Elizabeth Phillips Academy Center - Phillips Exeter Academy

Meet you at Grill

When you're looking for your people, meeting with your club or just needing a snack break, EPAC is your place. It's in the heart of campus and open early and late for boarders and day students alike.

One-stop shop

Check the post office for packages and mail. Grab one of the world’s best chocolate-chip cookies at Grill. Hang with friends in the Phelps Commons or the day student lounge. Maybe you’ll record a radio show downstairs at WPEA, or work two floors up on the student yearbook or file a story for The Exonian (the nation’s longest-running student newspaper). Exeter Student Service Organization (ESSO) office is just down the hall, as are multiple gathering spaces for clubs of all kinds.

The Elizabeth Phillips Academy Center is the crossroads of campus life at Exeter. You’ll find yourself here often, and the vibe is welcoming and warm.

Grill cookies

For more than a century, Grill has been the go-to spot on campus for grabbing a snack between classes, fueling up for late-night study sessions, avoiding dining hall — or all of the above. It has known different homes over those 100+ years, but today is the anchor of EPAC. Students pack Grill during midmorning break times, especially right after assembly, says Scott Jeffco, Grill’s manager.

And the go-to treat in the go-to spot: Grill cookies. Baked in-house and priced at 50 cents apiece, they are the most popular purchase in the cafe. Grill sells around 200 of these oversize chocolate chip treats every school day.

The elusive Elizabeth Phillips

Elizabeth Phillips was born Elizabeth Dennett in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on June 12, 1721. She married Eliphalet Hale, an Exeter physician, in 1736. When she became a widow after 29 years of marriage, she married John Phillips two years later, in 1767.

In 1781, Elizabeth co-signed, with her husband, the Deed of Gift, the great founding document of the Academy. Its language included a release of her significant inheritance for the new Academy to have the best chance to flourish. Otherwise, she remains archivally elusive. We have no portraiture to show us her appearance — not an oil painting, not even a miniature or a silhouette. We have to content ourselves with some legal documents. However, they are more than enough to convince us of her dedication to and sacrifice for the future of Phillips Exeter Academy. In 2018, the school recognized those contributions by renaming its Academy Center after her.

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