As a teenager, Ian Ingram ’95 was fascinated by the Loch Ness monster. His desire to find it is partly what inspired him to pursue a bachelor’s degree in ocean engineering, studying underwater robots at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then earned his master’s degree in ocean acoustics, with the hopes of one day communicating with whales. During grad school, he designed robots for animal studies and began to use them in unconventional ways.

After a stint as an engineering consultant, Ingram enrolled in an M.F.A. program at Carnegie Mellon. There, he became a de facto spokesperson for robotic art as a discipline. He has since exhibited internationally, including at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.

Ingram’s latest installation, Reduced Rabbit Juice, the first in a planned series called Herbivore Semaphore, explores the vigilance of prey animals and the gestures of ears. It’s part of a summer “AI Ecologies” exhibition at the Artphy contemporary arts center in Onstwedde, Netherlands. The show looks at how people, nature and technology coexist and the ways artificial intelligence continues to affect our relationship with nature.

The exhibition is a natural fit for Ingram professionally and personally — he spent part of his childhood in Copenhagen, Denmark. Through his unique viewpoint, which is critically layered with wit and humor, he reveals how much we know about our planet’s nonhuman species, including backyard squirrels and ants, and the Western fence lizard, yet how little our society seems to contemplate the value of that understanding.

“We exist in increasingly narrow portals of interaction with the world,” Ingram says. “We are at risk of losing sight of what’s truly out there, and might not work to protect it because we don’t fully grasp how much more valuable the real things are than the simulacra.”

To bring the installation to life, Ingram developed a machine-learning model that runs on an acoustic feed using microphones embedded in a set of faux rabbit ears. The robotic ears move to scan the environment just as a real rabbit’s ears would. When they “hear” a threat — the sound of a predator, say — they relay the information with a signature Ingram twist: The ears communicate the warning using traditional flag semaphore rather than by mimicking actual rabbit gestures.

 “It’s about the intent to communicate on the part of the robot,” Ingram says, “but the communication is wrapped up in so many layers that it’s a presumed failure.” This failure is repeated in many works, such as Nevermore-A-Matic (2016), a device that uses coded human language to attempt to tell apocalyptic stories to ravens. But much is also gained through Ingram’s work, as his avatars uncover things we never knew before while they cohabitate, commune and communicate with animals in their own places.

During his alumni reunion in May, Ingram attended one of the Academy’s robotics courses and met with the Robotics Club, neither of which existed during his Exeter tenure. He regards his work — both as a conservation technology scientist with the San Diego Zoo and as an artist — more closely tied to what the robotics field is trying to achieve.

“Back in the early- to mid-2000s,” he says, “it still felt as if the legacy we were leaving for robots was coming from the worst parts of human activity. So I frame my work around the idea that I’m helping create a different origin story for future fully sentient robots to look back on. I hope the things I’ve done direct some energy toward other ways robots can be, and other ways robots can look.”

This article was first published in the summer 2025 edition of The Exeter Bulletin.

Each winter and spring, members of the senior class take to the lectern in Phillips Church, in front of peers, instructors and friends to deliver meditations. There is no template or paradigm for a meditation. Most are personal and evolve from thinking about life and one’s place in it. Here is an excerpt of the meditation Alex Field ’25 shared with the community this spring.

NINTH IN LINE, WAITING to read Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale,” I stare at my line, tracing each word but fixating on “beechen.” As each person in my lower English class reads line after line, I wonder if a filler word will make it sound smoother, but before I find one, my turn arrives. I haven’t planned a thing; the “b” sticks in my mouth, like it’s bound my lips shut. I push out sound, just a thread of breath between pursed lips, eyes closed tight, avoiding the gaze of everyone around me. By the third try, “beechen” finally breaks free. I finish the line, hands rising instinctively to my mouth—a shield, muffling whatever’s left of my voice. I go back to counting heads, finding my next line to stumble through.

Being the world’s 1% was supposed to be something great. But why this 1%, the 1% who stutters?

Since I was five, I’ve been part of that 1%. Back then, doctors assured my parents that I’d likely outgrow it—75% of kids did. Years passed, and I cycled through three rounds of speech therapy. In fifth grade, stuttering became a strange part of myself. Back then, nothing I said in class was graded, there were no formal discussions, no girls to impress in an all-boys school. But then came group presentations, the ones that were graded, where people began depending on me to perform well. I prayed we’d present through iMovie, where I could record at least twenty takes if I needed to, each one cutting away my stutters. But the presentations still happened, and my group mates looked down as I spoke, eyes fixed on their hands to avoid watching my face contort through syllables.

By sixth grade, dances started with the girls. I’d bring a list of questions, complete with answers I could practice—topics safe enough to keep control over my words. Still, it didn’t take long to see they weren’t interested in a guy who couldn’t even say “couple” in under five seconds. Why was this my 1%?

