau,” poems.

(Cutleaf, October 2021)

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Unrivaled Pride E X E T E R F O O T B A L L’ S 1 9 7 1 T R I U M P H O V E R A N D O V E R In one of the greatest upset victories in the long-running Exeter-Andover sporting rivalry, Big Red rallied from a 17-point, second-period deficit to triumph over Andover and earn the football team its first New England title in 15 years. This is the story of that wild 1971 game as told

by Exeter quarterback and legendary Boston sportscaster Mike Lynch ’72 on the 50th anniversary of that memorable meeting at Phelps Stadium.

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By Mike Lynch ’72 he record shows that the 90th edition of this

rivalry was won by Exeter 30-20 on Saturday, November 13, 1971. I’m here to inform you that this game was unofficially won by Exeter on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, November 9, 10 and 11. I was the quarterback and placekicker on that 1971 New England Prep School championship team. I’ve been asked to pen my recollection of how it happened 50 years ago to the very day.

Sleep was an elusive companion the night before the Andover game. We had just completed a productive week of practice. For three days, coach Alan Estey and his staff walked us through what Andover would do on offense and defense. They were 100% correct. With their preparation and leadership, we felt extremely confident as we

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wrapped up Friday’s walkthrough.

There was a buzz around the Phillips Exeter campus all week, and by Friday night it was palpable. There was a bonfire, a pep rally, and speeches from Coach Estey and our two outstanding captains and leaders, Dave Fullerton ’72 and Drew Mellen ’72. After the bonfire I went in search of a store that sold long underwear. I knew it would be cold during the game and wanted to keep my chest and shoulders warm, especially as the day wore on. I found one up on Portsmouth Avenue. I borrowed Mrs. Estey’s scissors to cut off the sleeves. Check-in was complete at Peabody Hall room 9. My roommate Ernie Pisanelli ’72 (offensive and defensive tackle) and I shut out the lights. The proverbial hay was in the barn.

I can’t recall if we had classes that morning. If we did, our heads were elsewhere. School spirit was at an all-time high as we strolled through campus on the way to get dressed in the locker room in the bowels of the athletic complex. The walk to the stadium across the bridge was brisk. Alums, family, friends and students all wished us well and we proceeded into the stadium for the 1:45 p.m. kickoff.

Rumor had it that the night before the game a few Andover students were stopped at the bridge with four buckets of blue paint hoping to douse the stadium with their school color. But it would not matter. After

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Lombardo ’73 and warm-ups I looked Pete Foote ’72 scooted Coach Estey in the eye through chasms opened and he told me to do

by Pisanelli, Kirby, exactly as we practiced Mellen, Gleason and and we would end Shea. We scored on a two-year drought a quarterback sneak. against Andover.

Andover 20, Exeter 16.

The opening kickoff By now the soccer, field was disastrous. The hockey and cross-counfield was glazed with try crowds were all in frost, causing our return the stadium. To us it man, Roy Ball ’72, to slip looked like 100,000 and fall and dislocate people. It was a wonderhis elbow. Poor Roy was ful feeling. Faculty, in agony as we huddled alumni, students, family up just a few feet away and friends all gave off from him. An ambuenergy that fueled us, lance drove onto the and we weren’t about field and Roy was taken to disappoint them. to Exeter Hospital.

As the shadows grew Away we went on longer the defense offense. We managed to of Pisanelli, Bossy, get deep into Andover Newman, Moutevelis, territory before settling Fullerton, Mellen, for a 31-yard field goal Burns, Trowbridge, and a 3-0 lead.

Curry, Trivett and Wong And then a blue tidal stood taller than the wave hit us. mighty pines that framed our stadium.

Andover scored 20 straight points “Tom Brady never had better Into the fourth quarter we forged, and and led 20-3. I would throw a horrific protection,” says Lynch, shown as a touchdown pass to Dan Fournier ’73 pass behind Jim Curry ’73 that was QB in 1971. Bottom: Pete Rodis ’72, gave us back the lead at 23-20. picked off by Andover’s Barry Cronin Ernie Pisanelli ’72, Jim Burns ’72 By now the field was in complete (my eventual college roommate), who and Lynch, after the game. shade, bordering on darkness. We took it 85 yards for a score. That pick knew we needed another score, and an interception by would have put us in a 28-3 bind save for a clipping call, “Famous Jamous” Jim Curry set it up at our 10-yard line. and thankfully the score was nullified. Still, 20-3 was a Curry and Fournier were as good as it gets for receivtough road to travel … except for this team. Each time ers. They certainly bailed this QB out of many a jam. A I stepped into the huddle, 10 pair of eyes were looking 90-yard drive mixed with runs, a catch-and-run by Curry directly at me as I prepared to call each play. Not once did and a 49-yard completion to Fournier, who lugged it to I see or sense panic or despair. I only saw confidence and the Andover 1-yard line, set up Pete Foote’s touchdown grit. We were good, really good. Think about our defense. run and we had a 30-20 lead. Twenty-seven unanswered Andover scored its 20th point just two minutes into the points, a shutout by our defense when it counted the second quarter. For the remainder of the game our “D” most. Coach Estey and his staff won this game. Their shut out a very potent Andover “O.” We drove before the preparation made it impossible to fail. half and scored to make it 20-10 at the break.

The scene on the field was chaotic. Everyone wanted I’ve always believed a team that scores just before to participate in the celebration. Our win made headlines the half has the edge coming out of the locker room, in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and the Boston and that would be us. Inside our locker room there was Herald. Winter wasn’t far off and classes would resume confidence. Coach Estey told me we weren’t changing on Monday, but for a few hours on a chilly Saturday anything and that the work from Tuesday, Wednesday November afternoon we rode a wave of joy, happiness and Thursday would pay off. I never doubted him and he and UNRIVALED Exeter pride! E was correct.

We marched down the field running the ball. Randy

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Hoop Dreams K AT I E B R U L E N E T S N E W R O L E A S G I R L S VA R S I T Y B A S K E T B A L L C O A C H

By Brian Muldoon

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former college player and current English instructor, Katie Brule hits the court this winter as the new head coach of the girls varsity basketball program.

Brule came to Exeter at the start of the 2020-21 academic year as a teaching intern in the English Department after graduating from Williams College. In addition to her classroom duties, Brule was an assistant field hockey coach and an assistant for the girls basketball program.

“We are thrilled to have Coach Brule lead our girls basketball program,” says Exeter Director of Physical Education and Athletics Jason Baseden.

“She has made an immediate impact in our community during her first year on campus. She is a leader, a terrific role model for our students and an impactful coach.”

“Exeter has allowed me to be more than just a teacher,” Brule says. “I want to be integrated into the students’ lives in a way that shows a lot of care for them, getting to know them as the incredible young people that they are, and I’ve been able to do that on the basketball court and in other ways on campus. The Exeter community is so impressive — both the students and the adults on campus — and I look forward to helping students reach their goals both on and off the court.”

Brule made her mark during her time at Williams, where she was a captain of the women’s basketball team during her senior season, helping lead the Ephs to an NCAA Division III Sweet 16 appearance. Brule started each of the 53 games during her junior and senior seasons, was a three-time New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) All-Academic selection, and was named to the NESCAC All-Sportsmanship team during her junior and senior seasons. E

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E/A Weekend Exeter and Andover athletes squared off this November for the first time in 736 days in the resumption of a historic sporting rivalry, treating raucous student sections and proud alumni to a day worthy of the tradition. Big Red took the spoils, ending a football drought in dominating fashion and sweeping to a quartet of New England cross-country team championships — fittingly on Andover’s home course. Overall, Exeter took eight of 10 varsity meetings from their age-old adversary, including a sweep of two boys water polo matches. — Brian Muldoon

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAMIAN STROHMEYER

FALL SPORTS

BOYS SOCCER RECORD: 8-4-4

Head Coach: A.J. Cosgrove Assistant Coaches: Nolan Lincoln, John Hutchins Captains: Aiden Silvestri ’22, Jonathan Jean Baptiste ’22 MVP: Lane Foushee ’22

FOOTBALL RECORD: 2-6

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Head Coach: Panos Voulgaris Assistant Coaches: Patrick Bond, Tom Evans, Bill Glennon, Dave Hudson, Stephan Lewis, Tim Mitropoulos, Brandon Thomas Captains: Ethan Aguilar ’22, Camden Anderson ’22, Sean Greene ’22 MVP: Caleb Phillips ’22

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GIRLS SOCCER RECORD: 5-9-4

Head Coach: Alexa Caldwell Assistant Coaches: Kerry McBrearty, Austin Washington Captains: Kaylee Bennett ’22, Kate Mautz ’22, Alex Singh ’22 MVP: Bridgette Martin ’23

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GIRLS VOLLEYBALL RECORD: 13-3

Head Coach: Bruce Shang Assistant Coach: Sue Rowe Captains: Kelsey Austin ’22, KG Buckham-White ’22, Liz Handte ’22 MVP: Sofia Morais ’23

