Phillips Exeter Academy

7 questions for classics scholar Dan-el Padilla Peralta

A Living Legacy:

A Living Legacy:

H. Hamilton Bissell

Opening Assembly 2025

Watch the assembly

Watch as Exeter starts it's 245th year.

Forward Thinking

Gone fishin’

Tejo y Sapo

Science Project

“Our daughter ate a rock,” I told my spouse as he returned from crew practice one afternoon. “I tried to stop her, but she’d swallowed it by the time I got there.”

Curiosity is a strong, and sometimes uncontrollable, impulse. My daughter’s urge to taste a rock (honestly, it was a small pebble) is not much different from what piqued my interest in organic chemistry: the desire to know more about the world. Like my daughter — whose favorite phrase is “What’s this?” — I’m constantly asking questions. Mine are slightly different, and chemistry has been the lens that I’ve used to find answers. Why do fireflies flash at night? A reaction between luciferin and the enzyme luciferase. Researchers call this type of curiosity “joyous exploration” and have investigated its role in learning and motivation.

The most frequent response I get when I share that I’m a chemistry teacher is, “I hated that subject.” I never quite know what to say other than to list the course I dreaded most (history). But I often wonder, what is it about chemistry that elicits such a strong reaction, and is there any way to get students more excited to learn it?

Each spring, Exeter’s Center for Teaching and Learning asks for project proposals from faculty looking to research a topic during the following school year. Usually, I am a bit of a dabbler, a stone skipping across the water’s surface. A yearlong project seemed like a great way to focus on a single topic, to dig into the research on curiosity, assessment and student engagement, and hopefully to find a way to combat chemistry’s PR problem.

During the fall term, I wanted to learn how students felt while completing chemistry homework, studying for exams and working at the lab bench. It came as somewhat of a surprise, but most students said they enjoyed learning the topic and some even found the subject interesting. They just weren’t too keen on studying for the tests. They reported feeling nervous, anxious and “cooked,” and constantly worried whether they had studied enough. And most students wanted more practice — practice tests and problems to help build their confidence. Maybe chemistry wasn’t the problem, and it was the tests that left a bad taste. Perhaps a different type of assessment could improve student engagement.

Instead of tests and lab reports, I asked students to explore a topic of their choice and explain it the way a chemist would. For another assignment, students created a small art exhibition inspired by the concept of entropy. I hoped that they would enjoy these projects, worry less and feel more confident in themselves.

The students amazed me with their wide range of topics — such as coral, diet soda and ceviche — and their projects. One senior made a video of her interpretive dance of statistical thermodynamics. Another mixed and layered two songs to create an acoustic interpretation of entropy and disorder. A third showed a video of lightning bugs blinking synchronously in an Appalachian forest and explained to the class how chemiluminescence can produce something so cool.

Before my partner returned from the boathouse, I Googled “what to do if your child swallows a rock.” I wasn’t too worried, only wanting to fill in a gap in my knowledge. This is called epistemic curiosity. Directionless curiosity, like shoving a handful of pebbles in your mouth, is known as diversive curiosity. Turns out, when you blend diversive and epistemic curiosity, work can seem like play.

Illustration by Becki Gill

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

Faculty Farewells

Supply and Demand

Supply and Demand

Shared Space,

Academy Building Over Time

From the time Exeter welcomed its first 56 students in 1783, an Academy Building has served as the center of academic and community life on campus.

1782-94

Exeter’s first students and faculty share four classrooms in this two-story wooden school house on Tan Lane. It has expanded and moved several times, finally settling on Elliot Street in 1999.

1794-1870

As the school grows, a larger Academy Building is built along Front Street. The Georgian-style building serves the school for nearly 80 years before a fire destroys it.

1872-1914

The third Academy Building is designed to replicate the second as closely as possible, but in brick. Academy chronicler Frank H. Cunningham describes it as “perfect in its proportions and graceful in its outlines.” The building nonetheless meets the same fate as its predecessor.

1915-2025

In the wake of another devastating fire, Exonians raise $200,000 — some $6.2 million today — for the construction of a fourth Academy Building. It incorporates nearly 1 million water-struck bricks and white Vermont marble. An addition to the north side is built in 1931. An update is completed in 1969.

2025-

Construction begins on a comprehensive renewal of the Academy Building that preserves its historic character while expanding and reimagining it for Exeter’s future.

 

Academy Building by the numbers

60

Approximate number of required assemblies each year

1,300

Seating capacity of the new Assembly Hall

2,600

Square feet of the new Design Lab

135

Number of geothermal wells serving the Academy Building, Phillips Hall and the renovated dining hall