Seventh grade was the year I accepted my limitations, and my body obeyed, doing everything to keep my voice hidden. I spoke more softly, covered my mouth more often, and let my speech quicken until it blurred into an unintelligible hum. When I was elected to represent the seventh grade in student government, it didn’t feel like an achievement. It came with one line to deliver in front of the entire school during assembly: “This Tuesday of spirit week will be free dress.” Just one line, seemingly safe from my usual stumbling blocks. I pleaded with my mom to let me stay home. “Maybe I could come in after lunch or tell the faculty I’d quit?” But she stood firm, drove me to school, and walked me in. I managed to say the line without stuttering, but I vowed never to run for anything again that required me to speak before so many people. Another boundary, carefully set.

Eighth grade brought two new speech therapists. The first therapist’s waiting room brimmed with children no older than nine—a quiet reminder of my own small voice. Ms. Schmidt, the therapist I saw, offered tips: “Stand more confidently,” she’d say, as if I knew what that looked like. We practiced whispering “ha” before every word, ran through the alphabet on an endless loop, and then did it again. It felt as though our sessions, too, had fallen into a loop. My voice would not be set free by standing with my hands on my hips, nor by sounding as if I were on the edge of laughter before each word. But the second therapist that year brought something new.

Dr. Levine’s office stood apart; there was no waiting room, just a maze of identical offices in a complex filled with doctors, lawyers, and brokers, each space resembling a cell. He was tall and lean, with a nose that drooped slightly, causing his glasses to rest perpetually low on his face. His skin was pale—uncommon for California—and his almond-brown eyes hinted at a quiet sharpness, framed by hair streaked with gray. He wore his watch facing inward and held a clipboard, pen ready. We sat on heather-gray furniture: I on a couch, him in an oversized chair. My gaze swept the room for the typical signs of speech therapy—posters of syllables, alphabets—but instead, I found shelves adorned with trinkets from all over the world: little keepsakes from South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. His words tumbled out like confetti, light and unexpected, each one vivid and free. He even swore on occasion, which, strangely, made him feel more relatable. In that first session, we didn’t even touch the word “stutter.” I wondered, Is this guy even a therapist?

By the fourth session, we hadn’t touched the alphabet. I finally asked him why.

“I’m not here to change the way you pronounce letters,” he said. “I’m here to help you find out why you stutter.”

“Why I stutter?” I echoed, surprised. “What does that mean?”

“Well,” he said, “if you had a reason for stuttering, and we found it and removed it, would you still stutter?”

“I . . . don’t think so?” I answered, uncertainty lacing my voice.

“Exactly. So why do you think you stuttered during your project on natural selection?”

Hope flickered for the first time, a small, distant light in the fog. Until now, I’d built boundaries and walls, a fortress to keep myself safe from judgment. But with Dr. Levine, the idea took hold that maybe, just maybe, there was a path out. Maybe I could shake free from this 1%. Our conversations peeled back layers, stripping away assumptions, until we unearthed what sat at the root: the fear of judgment—something nearly everyone shared.

It was in that cell of an office that hope first took root. Something about the space—a room stripped of the usual trappings of speech therapy, bare of posters showing vowel sounds or step-by-step breathing techniques—made the idea seem real. It wasn’t about phonetics or practice drills but an excavation of why my voice betrayed me, why fear strangled words in my throat. For the first time, I believed my stutter was something I could overcome. The fortress I’d built around myself didn’t feel impenetrable anymore. The 1% suddenly seemed less isolating. The fear I carried was universal, a shadow everyone knew, only mine had carved deeper paths, tangled with neural misfires.

The focus of our work shifted, not to erasing the stutter but to loosening its grip, loosening my own grip on the shame that came with it.

Bit by bit, I released my old habits, taking mindful steps: my hand wandered away from my mouth; I held eye contact a little longer when I spoke. Each small shift felt momentous.

Then, the next year, Phillips Exeter Academy loomed—a place where speaking wasn’t just inevitable but required, where Harkness tables filled with the country’s brightest minds waited for every word. Here, speech was graded, each voice weighed in the balance. And I could feel judgment in the air, sharp as glass, pressing in from all sides. The stutter, a familiar burden, was suddenly magnified. It was no longer just about speaking but about being seen, and ultimately evaluated for every slip, every pause, every missed beat.

Suddenly, those five seconds it took for my first word to form felt like an eternity, each heartbeat filled with the start of three different points from other people—some who had already spoken multiple times. Who could blame them? We were all being evaluated. Each of us was desperate for recognition, a tally mark, a toothpick, a piece of candy, or whatever symbol the teacher used that day to measure our voices. We all glanced at the teacher after speaking, hoping to see our voice acknowledged with a scribble in their notepad, to feel that our words had weight.