BOYS CROSS COUNTRY NEW ENGLAND CHAMPIONS RECORD: 5-0

Head Coach: Brandon Newbould Assistant Coaches: Matt Hartnett, Nick Unger Captains: Alex Kermath ’22, Bradley St. Laurent ’22 MVP: Byron Grevious ’24

GIRLS CROSS COUNTRY NEW ENGLAND CHAMPIONS RECORD: 5-0

Head Coach: Gwyn Coogan Assistant Coaches: Dale Braile, Diana Davis Captains: Kaitlyn Flowers ’22, Lindsay Machado ’22 MVP: Kaitlyn Flowers ’22

FIELD HOCKEY RECORD: 4-10

Head Coach: Samantha Fahey Assistant Coach: Mercy Carbonell Captains: Carolyn Fortin ’22, Molly Longfield ’22, Victoria Quinn ’22 MVP: Victoria Quinn ’22

BOYS WATER POLO RECORD: 9-2

Head Coach: Don Mills Assistant Coach: Meg Blitzshaw Captains: Hayden Giles ’22, Patrick McCann ’23 MVP: Patrick McCann ’23

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY DOROTHY BAKER ’22, BRIAN MULDOON AND DAMIAN STROHMEYER

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A Momentous Decision TRUSTEES USHER IN A NEW ERA WITH COMMITMENT TO NEED-BLIND ADMISSIONS

By Patrick Garrity

YOON S. BYUN

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n the afternoon of October 22, 2021, moments after voting to admit students without consideration of their ability to pay tuition, Exeter’s Trustees rose from their seats to applaud the moment, the generosity of the Exeter community, and the hard work that had made the decision possible.

Their spontaneous celebration was understandable.

Rarely in the Academy’s history have the Trustees been called upon to make such a weighty decision. Just as Edward Harkness’ gift inspired a reimagining of our pedagogy, and the opening of our doors to coeducation transformed the institution, a vote to formally commit to “need-blind” admissions is similarly groundbreaking.

The Trustees’ decision is the first official commitment since the school began charging a fee for tuition in 1809, that cost is no longer a barrier to any qualified student who dreams of attending Phillips Exeter Academy — a decisive step toward becoming the community the founders envisioned.

Days after that momentous vote, Principal Bill Rawson ’71; P’08 and Morgan Sze ’83; P’19, P’22, P’25, president of the Trustees, shared the news in a joint statement to the Academy community: “John and Elizabeth

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most highly — is the commitment to youth from every quarter — the ideal that finances should not be a barrier to students,” says Morgan Dudley ’77, Exeter’s director of institutional advancement. “The opportunity to focus our outreach and engagement efforts on becoming need-blind in admissions is deeply meaningful to every member of the Exeter community.”

Richard (Rick) L. Smith ’66 is one of those alumni for whom need-blind admissions resonates. Smith, who received financial aid to attend the Academy, has been a consistent Exeter donor and volunteer since his graduation, when he sent Exeter Principal Richard Day a letter and a $5 contribution to the school’s Christmas Fund.

“My first contribution to the Christmas Fund is small,” he wrote. “My interest in Exeter, however, is not small.”

Smith vowed in that letter to help Exeter always have “the resources to attract the people it needs to maintain a community marked by excellence.” More than 50 years later, Smith continues to live up to his promise, stepping forward as one of the first Exonians to support new endowment for financial aid to make need-blind possible.

“It’s a very positive message and provides a greater level of encouragement to students and families seek-

COST IS NO LONGER A BARRIER TO ANY QUALIFIED STUDENT WHO DREAMS OF ATTENDING PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY Phillips made a commitment that continues to serve as one of our core values: ‘[The Academy] shall ever be equally open to youth of requisite qualifications from every quarter,’” Rawson and Sze wrote in an email to students, employees, alumni and parents.

“The commitment expressed in our Deed of Gift ensures that all our students, regardless of economic circumstances, are not only able to attend but also know they belong at Exeter. Financial aid makes it possible for students from ‘every quarter’ to join the Academy community and learn, lead and thrive here. Today, we renew our commitment to youth from every quarter.”

The historic decision came after Exeter donors over the past two years committed more than $90 million in new endowment for financial aid. Further support will be needed to sustain the commitment and fundraising for financial aid will continue to be a priority.

“From our conversations with alumni around the world, from Boston to Beijing, from London to LA, we hear consistently that one of the overarching priorities for the Academy — one of the values our alumni hold

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ing financial aid,” says Smith, a former trustee. “It also emphasizes the Academy’s commitment to being a diverse and equitable institution.”

A HISTORY OF SUPPORT

Exeter has a long tradition of remaining accessible to applicants of all means. In 1947, the school launched a $5 million campaign to limit tuition increases and “preserve the essential character” of the Academy, according to then-president of the Trustees Thomas Lamont, and enroll the most deserving and talented students from all over the country — not just those who can afford tuition.

The stories of Director of Scholarships H. Hamilton “Hammy” Bissell ’29 barnstorming around the Midwest in the 1950s in search of qualified students are Exeter legend. More than 800 of “Hammy’s boys” attended PEA through the school’s financial support.

Those efforts have only grown over time. In 1980, the percentage of need-based financial aid students at Exeter was 26%. Today it is 44%. The Academy awards more than $25 million in financial assistance to its students

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each year; the largest distribution of endowment income is designated to financial aid.

In 2006, Exeter temporarily achieved need-blind in practice if not official policy, admitting three successive incoming classes regardless of means. A global financial crisis forced the school to curtail the effort in 2009 while pledging to remain free to those qualified students whose family income was $75,000 or less and to meet 100% of the demonstrated need of every admitted student.

Now, the school has formally committed to a needblind admissions system going forward.

The Exeter community hailed the milestone and the Academy’s commitment to making an Exeter education accessible. “Financial aid at a comprehensive level was critical to my own ability to be one of ‘Hammy’s boys,’” wrote Jim Peterson ’63, “an experience that was life-shaping both for me and my family.”

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“We will be forever grateful for our son’s full scholarship to attend Exeter for a postgrad year,” Laurie Easton Parker P’11 said. “Without the financial aid, that superior education would have been out of reach for our family.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!”

Added Jim Rogers ’63; P’05, a former president of the Trustees: “This is wonderful news and such an important and fitting milestone for PEA.” Rawson and Sze expressed appreciation for the legacy of philanthropy at Exeter that inspired the initiative. “It is humbling to consider the generations of Exonians who have come forward over the years to support the school, often inspired by the gratitude they felt for the assistance they received themselves,” they wrote. “It is equally humbling to contemplate the generosity that will support our school and our commitment to youth from every quarter in years to come.”

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Need-Blind Admissions Explained FIVE QUESTIONS WITH DEAN OF ENROLLMENT BILL LEAHY

By Karen Stewart

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ill Leahy has made a career of getting to know people. An admissions professional for three decades, he arrived at Exeter in 2016 after serving as director of admission at Phillips Academy; dean of admission at The Hotchkiss School; director of finanacial aid at St. Paul’s School; global director of enrollment and director of admissions at Avenues: The World School; and as assistant director of admission at Boston University.

We sat down with Leahy in December, one month after the formal adoption of a need-blind policy and on the cusp of his sixth season working with his colleagues in the Exeter Admissions Office to select the next entering class of Exonians.

You’ve been a champion for need-blind admissions since you arrived at Exeter. How do you feel now that it is a reality?

It feels great to be able to fulfill our charge and honor the founding vision of Elizabeth and John Phillips, who called

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on this school to educate youth from every quarter. Over our school’s history, our definition of youth from every quarter has appropriately evolved and will continue to evolve — that is the power of a timeless mission. Today, with the decision to become need-blind, we are positioned to honor our founders and this school even more by ensuring that family income never becomes a barrier of access to an Exeter education.

Private schools in general have seen declining enrollment. Has the admissions process changed during your time here?

We have seen unprecedented growth in applications to Exeter from around the world in recent years. Each year, we read thousands of applications seeking those students with the most to give and the most to gain by attending Exeter. The admissions committee devotes weeks of careful evaluation and deliberation on every application to Exeter. We work late into the night revisiting files and

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The Admissions team at the table in Bissell House; Dean of Enrollment Bill Leahy; and Senior Associate Director Matti Donkor

discussing, sometimes debating, how to narrow the long list of incredibly talented applicants down to just the small number who will ultimately be offered admission.

You and your team are entering your first season with this new policy in place. From a very pragmatic standpoint, what will change for you this winter?

What being need-blind means is that the narrowing down of the final list of admitted students is based solely on the assessment of the applicant and has nothing to do with family financial resources. So many qualified students apply each year and we have removed another hurdle. One’s ability to afford Exeter is not on the table for discussion.

You’ve worked in secondary school admissions for over 30 years. Does Exeter feel different from other schools?

