The residential connection
As Exeter’s new dean of Academy life, Tyler Caldwell empowers advisers, dorm heads and other adult mentors to better support students on campus.
For Tyler Caldwell, life on the campus of a residential school is second nature. Both of his parents were teachers and administrators at St. Andrew’s School in Delaware, and he and his siblings — including twin sister, Alexa, now a history teacher at Exeter — grew up steeped in the rhythms of the boarding school community.
In 2011, after graduating from Harvard, Caldwell arrived at Exeter and dove into residential life on a new campus. As the head of Soule Hall and then Main Street Dormitory, he collaborated with fellow dorm faculty to create a welcoming, nurturing environment for the students in their charge. For inspiration, he drew on memories of his father hosting breakfast for his advisees on Sunday mornings.
“As a faculty kid, I didn’t love that tradition because they were eating my waffles and sitting in my kitchen,” Caldwell says. “But as an incoming teacher and dorm head, I looked back and saw such value in opening up your door to the students.”
After holding various administrative roles, including ninth grade program coordinator and director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, Caldwell now takes on the newly created position of dean of Academy life. In this role, he works out of the dean of students office and oversees the residential, day and advising programs.
“The majority of students’ time on campus is spent in the dorm, and that’s where many of their strongest connections are made,” Caldwell says. He is a firm advocate for Exeter’s residential model — in which students of different ages live together and students remain in the same dorm throughout their time on campus — because “it deepens the connections that kids have with one another and with faculty.”
In addition to supporting dorm heads and faculty, Caldwell is excited to think about expanding training for student leaders, including proctors, Student Listeners, team captains and others, to make it ongoing and comprehensive. “Older students are in a unique position to have a positive and lasting impact on younger students,” he says. He’s also thinking about how best to support day students, ensuring that they find in their affiliated dorms a welcoming space on campus for study and hanging out with friends.
“In my mind, a big part of the position is ensuring that these communities are thriving, and are the best possible versions of themselves,” Caldwell says.
Advising program
As dean of Academy life, Caldwell oversees and supports advisers, who become the closest and most trusted adults in many students’ lives on campus. “The adviser is really the main contact and support for any kid’s experience and time on campus,” he says. Through their advisers, students are connected to a broader network of support that includes faculty, peer support groups and an entire team of deans, including Caldwell, who are on hand to assist students with academics, residential life, health and wellness, community expectations, well-being and more.
Dorm identity
For many boarding and affiliated day students, the dorm is the center of community and identity from their first moment on campus — and remains so for the entirety of their Exeter experience. “One of the strengths of our residential model is that we have 26 dorms on campus that all form their own communities in different ways,” Caldwell says. “I’m interested to work with dorm heads and advisers to figure out where we feel it’s essential to have consistent practices across all dorms and across all advising, and what can be unique to each particular dorm.”
Building community
Near the beginning of his time at Exeter, Caldwell directed the “Faculty Follies,” a semi-annual assembly featuring faculty members showcasing their various performance talents in a variety show. “It’s just super lighthearted and fun, and those assemblies were such community-building moments for me,” he says. In his new role, Caldwell will be on the lookout for ways to build similar moments of connection among students, in the dorms or otherwise.
Supporting adults who support students
One of Caldwell’s most important goals as dean of Academy life is to engage with and support dorm heads and other faculty — whether by going around to different dorms on duty nights to spend time with both faculty and students, or simply checking in regularly to see how things are going. “The adults in the dorms are doing a ton of amazing work, and it’s very time-consuming and labor-intensive,” he says. “I want to be a listening ear for them.”