By the end of class, I’d always have extras—untouched toothpicks or candy—clear markers of how little my voice was valued compared to my classmates’. The realization was unavoidable, as every class, in every grade, existed under the same Harkness pressure. The comparisons haunted me, multiplying across subjects, a relentless tally of my silence.

Comparison was the pulse of Exeter, a constant obsession. I compared myself endlessly: my voice, my grades, even my place in the social hierarchy. Even in my prep fall I knew everyone’s GPA, how athletic they were, who they liked. Later in Exeter it turned into their SAT scores, and, in the coming months, where they’d go for the next four years. It was almost impossible not to judge, to make silent comments, to wonder what others thought. If I was dissecting someone else’s value, then surely they were doing the same to me. And when it came to my voice, I knew where I stood. Even though I never heard the judgment out loud, the silence in my classmates’ faces when I spoke in class made me think I shouldn’t risk speaking at all.  These actions mirrored the feedback in my prep fall comments: “I would love to hear more of Alex’s thoughts at the table.” “If he could articulate a little better and make his points clearer.” “If he just spoke more.” By lower year, I stopped reading the comments altogether. They were a wound I knew too well.

I tried to return to what I’d learned from Dr. Levine, that my fear of speaking was rooted in a universal fear of judgment. But this time, it was more than social anxiety. My fear was tangled up in a web of academic pressure, the looming threat of lower grades, and the constant awareness that I was being measured. The strategies Dr. Levine had given me felt powerless against this reality, unable to lift the weight of expectations pressing down from every side. The fortress I’d tried to dismantle began to rebuild itself, stone by stone.

I recall how my fortress began to build itself rapidly during prep spring, just after I realized how every teacher critiqued my speaking ability. It was my first English class of the term, and the teacher had handed out a poem for us to read aloud—a warm-up exercise in Harkness discussion to help us get comfortable. My stomach knotted, the tension rising to my throat, as Mark Strand’s Eating Poetry fluttered onto the scuffed wood of the Harkness table in front of me. As the class began to read, others underlined key phrases and noted repetitions, finding patterns to analyze. I, however, was counting heads, marking the line I’d be assigned. One, two, three . . . six. Sixth line—where was it?

Instead of looking for themes, I scoured the text for words that might trip me up, rehearsing filler words to patch over silences. When I reached she walks with her hands in her dress, I dissected the line. “Hands,” I thought. My tongue could fumble the “h.” What if I stuttered? Um, hands. I repeated it twice in my head. But “dress”—that would be the real challenge. Words with hard “d” sounds were treacherous, and I knew no amount of filler words could save me if I faltered. As my turn approached, I accepted defeat. When I finally spoke, the rehearsed words tumbled out as if I was a lagging Netflix show, but my mind echoed with critiques I’d received before. The judgment, real or imagined, silenced me for the rest of class.

My strategies for safety—the filler words, the avoidance—spilled into other parts of my life. Words that caused my silence or stutter were quietly removed from my vocabulary. Even with my friends, I avoided speaking for fear of failure, steering clear of jokes or storytelling. Soon I withdrew entirely, dodging hangouts and leaving group chats unread, afraid my words might be critiqued there, too. The fortress was complete. I locked the doors and buried the key, sealing away what I believed to be my greatest weakness: silence.

By lower spring, I took a one-year medical leave, stepping away  to confront mental health challenges that extended beyond my stutter but were undeniably amplified by it. Silence came with me, but for the first time, it felt like a relief. I no longer had to compare myself to classmates, no longer needed to speak. I could retreat fully into the quiet I’d built for myself.

During my time on medical leave, freed from Exeter’s relentless pulse of comparison, I experienced a moment of self-reflection that I remain deeply grateful for. In that quieter space, I turned my focus inward, confronting different facets of myself—including my stutter. As I reflected, I began to notice an unexpected pattern: the significance wasn’t in where my stutter occurred, but rather where it didn’t.

One afternoon early in my leave, my mom burst into my bedroom, the door slamming against the wall as if she’d nearly unhinged it. Startled, I rolled over in bed, groggy from another aimless day, only to find her face inches from mine. Her sea-blue eyes flashed with frustration, strands of blonde hair disheveled from rushing up the stairs. “You missed Dr. Jacob again? You can’t keep skipping therapy appointments! You’re here to get better!” Her voice was sharp, cutting through the fog of my self-imposed isolation. Angry at myself, at the world, and now at my mom for yelling, I leapt from bed, hair a chaotic mess, and launched into the most impassioned rant of my life. Words spilled out—every grievance, every frustration, every ounce of pain I had bottled up. My rant stretched on, perhaps as long as a meditation, and when I finally paused, breathless, my mom simply said, “You have to go next time.”

Sitting back down, I expected to feel the familiar churn of teenage resentment, the urge to scroll through my phone to drown out my anger. But something stopped me. I couldn’t stay mad. In those 15 minutes of venting, I hadn’t stuttered once.