I’ve learned firsthand what a special community Exeter is — in part because of its transformational teaching pedagogy and remarkable resources, but more because of the students and adults who represent the very best of

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this residential education experience. They are all part of a mission to explore and discover their authentic selves, to collaborate and to consider different perspectives on every topic.

This new need-blind policy has deeper meaning beyond our campus community, doesn’t it?

The commitment to access is a central tenet of Exeter’s identity. When the need-blind announcement was made, I had a chance to travel to New York City for some admission events and on more than one occasion, the audience applauded when we referenced the recent announcement. There are many issues of educational inequity that confront our applicants, and this historic commitment of removing financial barriers to an Exeter education once and for all says so much about our institutional values.

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Historic Giving A CENTURY OF THE EXETER FUND

By Patrick Garrity

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n December of 1922, as the nation made a wobbly recovery from a post-war recession and an influenza pandemic that killed millions worldwide, Exeter Principal Lewis Perry sent a letter to the school’s alumni.

He began by thanking them for their “generous help” in erasing the school’s debt and allowing it to pay off its mortgages. “This is truly a thankful achievement and it tells better than anything else can your splendid spirit for this school,” Perry wrote.

But this was not just a thank you note. The principal had other motives. The letter told of a promise the classes of 1920, ’21 and ’22 had made “to send Exeter, for running expenses, Ten Dollars a year at Christmas Time as a part of his Christmas and to do so as long as he lives. Isn’t that fine?” Perry wrote.

Then he arrived at the heart of the matter. “Perhaps then it is not too much for me to ask the older Alumni to join with these youngest classes in sharing their Christmas with the best School in America and to persuade them each one if they can, to give something every year in this way toward current expenses.”

On Dec. 15, 1922, Lewis Perry’s letter launched what would eventually come to be known as The Exeter Fund.

That first year returned $5,821 from 302 donations, an average of $19.27 per gift. More critically, it established a mechanism for grateful alumni to give back to their alma mater and help offset expenses that otherwise would be covered by tuition.

When Perry retired in 1946, the fund had raised more than a quarter-million dollars — an unprecedented amount for the times and the footing for what The Exeter Fund would become. Principal William Saltonstall built on Perry’s legacy, helping to launch a $5 million fundraising campaign in 1947 to offset a half-million-dollar annual operating deficit. The culture of philanthropy Perry inspired among Exonians was enduring. By 1980, annual giving surpassed $1 million.

Seven decades after Perry made his initial plea, Kendra Stearns O’Donnell, Exeter’s 12th principal, addressed that culture of giving and its impact in a year-ending letter to alumni: “Those of us privileged to be here now know that the generosity of those who have gone before is the foundation on which we build each day’s accomplishments.”

Last year, thousands of alumni, parents and friends of the Academy combined to donate $10.2 million to The Exeter Fund, which introduced eight targeted designations: financial aid; academic excellence; the arts; athletics; global initiatives; health and wellness; equity and inclusion; and immediate priorities. In December, a campaign to support these designations raised more than $1.6 million from 2,017 donors in a single day.

Dr. Perry would be proud. E

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MODERN SCIENCE FROM THE LAB TO T H E TA B L E , H O W EXETER NURTURES T H E I N N O VAT O R S OF THE FUTURE

By Sarah Pruitt ’95

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unlight streams through a wall of windows into a secondfloor classroom in Phelps Science Center, illuminating the trappings of a well-equipped biology lab — including three octagonal lab tables with four stools each, a blond wood Harkness table and a taxidermied bear head resting on a countertop, mouth agape.

It’s barely a week before Thanksgiving break and Lina Huang ’22 and the other students in Integrated Studies 419: Bioethics assemble for one of their last classes of the fall term. They aren’t using the lab tables, where several weeks ago they were manipulating the genes of different bacteria using CRISPR-Cas9, the powerful technology that has sparked ongoing debate over the morality of editing human genomes. Instead, two classmates are delivering a final presentation on medical paternalism and whether doctors are justified in withholding information about the risk of stillbirth from their pregnant patients.

Among those listening in are Religion Instructor Austin Washington and Science Instructor Michele Chapman. The pair are co-teaching this interdisciplinary course investigating gene PHOTOS BY YOON S. BYUN, CHRISTIAN HARRISON, TOM KATES, CHERYL SENTER

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Pictured from left: The Phelps Science Center; Science Instructor Michele Chapman joins students for an experiment; classmates gather around the Harkness table; Lina Huang ’22 basks in the blue light of the Science Center’s 900-gallon aquarium; and Milan Gandhi ‘22 inspects a motor in the Design Lab.

editing, cloning and stem cell research, as well as medical technologies ranging from in vitro fertilization to organ donation and vaccination, from a host of perspectives.

“The students can take the course for either science or religion credit based on their needs or their interests,” Chapman explains. “It’s been really successful.”

Huang, who hadn’t done any lab experiments before coming to Exeter as a prep, finds classes that cross disciplines and combine hands-on lab work with Harkness discussion most thrilling. “People come into science class with a bunch of questions about how our course material applies to things they’ve seen, things they’ve read or experiences they’ve had,” Huang says. “In Biology 520, when we covered the circulatory system, we not only learned how blood travels through the body, but we also explored, in a lab, how blood pressure varies with changes in posture and activity.”

Like an ever-growing number of Exeter students, Huang is taking full advantage of the school’s

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wide-ranging science offerings, including advanced courses in biology — her primary area of interest — as well as physics, chemistry and computer science. Her experience, and that of many other Exonians learning science today, is a direct result of the decision made more than two decades ago to create a new, more open science facility that would fully incorporate the Harkness method into science learning for the first time.

THE HISTORY OF HARKNESS SCIENCE

When Stanford N. Phelps ’52 donated $15 million in 1999 for the construction of a new science building, he imagined expanding the realm of possibility not just for the Academy and its students, but also for the world. “I wanted to make the science building a reality because I believe the nation will benefit from the future contributions of Exeter students who study within its walls,” he said at the dedication ceremony for the Phelps Science Center in October 2001.

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That opening ceremony was the culmination of a process that began with a meeting Exeter’s science faculty had with the Trustees around 1994. “We intentionally brought them into the Thompson Science Building and said, here’s where we’re finding this building to be inadequate,” says Scott Saltman, science instructor and Exeter’s director of studies. “The response that we got from them was — you’re absolutely right.”

Thompson had opened in the fall of 1931, just shy of a year after Edward Harkness made the gift of $5.8 million that would change the school’s pedagogy forever. As a consequence of timing, science learning was largely left out of the Harkness revolution, as there was no accommodation for the now-famous oval tables in the building’s classrooms.

According to Saltman, adding Harkness tables to the new science center was actually one of the last decisions made during its design. By the 1990s, most classrooms in Thompson featured movable chair-desks arranged in

“SCIENCE IS A LOT MORE THAN LEARNING THE FACTS — IT’S SOMETHING THAT’S CONSTANTLY DEVELOPING AND EVOLVING.” a U-shaped configuration, in addition to the lab bench and teacher’s bench. At first, Saltman and his colleagues envisioned using similar setups in the new building, but after experimenting in a mock-up classroom with a special reconfigurable version of a Harkness table, they found they never moved the pieces out of the oval shape. “We were experiencing in real time how taking the teacher out of the center and putting people on more of an equal footing does to the way a group interacts with each other,” Saltman says. “When we moved an established class into that room, they immediately interacted in different ways.”

MAKING SCIENCE MATTER E X E T E R ’S S T U D E N T- R U N S T E M M AGA Z I N E When Emma Chen ’22 arrived at Exeter as a prep from Shanghai, China, she followed her twin interests in science and art to MATTER, Exeter’s student-run science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, publication.

As an illustrator, Chen enjoys drawing cartoon cells and other vivid, colorful images for the magazine’s wide array of articles, which aim to make science relevant and accessible for everyone in the Exeter community.

“Working with MATTER really helped me get to know other people interested in STEM,” says Chen, now the magazine’s co-editor-in-chief along with Lina Huang ’22.

“It’s especially important because a lot of students do research outside of Exeter and I feel like we don’t really get to know about it, because on campus everyone’s just doing schoolwork.”

Since its launch in 2013, MATTER has grown to include eight co-editors and more than 100 writers and other contributors. The magazine’s content is driven entirely by its student writers and editors, and the topics they see as relevant to themselves and their peers.

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“We’re bringing science to the Exeter community in a way that connects with our unique positions as students at this school,” Huang says. In addition to print and online issues, the magazine has a sleek website, an active Instagram presence and a regular column in The Exonian.

With the pandemic’s arrival, science became relevant to everyone’s lives in a new way. As Huang puts it: “Science doesn’t operate in a vacuum.” The magazine’s most recent issue, published last May when students were back on campus together, dedicated an entire section to COVID-19, including stories on vaccines and how to combat the pandemic’s effects on mental health.

Separate sections tackled other of-the-moment topics, such as environmental racism, the Elizabeth Holmes trial, and breakthrough research on the effect of trauma on our genes.