Why? Why didn’t I stutter? The thought nagged at me. It wasn’t just during that one heated moment—I realized I rarely stuttered around my family at all. My mom, my dad, my brother—they never had to endure the fragmented speech that plagued me at Exeter. But why? They were people, too. Shouldn’t I have stuttered, especially in the heightened emotions of medical leave? I spent months unraveling this question, revisiting it in moments of reflection. Eventually, I realized that in these spaces where fear might have flourished, there was something stronger: trust.

I trusted my family. I trusted them to care for me, love me, and—most importantly—not judge me. This absence of judgment uprooted the fear that Dr. Levine and I had identified as the root of my stutter years ago. With my family, I wasn’t paralyzed by fear because judgment wasn’t part of the equation. But how could I bring this sense of trust into a place like Exeter, where judgment seemed to define every interaction?

The beginnings of an answer came to me through Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor of Rome. In his personal journal, Meditations, he urged himself to reflect on what lies within one’s control, asserting that others’ judgments of us are beyond our influence. This insight applied directly to my stutter: I couldn’t control how others judged it. In fact, I realized people might judge me to be a bad speaker even without my stutter, so why waste energy fretting over something outside my power? Embracing this simple truth became a lifeline—a source of trust I could carry back into Exeter to combat the fear that had thrived there.

The spring of 2023 I returned to Exeter to finish out my lower year, and armed with the notion that I couldn’t dictate others’ opinions, I came in trusting my new belief and my fresh new perspective on my stutter.

Firstly, yes! Yes, my stutter did improve and I gradually became more social and talkative with others; however, classrooms remained the most difficult battleground. Speaking up was still my greatest fear, but I pushed through. Citing text felt like navigating a storm, reading aloud was a trial of nerves, but I did it—I spoke. I even stopped counting heads each time something written was read out loud to practice removing filler words and adding words back to my vocabulary from my subconscious prison. Regardless, I couldn’t decide how to feel about this voice of mine, still tangled with stutters. I worried constantly if every pause and break was being judged, but I clung to one thought: I had no power over others’ judgments. That belief kept me speaking, even as comments on my final report that spring appeared: “If Alex could improve his brevity.” “It is sometimes hard to understand Alex’s points; if he could articulate better it would help.” My grades reflected their feedback—progress, yet falling short of what I felt I deserved. I repeatedly saw that those who spoke more fluidly often received higher grades, a result of factors beyond my control. I don’t fault the teachers for this; it’s difficult to view someone with a stutter as a top Harkness participant. The more I fought my internal limits, the more external barriers seemed to push back.

I had conquered much of my own internal limits and it seemed unfeasible to make any more progress with the value of my, especially with external barriers providing an edge to how valued my voice could be. I accepted the external limitations as the year drew to a close, and through the entirety of my upper year, acknowledging my speaking struggles as part of me. Yes, I was frustrated that my voice seemed less valued and, at times, outright angry, but after almost 14 years, it was familiar. I accepted the moments of silence that would bring my value down, I accepted this burden of my 1%.

That summer, my family was fortunate enough to travel to Kyoto, a city where tradition and serenity seemed woven into every corner. We wandered through ancient temples, their wooden beams polished smooth by centuries of hands, and lanterns hanging like sentinels from their eaves. The faint sweetness of incense curled upward from bronze burners, mingling with the soft glow of candlelight that illuminated gilded statues and delicately painted paper screens. Outside, Zen gardens stretched out in meticulously raked patterns of sand and stone, inviting contemplation. Koi fish glided just beneath the surface of still ponds, their vibrant orange and white bodies moving like living brushstrokes through the water. Bamboo groves swayed gently, their slender stalks tapping together in a rhythmic melody, while moss blanketed the ground in lush, emerald hues. The leaves overhead shifted and whispered as though in conversation with the wind. And yet for all the vivid beauty, what struck me most was the silence. In these sacred spaces, words seemed unnecessary. Silence wasn’t just present—it was cherished, a profound presence in itself.

I know that for 99% of people, including my family, the temples and the craftsmanship within them would have been the most awe-inspiring part of our trip to Kyoto. But for me, it was the value placed on silence. This was the first culture, the first city, the first place where silence held profound meaning. The realization shook my belief system and planted the seeds of a new possibility: that silence could uplift my relationship with my speech rather than diminish it.