Chen, Huang and their fellow MATTER magazine club members plan to publish two issues this school year, including an installment focused specifically on science at Exeter. “We’re really zooming in on our classmates and teachers, and all the research they’re doing,” Chen says.

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISITIAN HARRISON

Above: Science Instructor and Director of Studies Scott Saltman; Neil Chowdhury ’22 tinkers in the Design Lab.

By conscious and collaborative design, the Phelps Science Center is a building that not only fully incorporates Harkness, but reflects the dynamic, expansive nature of modern science itself. In addition to 22 classroom-labs, each with its own Harkness table and laboratory space, there are four common labs for biology, chemistry and physics, as well as a flexible multi-science lab. The common labs are very visible spaces, with front walls completely made of glass, while angled windows in the classrooms strategically reveal lab work while keeping class discussions a bit more concealed. “It’s modern, beautiful and practical,” says Albert Léger, chair of the Science Department, of the building. “We have the best of both worlds — we can discover together in a more informal, tactile way at the lab bench, and then come back together at the Harkness table and talk about what we saw and our next steps.”

SCIENCE LEARNING AT EXETER TODAY

Like Huang, Neil Chowdhury ’22 was immediately captivated by the specific way he was learning science at Exeter. “Being able to do a lab in chemistry and then go straight to the table and talk about how it worked and everything — that is a cool experience,” he says.

Chowdhury has taken a wide array of science courses, including organic chemistry, modern physics and astronomy. He is also co-head of three science-related clubs: including the Chemistry Club, Science Bowl (a buzzer-based competition) and the Physics Club. The latter group won the 14th U.S. Association for Young Physicists Tournament in 2021, besting 10 rival teams by tackling problems like how a lava lamp works and the physics of terrestrial and lunar impact craters.

Along with many other Exeter students, Chowdhury and his fellow Physics Club members take advantage of the Design Lab, a well-outfitted maker space located in

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the physics wing of the Phelps Science Center. Featuring a 3D printer, laser cutter and other high-tech tools, the lab was the result of student demand for a more informal workshop space to build, create and learn. “People are always in there trying to build their own electric skateboards and scooters,” Chowdhury says.

“It’s a different place than the rest of the building,” Léger says of the Design Lab, which was added more than a decade after the Science Center opened. “There’s room for play in science — it doesn’t have to be tedious.”

For Saltman, the Design Lab is a perfect example of the way the Science Center and the curriculum has been able to grow and change along with technology and science itself. “Things we couldn’t necessarily have envisioned happening in 2001, we can do the configuring to make it happen,” he says. “A lot of that is due to the flexibility of the common lab spaces, where we can move things around to make that work.”

As flexible as the building may be, students studying science at Exeter aren’t confined within the walls of Phelps. Over the years, the curriculum has grown to include an array of field courses, including ornithology, earth science, ecology and animal behavior. It’s not uncommon, Léger says, to see one of the Academy’s familiar Red Dragon vans heading out of Phelps at 7:30 a.m. for a field trip.

In her marine biology class last year, Huang took a trip to a mud flat, where she dug for Nemertea worms and collected organisms on a rainy, cold day in January.

“It felt really great to still be pursuing science even in this extreme weather,” she says. “When we got back, we looked at the organisms under a microscope and categorized them, then went through the process of scientific inquiry to see how they were adapted to the environment of the mud flat.”

Above all, Chowdhury and Huang appreciate the openness and collaborative spirit of learning science at Exeter.

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Huang remembers working with her physics classmates to figure out how to launch a ball into a cup as their final project of the course. “Finals week is usually associated with a lot of stress and tests,” Huang says. “But here we could bounce ideas off of friends and enjoy comparing our approaches to physics.”

Chowdhury describes the third-floor lounge in Phelps, with its high ceilings, comfy chairs and sweeping view of campus, as an ideal place for relaxing, socializing — and doing science. For the Robotics Club, he and other members recently set up a large playing field for their robots there. “I’m working on programming the robot to accomplish all the game objectives,” he says. “I think we’re getting a dedicated lab space soon, but for now the lounge is the only place where that stuff fits.”

TEACHING THE SCIENTISTS OF TOMORROW

Over the past decade, the Science Department has seen a steady increase in the number of students enrolled in its courses, as well as an increasing number of those choosing to take advanced science courses and electives.

In 2021, the annual enrollment in science classes totaled 3,045, including 427 enrollments in 500-level classes or higher. “We’ve adjusted our curriculum in ways that support the students better,” Saltman says.

Faculty are also meeting student demand for opportunities to engage in college-level research. “Our students have done research at their old school, or over the summer, and they want to continue,” Léger says.

After taking an earlier genetics course at Exeter, Leena Hamad ’17, for example, applied and was selected for Biology 670, a research course that delves into the genetics of Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly. Initiated in 2012 as part of “StanEx,” a collaboration between Dr. Seung Kim ’81, professor of developmental biology and of medicine at Stanford, and Science Instructors Townley Chisholm and Anne Rankin, the course teaches Exeter students how to genetically modify fruit flies and breed their own new fruit fly lines.

“It is kind of amazing to me that we were able to get our hands on facilities for microscopy and all these technologies,” Hamad says. “We were 16- and 17-yearolds just dabbling with research, and most of us hadn’t really used any of the tools before.” She recalls the fruit fly course as a lot of independent work, independent thinking and troubleshooting — all skills that have proved invaluable in her college and professional experience.

“In my later lab work, it was routine practice to isolate DNA from things, and it all started at Exeter.”

Hamad says she has tried to explain the experience of learning science via the Harkness method to others who haven’t shared it. “They’re confused, because it seems like science is something that’s instructed to you,” she says. “But science is a lot more than learning the facts — it’s something that’s constantly developing and evolving, and you have to learn how to ask questions about the things you’re being taught and delve deeper. In a real-life lab setting, that’s what it’s all about.”

She credits her Exeter experience with showing her the value of a multifaceted approach to learning, including seeing the deeper connections between different subjects and disciplines. While at Harvard, Hamad concentrated in molecular and cellular biology, but minored in political science and earned a certificate in Arabic. Now pursuing her M.Phil. degree in health, medicine and society at Cambridge University, she’s diving deeper into subjects such as philosophy, ethics, and the history of science and medicine, and plans to enroll in a combined M.D./Ph.D. program to become a physician-scientist.

LOOKING AHEAD

The future of science at Exeter, Léger says, is about continuing to break down barriers and weave together different disciplines. “Can somebody learn about an organ in biology, write a code for its function in computer science, build it in the Design Lab and then test it in physics?” he asks. “Modern science is more and more interdisciplinary.”

That’s certainly true for this fall’s Bioethics class and Huang’s experience integrating ideas from theology, history, philosophy and law with modern medicine and biological research. Huang welcomes such academic opportunities to make connections, especially during the unprecedented challenges of the past two years.

“The pandemic emphasized how science touches so many parts of our daily lives,” she says. “It’s so important to gain a foundation in these scientific principles so that when we approach topics like vaccines, or masking, we do so with an informed understanding of how it all works.”

When it comes to educating the scientists of tomorrow, Léger is prepared to dream big. “We’re always thinking, how can we meet the students where they are?” he says. “In the science building, we can do just about anything we put our minds to.” E

Pictured right from top: Chair of the Science Department Albert Léger works with students at the table; the 28-foot humpback whale skeleton hangs in the Phelps Science Center rear atrium; and Leena Hamad ’17 holds her Harvard senior thesis “Computation Profiling of Two Superoxide Dismutase Families in the Human Gut Microbiome.”

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INTEGRATED STUDIES 1 0 E XO N I A N S C I E N T I ST S W H O B R E A K B A R R I E R S Thousands of Exonians have made meaningful contributions in scientific fields ranging from microbiology to physics and computer science. Here are 10 whose work integrates knowledge and methods from different disciplines in ways that reflect the dynamic nature of learning science at Exeter today.

TOM KATES

Elkan R. Blout ’35 While developing the film chemistry for instant photography at Polaroid Corporation (and authoring or co-authoring more than 50 patent applications), Blout conducted biophysics research at Harvard on peptides and polypeptides, the building blocks for proteins in the body.

Emery Brown ’74 A leading physician-scientist in anesthesiology, Brown is one of only 25 people — and the first African American, the first statistician and the first anesthesiologist — elected to all three branches of the National Academies: Medicine, Sciences and Engineering.

John K. Hall ’58 After spending more than three decades mapping bodies of water in the Middle East, marine geophysicist Hall turned to exploring the even more uncharted waters of the Alpha Ridge in the Arctic Ocean using a specially designed research hovercraft.

Sarah Spence ’80 As a physician and clinical researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital, Spence works to better understand the connection between the brain and behavior in order to diagnose and support children with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD.

Robert Nussbaum ’67 A clinician and leader in the fields of human genetics and neuroscience, Nussbaum has focused his research on tracing the genetic roots of hereditary diseases such as Parkinson’s disease.