Immediately after returning home, instead of collapsing onto my bed, I rifled through the philosophical books I had read before, searching for a reflection, a quote, that echoed my newfound respect for silence. As pages fluttered through my hands, the ink of my own annotations smudging my fingers, Plato’s words emerged: “Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools speak because they have to say something.” I paused, struck by how much this sentiment reflected my own experience. My time at Exeter had turned me into the fool Plato described. I had been driven to speak not from genuine thought but from a desperate need to contribute, to prove myself. While I had learned to trust that I couldn’t control how others judged me, I lacked trust in my own words because they weren’t truly mine. They were carefully crafted responses, calculated to please the teacher and boost my grade. Armed with the ideas I had encountered in Kyoto and this philosophical reflection, I began to see silence—not as my enemy but as a source of power. Could I bring this understanding back to Exeter?

To build trust in my own words, I knew I had to fundamentally shift how I approached the Harkness experience. I started reading not to hunt for contributions but to absorb and reflect. That senior fall, my annotations evolved. They were no longer rehearsed arguments scrawled in the margins, designed to be spoken flawlessly in class. Instead, they captured my genuine reactions to the text—my thoughts, my questions, even the occasional “HAHA” next to a passage I found funny. At first, my points weren’t the most strategic for securing an A, but they were mine. For the first time in a Harkness setting, I was myself. A quiet person by nature, I spoke less, but when I did, my words carried weight. Slowly, my trust in my own voice began to dissolve not the fear of judgment from others, but the judgment I so often directed at myself. And with that shift, my stutter began to decrease. For the first time, I discovered moments of joy in speaking. I stopped fixating on the teacher’s reactions, on whether my classmates would lower their heads to avoid watching me struggle through syllables during read-alouds, or on the comments I might receive at the end of the term.

That fall also brought another revelation: gratitude. How could I not feel thankful for something that had shaped my growth, offered me a unique perspective, and given me countless opportunities to practice becoming the person I wanted to be?

Yes, I still stuttered through senior fall, but I didn’t hide behind my hand or lose myself in frantic scribbling, drowning in shame. Trust anchored me, and gratitude helped me grow, allowing me to keep speaking.

Would I wish away my stutter? Absolutely. But to see my journey as fruitless would be to ignore the resilience, growth, and courage it fostered in me. How could I feel anything but grateful for my place in this 1%?

Alex Field ’25 was a member of the varsity lacrosse team and co-founder and co-head of the mental health club on campus. Alex will attend NYU in the fall; he plans to major in business.

This article was first published in the spring 2025 edition of The Exeter Bulletin.

During the last week of her nearly 40-year career at Exeter, Jan Woodford ’40, ’41, 44, ’49, ’51, 52, ’53, ’59, ’60, ’62, ’70, ’71, ’78 (Hon.), senior advisor of campus events, is doing what she does best: serving and connecting with alumni.

In between cleaning out her desk and saying goodbye to colleagues, Woodford, who retired in June, pens an obituary for Bissell Jenkins Middleton ’44, recalling “he was a delight to work with” on reunions. “You’d never know he was a high-powered lawyer,” she says. She pauses hours later as Beth Dutton ’79 ducks into her office and requests a selfie.

It’s all in a day’s work for Woodford, who managed logistics for 14 reunion classes as a key Alumni Relations team member. Now an honorary member of 13 of those classes — the most of any community member — Woodford worked closely with alumni volunteers and departments across campus to ensure events were flawlessly executed all while keeping calm under pressure. Nancy Smith Douglas ’79 likens Woodford to “a beautiful swan gliding effortlessly over the surface of the water while paddling madly beneath.”

For Woodford, relationships are at the heart of the alumni experience. She maintained personal connections with hundreds of alumni through handwritten notes and phone calls, always remembering the smallest details about their lives. “She has a genuine interest in alumni stories,” says Michelle Curtin, director of Alumni Relations and Woodford’s supervisor. “Jan always had alumni in her office. With her extensive knowledge of Exeter and her connections, there was a level of security that people working with her knew she’d get things done, find answers and make something work.”

An Air Force veteran, Woodford came to Exeter with her husband and young son, Billy (their daughter, Kati, was born later). “I wanted to work locally and a relative worked at Exeter and highly recommended working here,” she says. Woodford initially joined the annual giving office but soon moved to Alumni Relations, starting as the primary staff member supporting reunion classes. “We eventually grew,” Woodford says, “expanding into alumni events, building dedications and groundbreakings. I became involved with everything to do with bringing alumni back to campus.”

Woodford was the driving force behind Exeter Salutes, a program launched in 2019 to honor members of the Exeter alumni community who currently serve in the armed forces or are veterans. Through assembly and in-person programs that connect veterans and current students, Exeter Salutes is “a wonderful example of non sibi,” Woodford says. “It’s a joy to watch students get excited to meet the veterans and learn more about the military and its contributions.”

Many special reunion memories stand out for Woodford, including: working with the class of ’59 to help raise money for the renovation of the Academy Building; welcoming female members of the class of ’71, part of Exeter’s first co-ed class, back to campus; and planning the gala celebration for the opening of The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance. “I couldn’t have done this for 38 years on my own,” Woodford says. “Staff in Institutional Advancement, facilities and dining all supported me throughout as I learned this job and grew into it.”