Julie Livingston ’84 Livingston is a medical historian whose work intersects the fields of history, anthropology and public health. Her exploration of health care in Botswana through both archival research and ethnography earned her a 2013 MacArthur “Genius” grant.

Michael Fossel ’69 With degrees in psychology, neurobiology and medicine, Fossel has devoted his career to studying how humans age.

His biotech company, Telocyte, focuses on the potential of telomerase therapy to treat age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

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clinical trials of the Moderna vaccine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Aomawa Shields ’93 As an astronomer and astrobiologist, Shields uses computer modeling and other data to search for exoplanets — planets orbiting stars outside our solar system — with atmospheres that might potentially be habitable to life. She spent more than a decade acting in Hollywood before returning to academia, and is still active in science communication and outreach.

Sarah Milkovich ’96 As a planetary geologist and science systems engineer working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, Milkovich studies the layers of ice and dust on Mars’ surface in an attempt to trace the planet’s geological history.

Are you an Exonian

Alison Buttenheim ’87 A social scientist and public health researcher who studies the role of behavior in infectious disease prevention, Buttenheim helped determine recommendations for equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, and was part of the team overseeing

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scientist with a career that defies a singular definition? Do you know one? We want to hear from you. Email us at: bulletin@exeter.edu.

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Catching Fire IN THE HOT ZONE WITH WILDLAND FIREFIGHTER K AT E T I R R E L L ’ 1 1

By Jennifer Wagner

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ynamic. That’s the first word Kate Tirrell ’11 uses to describe the experience of fighting a wildland fire. “Things are always changing,” she says. “What we do, how we do it. It’s a fast-paced environment.” As a member of the Helena Hotshots, an elite, highly trained firefighting crew based in Montana, Tirrell meets the inherent dynamism and danger of her job with a cool head and lots and lots of prep work.

Deployed to remote areas for extended periods of time with minimal logistical support, her routine starts with the basics, getting dressed. What Tirrell wears can be a matter of life and death. The standard-issue green pants and yellow shirt she dons are fashioned from fire-resistant Nomex fabric. “It does a pretty good job of blocking heat,” she says. “But it’ll still burn if you walk through fire.”

Leather boots reinforced with fire-rated soles protect her feet, and then there’s the backpack she carries. “I have to be a self-sustaining resource for 48 hours,” she says.

At the minimum, Tirrell packs six liters of water, food for two days and a fire shelter. “There have been numerous circumstances where people have been saved with a fire shelter, so it is a good resource if you’re caught in that situation.” She also carries a headlamp, some basic firstaid supplies, and various other tools depending upon the nature of the fire. In total, it’s 45 to 50 pounds of gear.

Hotshot crews were first established in Southern California in the late 1940s and earned their name “Hotshot” because they work on the hottest, most challenging part of the wildfires. In the mid-1990s, an Interagency Hotshot Crew Operations Guide was developed to standardize the training, qualifications and responsibilities of wildland hotshot crews. As of 2021, there were 115 such crews across the nation.

Tirrell is winding up her third season as a firefighter, and this sesason was among the most grueling as Montana experienced its most active fire season in nearly a decade. “The snowpack came really early last winter and it melted off quicker than usual,” Tirrell explains.

“Then, because the forest hadn’t burned for a number of years, it was just extra dry with a lot of extra fuel. That made for a pretty booming fire season for the state.”

A national coordinating center decides where Tirrell and her crew go week to week. This year, she bounced around the West, starting in Arizona. “The Southwest typically burns first,” she says. From there, she spent time in Oregon, and in August she was sent predominantly to the Northern Rockies, including Montana, North Dakota, northern Idaho, Yellowstone National Park and a small portion of South Dakota.

Her final fire of the 2021 season was the Haystack fire, sparked by lightning, 11 miles northeast of Butte, Montana. Significant mountain pine beetle mortality in lodgepole pine from a 20-year epidemic created large pockets of dead and downed trees in the upper elevations,

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according to the official fire report. The region’s midelevation, the report continues, was populated with a mix of Douglas fir and conifer with a brush understory, and lower elevations included heavily grazed grass and sage, which transitioned into grass fuels in the valley. The fire wasn’t far from Tirrell’s own home.

Before Tirrell even got her boots on the ground though, a support crew in operations studied the fire and determined the best course of action. “There’s a huge spectrum of what we see when we show up,” she says. “I’ve been to a grass fire in Nevada where the fire was just smoldering, there was no flame. We were just there to contain it and make sure that it didn’t flare up. I’ve also been to a fire in Arizona that burned through the desert, up into the timber, and was producing a massive column. You have 40-, 50-foot flame lengths because it’s burning in timber.”

Once Tirrell’s crew is called to a fire, the first concern is how to reach the blaze. There are lots of forest service roads with access to most fires, and the crew goes as far as they can in trucks or ATVs to both conserve energy and hasten arrival. Then they hike. “Every fire that I have been to, I have hiked in,” Tirrell says. “It’s not uncommon to get a helicopter ride; that’s just dependent on the terrain and how long it would take to hike it.”

When the fire is just burning a couple of feet in the understory, Tirrell’s team “goes direct” by putting in a fire line. Using hand tools to scrape, cut and dig away vegetation to reach mineral soil, they make a 20- to 30-foot-wide break in fuel to stop or redirect the blaze. “That can be fun because you’re right there with the fire, you’re seeing how it’s burning, you’re engaging with your environment and it’s not super scary because you always have a place to escape to if something does change.”

This season, there was a lot of extreme fire behavior and Tirrell and her crew used more indirect tactics.

“Oftentimes that means that we’re doing a backburn,” Tirrell says. “The fire we create will burn into the wildfire and stop the wildfire. We use fire to fight fire essentially.”

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Tirrell must maintain a high level of physical fitness to effectively perform her duties. Her aerobic fitness is correlated directly with the time it would potentially take her to reach a safety zone. Physical fitness standards for hotshot crew members are set by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group, which requires, at a minimum, a 3-mile hike carrying a 60-pound pack in under 90 minutes; a one-and-a-half-mile run in 10:30 or less; 25 push-ups in 60 seconds; 45 sit-ups in 60 seconds; and 2 pull-ups.

On top of that, there are rules and training guidelines that allow firefighters to assume various roles on the fire. For example, a heavy equipment boss is someone who can be a leader for, say, a bulldozer. Because the bulldozer operator isn’t necessarily a firefighter, you need a firefighter to tell the bulldozer where to go in the fire environment. Tirrell hasn’t gone for her heavy equipment boss training yet, but that’s something she hopes to start next year.

She began her training with four classes, called Firefighter Type 2, or basic red-card classes, on topics such as chain of command.

This training is a prerequisite for any person working on a fire. From there, she advanced to firefighter Type 1 status, or a squad boss role, which means she can lead small groups of people. Tirrell is also an intermediate sawyer, allowing her to operate a chain saw during a wildfire incident.

Gaining the sawyer qualification is no small feat — the chain saw is a 30-pound piece of equipment. “It is heavy and it is especially challenging with female body structure and physiology,” Tirrell says. “We don’t have a lot of women in the primary role of sawyer because you have to carry your pack and you have to carry your chain saw and you have to carry your chain saw equipment. It ends up being somewhere around 80 pounds that you’re hiking around the wilderness.”

This year there were four women on Tirrell’s crew, a heartening statistic in the traditionally male-dominated field. “The trend is that more women are trying this job,” she says. “But on hotshot crews it’s something that’s more uncommon because the hotshot crew is the go-to for the most complex assignments and the more difficult areas of the fire, so the physical requirements are a lot more demanding.”

Still, Tirrell thinks it is extremely important to have all genders represented. “In jobs that traditionally only men have worked, they’re missing out on so many other aspects of the human experience. I think women play an important role in balancing the whole mentality.” While she doesn’t feel she’s been discriminated against, she acknowledges the impact of unconscious bias. “We kind of hold these biases in our minds and in our experiences that we might not be aware of, and sometimes I feel the effects of that,” she says. “When that happens, I just find that I must advocate for myself, and by expressing my needs in the workplace, the people that I work for do their best to accommodate that. Through being vocal and through advocating for myself, I feel like there is equal opportunity.”

Tirrell doesn’t take her opportunity or her work for granted. “I spent a lot of time really uncertain of what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t take the straight path, I kind of wandered around a little bit,” she says. “Coming of age

“THE WORK THAT I DO IS REALLY REWARDING BECAUSE IT’S IN SERVICE TO NOT JUST OTHER PEOPLE, BUT TO THE LANDSCAPE OF THE WEST.”

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is not easy. For anyone else trying to figure it out, have patience with yourself and just trust that what’s meant for you will be.”

Growing up in Madbury, New Hampshire, wildfire was not even on Tirrell’s radar. “As a young kid, I spent most of my time in the woods in my backyard and I think it’s always been important to me,” she says. “I just maybe didn’t always know that.” It was during her time in California at Humboldt State University, where she studied environmental science, that she first became interested in forestry. “Going to Humboldt State and starting to work in the natural resource field was a really big chapter for me because it brought me back to the natural world,” she says. “I didn’t necessarily have that desire when I was in high school — that wasn’t the path that I was going down. I wanted to go into political science, which is just funny to think about now.”

As a day student at Exeter, Tirrell was decidedly more of a water person. “I actually have never had a great relationship with fire,” she says. “I wouldn’t say I was afraid of fire, but I wasn’t really sure how it would go being at close proximity to fire. I was a swimmer, rower, skier.”

Her senior year, the crew team boasted an undefeated 12-0 season. Tirrell sat in the stroke (8th) seat of the girls Varisty Eight that won the New England Interscholastic Rowing Association regatta by 8 seconds. Over just 1,500 meters, the margin of victory is stunning. Tirrell’s crew went on to the US Rowing Youth Nationals where they finished fourth in the nation. “Kate always stood out to

The winning Exeter crew team in 2011; Tirrell with coach and instructor Sally Morris.

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me as a person who knew her own mind,” recalls coach and science instructor Sally Morris. “Naturally fit and strong, she worked hard to train her body to be as strong as she could be specifically for rowing. She did what she needed to do to keep herself healthy and to make her boats go fast. … She accepted responsibility for her actions without fanfare. Kate also was a good friend, teammate, and member of our community. She had maturity and grace beyond her years.”

Crew was an experience with a lasting impact on Tirrell’s adult life. “Before working in fire, I always said that rowing at Exeter and training for that team was the hardest I’d ever worked,” she says. “I learned a lot of lessons in terms of how to challenge myself, set goals and achieve them. That experience rowing at Exeter still resonates with me. … I think having the lessons of non sibi and trusting your community and your peer group — those are important support tools moving through life. Those are things that I’ll always hold on to that have gotten me through some interesting chapters.”

It was a volunteer position collecting data with an ecologist at Redwood National Park during college that finally opened her eyes to fire. “It grabbed me,” she says.

“Originally, I was not interested in fighting fire, I was more interested in lighting fires. I could see how important it was for the landscape and I was fascinated with the Indigenous history of controlled burns in that area and throughout the West.” She quickly learned that working in controlled burning required the same set of qualifications as fighting fire. After graduating from Humboldt State, she took a job with the Utah Department of Natural Resources, where she spent her first two seasons fighting fire.

During the winter, the fire off-season, Tirrell usually heads south, helping manage prescribed burns with The Nature Conservancy. This winter, she has decided to take six months off and recuperate. “The majority of seasonal firefighters don’t work the other half a year,” she says.

“Working year-round in fire has been super demanding.”

For the next four or five years, she has plans to pursue her burn boss qualification, which would allow her to write burn plans, implement them and organize resources. “I’d really just like to work in one area and become familiar with one landscape and be a part of the management of an area through fire,” she says.

Behind every choice Tirrell makes moving forward is an ethos of non sibi. “My dad was a pilot in the Air Force for a long time, so he has lived a career in service, and I admire that a lot about him,” she says. “I think being in the fire service is largely due to my dad. … I feel like the work that I do is really rewarding because it’s in service to not just other people, but to the landscape of the West, which is really important to me. I’m very grateful that I have found a profession that makes me as happy as it does and is as rewarding as it is.” E

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CONNECTIONS

News and notes from the alumni community

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MEGHAN RIORDAN JARVIS ’92

Finding Meaning in Grief

By Debbie Kane

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rauma therapist Meghan Riordan Jarvis ’92 has counseled others through some

of life’s toughest challenges. When her parents both died within two years of each other, she was trained in how to address the overwhelming loss she felt. But personally, she was in uncharted territory. “The brain holds traumatic memories that it has to make sense of in loss,” Jarvis says. “For months after her death, I couldn’t even say the phrase ‘My mom died.’”

She found solace in writing down the words that often woke her in the middle of the night, posting her thoughts on social media.

“I had been experiencing all of this sorrow,” Jarvis says. “Writing helped me understand my feelings.” Trained in narrative therapy, Jarvis knew the writing process could help others who were grieving, last year (during a pandemic-inspired road trip across the U.S. with her husband and three children) Jarvis launched Grief Mates, a free, virtual, four-week writing workshop that uses therapeutic writing prompts to explore grief. “Grief Mates is a marriage of things I’ve found helpful about expressing emotions and knowing the tasks and actions you need to do when you grieve,” Jarvis says.

“Grieving is a way energy moves through your body. The writing prompts encourage you to get into that energy and move it along.”

Jarvis addressed loss in her first prep writing assignment at Exeter. Her paper about her grandfather’s funeral and her family’s Irish heritage was praised by faculty as an exemplary piece of writing. “I wasn’t trying to be clever,” Jarvis says. “I had just come [to school] from burying my grandfather.” Interested in working with children, she received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in child study and developmental education from Tufts University. A positive experience with therapy inspired her to switch careers and pursue a master’s degree in social work from Catholic University. She worked in diverse settings, from emergency rooms and homeless shelters to schools and clinics, before opening her Washington, D.C.-based practice in 2004.

Jarvis’ grief work has reconnected her to Exeter. Last year, she started a podcast called “Grief Is My Side Hustle,” interviewing experts in palliative care and loss as well as ordinary people discussing their personal experiences with grief. Since she posted a call for guests on an Exeter alumni listserv, a number of Exonians have joined Jarvis on her podcast, including friend Lindsey Mead Russell ’92 and tech CEO Helkin Berg ’99, who opened up about the isolation of being a female leader in the tech industry. Another alumna, Carolyn Murnick ’96, is editing Jarvis’ memoir, Chasing Dark Skies, due for release in 2023.

Now, as the country copes with two years of pandemic-related losses, Jarvis is trying to address a burgeoning crisis and speaking to companies and organizations about becoming grief educated. “As the world returns to normal after the pandemic,” she says, “that’s when emotions come up. If you haven’t processed your own grief, it affects others around you.”

Her most important advice: “Grief is inevitable and natural. It’s important that you educate yourself about it, for yourself and others. Listen to podcasts, read books, have a conversation with a therapist. Let’s talk about what grieving is, so we can all get better at it.” E

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OISHI BANERJEE ’14

Artificial Intelligencer

By Sarah Zobel

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f there’s ever a Latin-speaking robot, there’s a good chance Oishi Banerjee will be the brains behind it. Banerjee, a “deep learning engineer” who helps design household robots with 3D vision at Matician, earned a Classical Diploma at Exeter and first came to appreciate computer science in a required introductory course with Instructor Brian Sea. That robot will likely sing, too: Banerjee studied opera at the Academy and won the 2013 Vocal Competition performing “Una donna a quindici anni” from Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. “One of the highlights of my Exeter career was a meditation I presented at Phillips Church about how Exeter allowed me to pursue different academic passions,” she says.

At Stanford, Banerjee majored in Greek and Latin literature — a minor in computer science introduced her to the world of artificial intelligence and natural language processing — and earned a master’s in computer science.

Looking to do more applied research, Banerjee found a position with a Stanford lab using AI to answer medical questions. Her humanities background was appreciated by research colleagues, who invited her to co-produce “The AI Health Podcast,” a podcast exploring how AI transforms health care and biotech. “I’m always doing 20 different things at the same time, so opportunities just pop up,” she says.

We caught up with Banerjee at her home in the Bay Area to hear about what’s next.

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What’s on the horizon for AI in medicine?

AI has the potential to allow scientific discoveries at paces we’ve never before imagined. As an example, AI can design drugs that target antibiotic-resistant pathogens, are less toxic, have fewer side effects, and are more likely to work, so less money will be wasted on expensive trials that often fail. Within the next 20 years, AI has the potential to revolutionize how we do drug development and cut medicine costs. Another example is using the same techniques that power devices such as Alexa to help doctors with electronic health records, freeing them to have more time with their patients.

Are there any downsides to AI?

In order to make a modern AI system, you give it data that already exists and you have it learn patterns. It’s hard to understand what patterns AI has learned, so there’s the risk of learning bad patterns, even picking up on racial or gender bias in the data. In some dermatology studies, a lot of the training data points were taken from lighter-skinned patients, and you can see a decrease in performance when the model is deployed on pictures of darker-skinned patients. Even if reserachers aren’t actively being malicious along the way, it’s so easy for these AI models to learn patterns that are prejudiced somehow.

What are your long-term goals?

At Exeter, I loved being a Latin tutor and I loved being at the Harkness table. … I taught English and computer science at Stanford. I think I’m going to be teaching regardless of my official job title.

I’m passionate about making somewhat opaque academic material easier to understand. I want to spread the knowledge. E

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P R O F I L E

GREG THOMPSON ’71

Dentistry for a Nation

By Juliet Eastland ’86

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rom his home in Tsaile, Arizona, Greg Thompson ’71 gazes over the warm browns and sepias of the Colorado Plateau. Here and there, green trees punctuate the arid beauty. In the distance, the Chuska Mountains graze the sky. “I’m in the most beautiful spot on the Navajo Nation,” he says.