As she looks forward to spending more time exploring New Hampshire during retirement, Woodford recalls her Exeter memories fondly. “Seeing alumni connect with each other and the school warms my heart,” she says. “It’s a testimony to what a great place Exeter is and how important it is to people’s lives.

This article was first published in the summer 2025 edition of The Exeter Bulletin.

Possibly the best decision I have ever made, in my long affiliation with Exeter, was when I volunteered, during my 30th reunion, to become a class correspondent. That is, to gather the news and notes from my fellow 1973 classmates quarterly and write a column for The Exeter Bulletin. I had attended every one of my reunions since graduation, and I had always had an immensely good time, visiting with old friends, making new ones and spending time on the campus of the school I love dearly. So the opportunity to communicate with classmates more often seemed like a great idea. And I have never regretted it.

My co-correspondent in those early years was Sally Spoerl, who has been one of my best friends since seventh grade, and more recently I have shared the duties with Robert Barnett, another close friend who was a fellow Abbot Hall hooligan.

Gathering news from classmates is not without its challenges. In my first few years as a correspondent, a number of classmates didn’t have email. Instead, the Academy provided stamped postcards to send to them. Somewhat tenuously attached to each postcard was a blank card, also stamped and affixed with my address label. Rather frequently the two cards became separated in the mail and the postal service would dutifully send the blank card back to me. When I received the first of these blank cards, I thought a classmate was sending it back anonymously, silently telling me, “This is what I think of your request for news.”

But I always hear back from a few classmates, sometimes quite a few, and receiving those messages is always a bit of a dopamine hit. Nowadays all the correspondence is through email, and the Alumni Office makes it easy by sending a blast email to the class, containing whatever begging, cajoling or threatening message we wish to use in order to solicit contributions from our friends.

The most common reason that classmates give me for not sending in news is the feeling that they have not done anything worth speaking about, compared with what others have done. One time I sent out my request for news, saying that they need not have won an Olympic medal or a Nobel Prize for their lives to be newsworthy. Then one of our classmates, Paul Romer, won a Nobel Prize. Now I have to say that Paul never wrote to tell me about the award, but I felt it was newsworthy enough to be included in the class notes. And I am sure that some classmates felt even more intimidated and became even less likely to send in their family news. But I am equally certain that Paul wanted to hear about his friends’ grandchildren and vacations just as much as they wanted to read about his Nobel Prize.

As we get older, I receive lots of news about children, grandchildren and travels. Hearing about these moments of pride and excitement provides me with a feeling of intimacy with classmates that I could not otherwise experience. Sometimes classmates reminisce about their time at Exeter, and those memories will take me back as well. Suddenly I’m that awkward teenager again, worrying about, in increasing order of importance, that English paper I still haven’t written, or the upcoming track meet, or why that one girl doesn’t like me back. (After all, I stood there, leaning against the wall of the Davis Student Center all evening, staring at her, so what more could she want from me?)

Only once did I find my work being censored. My classmate Susan had written about her sporty new car, which was faster than every other car around. Anticipating further midlife needs for excitement and inspired by a popular television show called “Pimp My Ride,” I speculated that soon she would be driving a “pimped-up truck,” before ending up riding a Harley as she approached old age. The Academy couldn’t abide such a suggestive term, and “pimped-up truck” became simply “pickup truck,” and the message I was trying to convey became somewhat deflated.

Exonians don’t just have amazing careers and wonderful families and do things that fascinate us. Sometimes they die. I wasn’t quite prepared for the emotional strain of reporting on a classmate’s death the first time. I was glad that I was not a class correspondent when my best friend died at a far-too-young age in the late 1980s. That was devastating, and I don’t know how I could have written about it.

But I have learned that death, however sad, is also an opportunity to celebrate life. Honoring people with little stories about their lives, from my memories or those of classmates who were closer to them, or from things I learned online, allows me to get past the sadness of their passing and appreciate all that they did, and all the lives that they touched, while they were still with us.

An unexpected benefit of being a class correspondent is being invited to the annual Alumni Council Weekend, which is now known as Exeter Leadership Weekend. Every fall, representatives of all the classes gather at Exeter for meetings, lectures and school activities, with the goals of updating us on new developments at the school and gleaning ideas for further improvements.

Among the initiatives we have learned about over the years are improvements in diversity at Exeter, the concept of non sibi, increased importance of the arts at the school (so now the focus is on three A’s: academics, athletics and arts), and need-blind admissions (so financial concerns are never an obstacle to attending the Academy).

For me the highlight of the weekend is the Friday evening dinner with the senior class. These students are really what Exeter is all about, and they never fail to impress me with their enthusiasm for and love of the school. They always seem to be far more intelligent, mature and well-rounded than we ever were as students, and we alumni always come away from that dinner thinking that we would never be able to get into Exeter today. The students always want to know about our days at Exeter, and especially about the early days of coeducation.

Sometimes you really connect with a student. One year I was walking to the dinner in the gymnasium with two classmates, Sally and Kris. Walking toward us was a student with a big smile. We decided we wanted to sit with this happy young woman. She told us how much she loved Exeter and couldn’t imagine what it would be like to no longer be a student there.

I shared the story of my last few hours as a student. Graduation was over and my family had to leave right away. I stayed behind to say goodbye to friends. One by one they drove off with their parents, and after a few hours everyone was gone. The campus was eerily deserted. I took my stuff out of my room and piled it in front of Abbot Hall. And then it hit me. My time as an Exeter student was really over, and a wave of sadness, the profundity of which shocked me, overcame me. “Oh my,” the student said, “that’s exactly how I’m going to feel. I don’t know how I’m going to bear it!”

Being a class representative helps you to bear it. Hearing from classmates is sort of like being back at school with them. And rewriting their stories for the Class Notes enables me to appreciate their adventures. Visiting campus, I feel like a student again, but without the stress of exams or papers or broken hearts. Just the joy of seeing old friends, making new ones, visiting with students or attending an athletic event or a dance recital is a reminder of what an unbelievably special place Phillips Exeter Academy really is.

Robert Lutes ’73 has been a class correspondent since 2003. He holds a degree in art history from McGill, a master’s degree in public health from Harvard and a medical degree from the Medical University of South Carolina. He has worked in emergency medicine for the past 34 years.

Interested in becoming a class correspondent? Contact Cathy Webber at cmwebber@exeter.edu

This article was first published in the spring 2025 edition of The Exeter Bulletin.

As stage manager at the Academy’s Fisher Theater, Laura Callanan ’83 ran productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Night School using many of the same organizational skills that she later parlayed into key positions with the National Endowment for the Arts, McKinsey & Company and the United Nations. As chief of staff for the U.N. Development Programme’s Bureau of Crisis Prevention and Recovery, she collaborated with colleagues from around the world.

“We realized that every one of us had been a stage manager,” Callanan says of one U.N.D.P. working group. “There’s no better way to learn about deadlines and details than making sure the light goes on at the right time and in the right place.”

Today, Callanan, a Barnard College theater major who went on to earn a Master of Public Administration in public finance, has blended her many experiences into Upstart Co-Lab, of which she is founding partner. Upstart serves as a bridge between creatives who are entrepreneurs and impact investors who seek to achieve a social or environmental benefit alongside a financial return.

The idea for Upstart arose during Callanan’s time at the NEA, when she observed creatives were not just working alone in a studio or starting nonprofit organizations, but were increasingly launching for-profit social purpose businesses. She set out to connect these creative entrepreneurs to the trillions of dollars of impact capital in the U.S.

“A lot of transformation for the whole economy can begin in the creative industries,” Callanan says. “At Upstart, we’re not focused on funding ‘the arts.’ We’re focused on financing businesses in creative industries that provide products, services and platforms to customers. Businesses that hire people, that pay taxes — and that need investors to grow.”

Callanan finds creative entrepreneurs work in some 145 industries that span fashion, food, film, TV, video games and more. One such business is Making Space, whose founder, a 20-something serial entrepreneur who is living with a disability herself, connects media and entertainment companies looking for staff with qualified, skilled disabled talent. In just under a decade, Upstart has mobilized some $45 million and is recognized as the leader in the field of impact investing for the U.S. creative economy.

She is careful to point out that impact investing can play a role in anyone’s financial plan. And the creative economy, valued at more than $1.2 trillion in the United States, can be part of any impact investor’s portfolio. According to the U.N., the creative industries are expected to make up 10 percent of the global economy over the next decade. Countries around the world that have long relied on extractive industries and agriculture have grasped that it may just prove to be the golden egg for sustainable development and economic growth.

“Places like Indonesia with a very young population are intentionally leaning into the creative economy. They’re balancing tradition and innovation,” Callanan says. Given that, she and her team are routinely fielding inbound queries from community, state and international arts councils, and foundations exploring ways to invest in their local creative economies.

“That’s really exciting for us, because part of our work as a nonprofit is sharing what we’re learning to motivate and support other people who want to do this themselves,” she says of the process, now formalized as Upstart Consults.

Reflecting on her time at Fisher Theater, Callanan, who walked the boards in productions of Rashomon, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Equus, says acting, too, was pivotal to her career.

“I have no fear of public speaking. And I can translate between the creative people who are entrepreneurs and the investors,” she says, “and help people see where they’re talking about the same thing, just using different language. I would not have my deep appreciation of creativity and creative people without my experience in theater at Exeter.”

This article was first published in the spring 2025 edition of The Exeter Bulletin.