Since 2009, Thompson has worked as sole staff dentist at Tsaile Health Center, one of 11 Navajo Nation clinics managed by Indian Health Service (IHS). Joining IHS was “strictly a financial decision,” he says: His previous 23 years in private practice in Missouri had left him burdened with expenses and constrained by insurance companies’ byzantine patient-classification systems. “I kind of went in blind, hoping things would work out,” he says. He did not foresee the fulfillment the new job would bring. Nor did he fully grasp the challenges facing his patients.

“It’s not uncommon for patients to drive 40 to 50 miles one way to see me,” Thompson says. Spanning portions of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, the Navajo Nation is the country’s largest Native American reservation, its population of 175,000 spread over 27,000 square miles. Chinle High School buses, serving Tsaile and other Navajo communities, travel more than 6,000 miles daily, often over unpaved roads.

Transportation woes are just one legacy of longtime systemic oppression that’s left almost 36% of Navajo Nation households below the federal poverty threshold.

One-third of Thompson’s patients lack running water.

One-quarter lack electricity. Diabetes is “rampant,” he says, and healthy grocery stores are scarce (Thompson’s nearest is a two-hour drive away).

Mindful of these hardships, Thompson strives to

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provide holistic care. “When a 35-year-old male shows up and the last time he was at the physician was for a high school physical, I ask, ‘How long has your blood pressure been high? You don’t know? After we’re done, I’m taking you to the clinic and we’ll make you an appointment.’”

Rural deprivation is not unfamiliar to Thompson, a self-described “Missouri farm boy” whose only indoor plumbing growing up was a kitchen sink. If anything, a bigger shock was landing as a lower at Exeter, after a school superintendent, recognizing Thompson’s intellect, referred him for an interview. “I was exposed to more racial and economic diversity” at Exeter than before, he says. He excelled in science, and after graduating, attended Vanderbilt and the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

A summer job in dental research led him to UMKC School of Dentistry, followed by five years practicing dentistry in the U.S. Air Force until he’d earned enough to open his own office.

Unlike private practice, where insurance coverage determines patient population, Thompson’s Tsaile practice is democratic. “I don’t care who you are. … If you show up with a toothache, we’ll treat you,” he says. “I may have a screaming 2-year-old in one chair and an 85-yearold grandma in the next.”

He has no plans to retire. “Getting people out of pain is a joy,” he says. “My life is very fulfilling because of the renewed sense of purpose I have, and it’s nice finally to have what I consider some financial security in my life. …

I can just practice dentistry; that’s what I really love and why I’m so happy out here. I don’t have to argue about money, about what insurance will or will not cover. Just sit in my chair and let me take care of you. It’s liberating.”

After 41 years of dentistry, he’s just getting started. E

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R O B E R T M . R U B I N ’6 9

A Drive to Open Doors

By Sarah Pruitt ’95

B

MICHAEL AVEDON

ob Rubin ’69 prides himself on learning things from the ground up. After all, he started trading commodities on Wall Street with a degree in American studies from Yale and no background in economics or finance. Then, after wrapping up a successful 25-year career, he bought 500 sprawling acres of land in Bridgehampton, New York, and founded his own golf club, The Bridge. At the time, Rubin was a recent but enthusiastic convert to the sport. “Once you hit a good shot, you’re hooked,” he says.

A new challenge came Rubin’s way in 2014 when he was asked if he’d be interested in launching a golf-based youth development organization in New York City.

The idea: introduce young men of color to the sport and provide mentoring and tutoring programs as a way of opening up more academic and professional opportunities to them in the future.

Rubin was receptive to the idea, as he was well aware of the role education and privilege had played in his own life. After growing up in a working-class family in New Jersey, he attended Exeter on financial aid and graduated a year early, when he was only 15.

“I was from a blue-collar background, and I went to these prep schools, Ivy League schools and Wall Street,” he says. “That access is not readily available to persons of color. Economic mobility in America is narrowing, not getting better.”

The result was the Bridge Golf Foundation and the Bridge Golf Learning Center, which opened in Harlem in 2016. Though Rubin started out in more hands-off roles as the organization’s main financial backer and real estate provider, he now serves as co-executive director along with his wife, Stéphane Samuel.

For three hours after school each weekday, around 50 students in grades nine through 12 come to the center for tutoring and mentoring programs as well as coaching in golf. The center boasts state-of-the-art golf simulators in three hitting bays, and a putt analysis and training system, and is open to the public when students aren’t in session.

The foundation partners with underfunded, under-resourced public schools, and works closely with the school’s teachers and guidance counselors to identify students

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and provide the best support for each individual in the program. “Our partners like us because we’re not just looking for their highest-performing kids,” Rubin says.

“We’re focused on the lost middle, the kids who are not good enough — or bad enough — to get noticed.”

Besides the year-round tutoring and golf at the center, young men enrolled in the program also attend a summer session at The Bridge, where construction was recently completed on a 28-bed dormitory, to spend a few weeks working in operations at the club, caddying and playing golf. In addition to the camaraderie and community, Rubin says it’s “a real networking opportunity” for the older students to interact with the golf club’s members, many of whom have helped fund the program itself and can offer internships to the young men.

The Bridge Golf Foundation supports its students through the college application process and beyond,

“Exeter really taught me how to think.” helping them confront any obstacles on the way to their eventual graduation. As for himself, Rubin credits his three years at the Academy with forming the foundations for his successful academic and professional career. “Exeter really taught me how to think,” Rubin says. He also learned how to “triage” his time, a skill that served him particularly well in his hectic early days on Wall Street. “At Exeter you had more work than you could possibly do,” Rubin remembers. “It was a question of deciding what really mattered and doing that well.”

Longtime English Instructor Rod Marriott, a champion of theater at Exeter, was particularly influential in Rubin’s life. In 1994, Rubin created the B. Rodney Marriott Chair in the Humanities to honor his former teacher, who died in 1990; English Instructor Ralph Sneeden is the current chairholder. Rubin went on to pursue his own cultural passions in retirement, earning two graduate degrees and writing numerous books and articles about the artist Richard Prince, among others.

Rubin attributes at least part of his embrace of social justice philanthropy to another bond made at Exeter: his friendship with Patrick Lydon ’68, founder of the Ballytobin Camphill Community, a small residential farming community for children with special needs in Callan, Ireland. Rubin has supported Ballytobin for decades, and channels Lydon’s non sibi example in his work with the Bridge Golf Foundation. “Patrick is a real role model for me,” Rubin says. “He comes from a similar background, and had the benefits of this education, and he turned around and served his whole life.”

Since taking on co-executive duties at the Bridge Golf Foundation, Rubin’s cultural output may have decreased, but not his impact. “I’m focused on getting our kids in college and through college,” he says. “If I do this long enough, there will be a couple hundred kids whose lives have been fundamentally changed by our intervention, and that’s good.” E

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Above: Inside the Bridge Golf Learning Center.

Facing page: Bob Rubin and mentee Zion Smith, now a sophomore at Syracuse University.

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Memorial Minute

Donald C. Dunbar ’45, ’59, ’62 (Hon.); P’71, P’73, P’76 Chair of the Department of Mathematics, Emeritus; Dean of Students, Emeritus; Director of Summer School, Emeritus; 1981 Independence Foundation Professor; Instructor in Mathematics, Emeritus, 1955-1993.

(1927-2018)

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he epitome of what was traditionally consid-

ered a “school man,” Don Dunbar was literally born into the world of independent schools.

Born in 1927 to Douglas and Mary Dunbar, Don grew up with his older brother, Doug, on the Cheshire Academy campus in Connecticut where his father was a mathematics teacher. At the end of Don’s ninth-grade year, his father took a position on the faculty at Phillips Academy, Andover. During his three years as a student

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at Andover, Don excelled both academically and athletically. A standout baseball player his entire childhood, Don also tried soccer for the first time as an Andover senior and was a natural as a defending halfback.

As an undergraduate at Amherst College, Don continued to play soccer and baseball, earning All-America honors as a soccer halfback in 1950, his senior year. He also received a tryout as a pitcher for a major league club.

Instead of playing minor league baseball, Don went to Harvard to earn his M.A. He taught at Lawrenceville and Westminster schools before accepting an appointment to Exeter’s Mathematics Department in 1955. Having married the love of his life, Dot Loomis, in 1951, Don arrived on campus with his wife and two young sons, David and Scott.

Daughter Cathy was born in 1958. All three Dunbar children graduated from PEA and — like their father and grandfather before them — went on to become teachers. Spring term 2021 marked 100 consecutive years in which a Dunbar had served in the classroom.