This season Big Red wrestling’s roster featured 10 girls, the most in the history of the program. A traditionally male-dominated sport, wrestling at Exeter is rapidly growing into a competitive arena for female athletes — a trend that’s happening around the country. The National Federation of State High School Associations reports that girls wrestling has experienced significant growth in participation, increasing 102% since 2021.

“There are multiple teams with double-digit numbers of girls on their roster this year,” says head wrestling coach Justin Muchnick. “There are girls divisions at both the league and New England tournaments, as well as several girls-only invitationals throughout the season.”

The rise of girls wrestling can be attributed in part to top-down efforts. The inclusion of women’s wrestling in the Olympics in 2004, the expansion of women’s college programs and the NCAA’s decision to recognize women’s wrestling as an official championship sport in 2025–26 have provided clear pathways for female athletes to compete at higher levels.

“In the world of New England prep schools, a lot of this has been driven from the bottom up, by individual coaches and programs committing to girls wrestling,” Muchnick says. “You have to give a ton of credit to Andover for being the prime mover here: Kassie Bateman and Rich Gorham have spent a decade-plus making this vision a reality. But at this point there are quite a few other programs — Choate, St. Paul’s, Hyde, Northfield Mount Hermon and now us — that have made girls wrestling a priority.”

Exeter ranks in the top third of NEPSAC wrestling programs in terms of girls participation. The focus moving forward is on retention, recruitment and building a team capable of filling all 12 weight classes.

“I really want to use our current momentum to add as many girls as we can to our program!” Muchnick says. “Beyond competition, the growth of girls wrestling is reshaping the culture of the sport itself. The camaraderie among female wrestlers, even between competitors from different schools, is setting a new standard. As girls wrestling continues to flourish, it is clear that the sport is becoming stronger, more inclusive and more dynamic than ever before.

This article was first published in the spring 2025 edition of The Exeter Bulletin.

Just three years out of college, Lauren Arkell ’18 is fulfilling one of her big career goals in aero-space: working on a mission to the moon. As flight controller on the mission operations team at Firefly Aerospace, she is playing a key role in the debut flight of the company’s lunar lander, Blue Ghost, which is scheduled to launch in mid-January.

During the two-month mission, the Firefly team will work around the clock in the console room, with Arkell and two other flight controllers alternating in 12-hour shifts. “I’ll be sending all the commands from the ground to the spacecraft and working hand in hand with the flight director to run through all of our operations procedures,” Arkell says. The procedures “make sure we meet our mission requirements and do all of the payload operations we need to, as well as monitor the health and safety of the vehicle.”

Blue Ghost will spend nearly a month orbiting the Earth and about two weeks in lunar orbit before landing near Mare Crisium, a basin in the far northeast quadrant of the moon’s Earth-facing side, for 14 days of surface operations. Dubbed Ghost Riders in the Sky, the mission will use 10 scientific instruments (or payloads) to collect data as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

Arkell’s ties to Blue Ghost go back to a summer internship at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio during college. She worked on a passive coating to mitigate lunar dust, the abrasive fragments from the moon’s surface that can wreck astronauts’ spacesuits and equipment. “That coating is one of the payloads that Blue Ghost will bring to the moon,” Arkell says.

After graduating from Davidson College in 2022, she worked on various projects for a contractor for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland but kept her eye on the lunar dust mitigation project. When a position opened at Firefly, she jumped at the opportunity, moving to Austin, Texas, to fulfill her goal of working on a lunar mission. “Getting that data on lunar dust mitigation can solve the issues we saw during all of the Apollo missions and be super beneficial for NASA’s return to the moon,” Arkell says.

A presentation by Tom Marshburn, a Davidson alumnus and former astronaut who made three flights to the International Space Station, inspired Arkell to enter the aerospace field. At the time, she was majoring in physics and on a pre-med track but was undecided on a career. “I was able to connect with him personally,” she recalls. “He was such a nice guy, so normal and willing to chat, that I saw myself in him and saw the path that he took as an option for the first time.”

But Arkell says she discovered her passion for STEM at Exeter, where she was a three-year senior day student from nearby Brentwood. She loved her chemistry and physics classes, and vividly remembers taking astronomy with Science Instructor John Blackwell, including regular trips to Grainger Observatory. “Mr. Blackwell had a great take on how expansive space is, and how we know so little about it,” Arkell says. A co-captain of the varsity lacrosse and soccer teams at Exeter, Arkell went on to play lacrosse at Davidson. She brings those well-honed teamwork skills to the work she’s doing on the Blue Ghost mission.

“So much of it is active troubleshooting, working with everyone in  the room,” Arkell says. “You really have to trust yourself, your co-workers and the other people on console that are the specialists, and you’re constantly working through problems. It’s a lot of pressure, but I think it’s very exciting.”