In a career that stretched from 1955 to 1993, Don numbers among the most impactful members of the Academy faculty in the 20th century. Embodying the proverbial “triple threat,” he taught math classes; coached varsity soccer, helped in basketball and baseball; served on innumerable faculty committees; and spent 30 years as head of McConnell Hall. In fact, most of those years in McConnell South, he was the sole resident faculty member. In other words, he was always on duty. If we tally up Don’s boyhood at Cheshire, his teenage years at Andover, and his adult career as a boarding school teacher, Don spent over 50 years living in dormitories.

In 1955, it would be fair to describe Exeter’s faculty as primarily older men who were appointed in the 1930s.

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enthusiasm distinguishing him among his colleagues.

As one member of the class of 1963 remembers: “Mr. Dunbar was among a handful of younger faculty who, with their wives and children, brought a warmer, more supportive and accessible presence. I was both coached and taught by Don, and recall him fondly as energetic, a serious but relaxed teacher, extremely good humored, always upbeat, interactive and encouraging.”

From 1966 to 1969 Don gained invaluable administrative experience serving as director of the Summer School.

This experience subsequently led Principal Richard Ward Day to appoint Don in 1970 to one of the most critical positions within his administration: the Academy’s first dean of students. That fall, Don began his tenure as dean at the same moment when our first cohort of 40 girls joined the campus community. At the time, the entire Dean’s Office consisted of Don, a young assistant dean new to the Academy, and two administrative assistants. All matters of communication, out-of-towns, attendance, discipline and grades were managed by this group of four in the Dean of Students’ Office, and they did so without the help of computers.

For the nation at large, the early ’70s were turbulent times, nowhere more prominently than on college and prep school campuses. Thus, the dean of students often found himself addressing disciplinary cases. All major cases, those that might result in expulsion, were presented to the entire faculty for discussion and vote. As in every aspect of his career, Don managed this huge responsibility with competence, consideration and kindness. “In the uneasy climate of mistrust between students and faculty that then hung like a fog around the campus, Dean Dunbar stood out as a beacon of decency and kindness in a world that at times seemed wanting in both,” recalls one student from the class of ’74. This challenging time became a catalyst for change, and Don was instrumental in helping Exeter move from a mostly punitive disciplinary system to one that nurtures growth and education.

No doubt, he would be quite proud of the way in which our current approach to discipline has evolved.

After completing his five-year appointment as dean, Don served for another five years as chair of the Mathematics Department. Having completed his tenure as department chair, Don spent the 1982-83 academic year on an exchange to Melbourne, Australia. This was his second time in Australia, having taught in New South Wales during the 1969-70 school year. Australia joined Amherst and Stanford on Don’s list of beloved

experiences. Unapologetic in his love for Amherst and Stanford, he often encouraged students to apply and actively lobbied on their behalf to help them gain admission. In the era of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, a call or letter from Mr. Dunbar to an admissions office could make all the difference. “Mr. Dunbar was instrumental in getting me into college,” remembers one member of the class of ’66. “When the recruiters came to Exeter in the fall of my senior year, Don encouraged me to interview, telling me at the time that he had said ‘something’ to Rixford Snyder, then the admissions director at Stanford, about me. Along with 23 of my classmates, I was accepted at Stanford, attended and loved it. Without Don’s gentle push I never would have imagined leaving New England and the East Coast. In retrospect, it was the best life decision I could have made.”

In the later stages of his career, Don concentrated on teaching, mentoring young faculty in his department, and coaching JV boys squash with close friend Hammy Bissell. They surely formed the most experienced JV coaching duo ever, and without a doubt they delighted their players with incredible stories of the past. Don also spent time playing tennis and squash with his close faculty friends. Not surprisingly, Don was a smooth and agile racquet player who could easily hold his own in competition with much younger colleagues.

After retiring in 1993, Don and Dot split time between their Brentwood home and their Great East Lake cottage on the border of Maine and New Hampshire. During the many years of his retirement, Don stayed connected to the Academy as a regular attendee at opening assemblies, Math Department parties and class reunions.

In the fall of 2017, Don’s beloved Dot passed away.

Don died a year later. They had been married 66 years.

Husband, father, grandfather, brother, teacher, colleague and friend, Don Dunbar left a rich and enduring legacy. E

“Dean Dunbar stood out as a beacon of decency and kindness in a world that at times seemed wanting in both.”

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The Memorial Minute excerpted here was written by Eric Bergofsky (chair of the Department of Mathematics); David Arnold (John E. and Mary E. Smith Memorial Distinguished Professor in Mathematics and chair of the Department of Mathematics, emeritus); Bill Campbell (instructor in Mathematics, emeritus); Spruill Kilgore (Vira I. Heinz Professor and instructor in Mathematics, emerita); Doug Rogers (Cowles Professor in the Humanities, director of Summer School, chair of the Department of English, emeritus); and Tom Seidenberg (former Bates-Russell Distinguished Professor and instructor in Mathematics). The full remarks were presented at a faculty meeting in October 2021 and are available online at www.exeter.edu/memorialminute.

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The Lord God Bird

By Maeve Kennedy ’24 Louisiana, 1944 They say my father is dead -Generations of men before me lie limp in the swamp-grass.

Not ten of them were good enough to stay.

LAUREN CROW

Men came with rifles and chewing tobacco; Old, half-taken by gout; Young, whooping to their comrades After a day of bang! Shooting Fast, dark bullets that threw our mothers limp on the ground Into their grimy hands: “I bagged a good one, show Liza back home.”

More came, too -In wagons, in trucks that spewed greasy smoke Into our eyes.

They heard our calls, The song for danger: “Goddamn, those birds are loud.”

Trees swung to the forest floor.

Mammoth machines ran through the empty earth they left -Back then we didn’t know their names.

More steam, more smoke; They used our wood to lay the tracks.

We starved like my grandfather, Who chipped through his kidnapper’s Table -- This time, we had no choice.

We did slowly in those days.

(Interlude: I once heard, When I was young, When there were more of us, That the murderer women wore our feathers On their hats.)

One day I’ll find another Like me -A woman with a black crest, Elegant, long wings that swoop patterns in the sky.

We’ll build our nest in a tree corpse -Solid, supple wood.

I’ll clasp her beak, hold her closes On rainy evenings.

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One day they’ll all come to see us.

We’ll soar from sun-soaked trees In Louisiana heat, Unfurl our painted wings And cry into the blue morning, We’re here! We’re here! We’re here!

And they’ll shout again, as they always did, “Lord God! What a bird!”

I want to hear the triumphant trumpet Of a golden beak I Want to feel the embrace Of war-hardened hands Under a baldcypress I Want to know that when we are gone They will remember us. E Maeve Kennedy ’24 was named a Lamont Younger Poet in 2021. The Lamont Younger Poets Prize is bestowed annually on select preps and lowers who show exceptional promise as well as achievement in the early years of developing their craft.

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Exeter for Educators for

JUNE 19-24, 2022

Exeter hosts professional development programs for secondary and middle-school teachers.

Select conference Exeter hosts week-long professional development programs for secondary and middle-school teachers.

Mostprovide conferences programs provide college credit, and many an introduce teachingin inthe the Harkness introduction to teaching Harknesstradition. tradition.

Learn more at www.exeter.edu/conferences2020.

Anja S. Greer Conference on Exeter Diversity Institute

June 19-24, 2022

Mathematics and Technology

For teachers focused on the impact and applications of technology in the classroom.

Acquire new methods and materials for discussing race, class, gender, identity, diversity and inclusion.

Astronomy Education Conference

Exeter Humanities Institute

June 21-26, 2020

Collaborate with peers and learn about changes in the science of astronomy and • ANJA S. GREER CONFERENCE ON astronomy education.

MATHEMATICS AND TECHNOLOGY Environmental Literature Institute BIOLOGY Spend a• week in theINSTITUTE classroom and doing fieldwork with fellow educators in the • ENVIRONMENTAL LITERATURE environmental humanities.

INSTITUTE

Explore the Harkness method of teaching, as taught by Exeter’s experienced instructors.

Offered in two locations:INSTITUTE Exeter, NH, • EXETER DIVERSITY and La Jolla, CA.

• EXETER HUMANITIES INSTITUTE

Writers’ Workshop

• WRITERS’ WORKSHOP

Discover what it means to be a teacher who writes and a writer who teaches.

EXETER HUMANITIES INSTITUTE WEST JULY 6-10, LA JOLLA, CA

Learn more at www.exeter.edu/conferences2022

PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY 20 Main Street Exeter, NH 03833-2460 Parents of Alumni: If this magazine is addressed to an Exonian who no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, please email us (records@exeter.edu) with their new address. Thank you.

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LIFE-CHANGING WEEKS

EXETER SUMMER

JULY 4 – AUGUST 5, 2022 Experience a journey of discovery and personal growth! Learn alongside — and from — other students in collaborative problem-based learning.

Join fellow students from around the world who represent a rich diversity of language, culture, religion and race. Enjoy all that Exeter has to offer this summer. Programs for middle and high school students.

E X E T E R . E D U/ S U M M E R | S U M M E R @ E X E T E R . E D U