Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy

Emma Ward

Artful Intelligence

Instructor in English Tim Horvath on AI and the human act of making meaning

The first day of ENG534: What Artifice; Whose Intelligence? AI Through a Literary Lens, I handed my students a packet containing three very short stories. One was an AI-generated story from a program developed by Imogen Casebourne in the 1990s, with subtle lines like, “Filled with hatred for Rebekka, Emma thirsted for revenge.” One was a burst of a story about grief by the very human author Rebecca Fishow that was published in the first-rate journal SmokeLong Quarterly. And one was hot off the algorithmic assembly line courtesy of Open AI, whose CEO, Sam Altman, boasted that “we trained a new model that is good at creative writing.” All identifying information was obscured. “OK,” I said. “One of these stories was written by a human. Your mission — should you choose to accept it — is to figure out which.”

The conversations the next day were boisterous … and sobering. In one class, only one student correctly ID’d the human story. Many were torn and, at the reveal, I felt an undertow of despair in the room: “If AI can write like this, we’re doomed!”

I, too, had been struck by the story written by Open AI — it had flaws, but what first draft doesn’t? One moment had given me particular pause: “I said, ‘It becomes part of your skin,’ not because I felt it, but because a hundred thousand voices agreed, and I am nothing if not a democracy of ghosts.” A democracy of ghosts? That’s a line that I would likely have noted in a published book. A line I wouldn’t have been ashamed to write — maybe even patted myself on the back for.

It turns out that “a democracy of ghosts” is indeed from a published book — straight out of Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin. It was “scraped,” along with unimaginably vast quantities of other phrases from the published books that make up several lobes of Open AI’s “brain.” And the rest of the story? Who knows how its tokens, more finely sliced, diced and plated to resemble words, thoughts and ideas were generated? Beneath the silicon surface masquerading as skin lay countless hours of human experience, human labor — the euphoria, confusion, striving, heartsickness, angst, lethargy, hunger, curiosity, incomprehension, contentment, hilarity, longing and ingenuity recorded by people over centuries.

What we were hearing was the thundering reverberation of trillions of pulsing synapses.

I’m not a Luddite. I write on a laptop, have to remember to silence my phone in class, have gotten sucked into Reels more times than I want to admit. And I’ve used AI to create an app that helps me study Spanish by reading Cortázar. (Take that, Duo!) The algorithms and I are no strangers. And yet, as we hurtle into this Brave New World, I wonder if the most underrated technology yet invented is the brake.

That’s really what this class was for me — an opportunity to slow down. To think alongside my students about what kind of present we’re living in and what sort of future we’re sowing the seeds of. The world they’ll inhabit. Sometimes, hearing statistics and doomsaying about the use of AI for shortcuts, it’s easy to imagine a divide — students embracing AI, teachers tearing their hair out. But the students in my classes were thoughtful, wary, critical. In their Human Journals, they reflected on everything from the prospect of AI companions to the environmental toll. And they made it personal. They wrote about the hope of restoring vision, about the way translation had brought them closer to their families. They imagined what it might be like to be a conscious machine. They wrote with candor and wonder.

It’s tough to slow down when the hype is breathless, ubiquitous. My inbox is inundated with news about the latest AI breakthrough; YouTube influencers want me to know how I can become a ChatGPT Iron Man in Under Five Minutes. Speed is enthralling, alluring, addictive. And when we see the speed with which large language models mimic actual thinking and creativity, it’s easy to stand slack-jawed.

How do you persuade people to row when hovercrafts are in view, soaring above the water?

And yet, we have crew teams — dedicated to doing just that. When it comes to athletics, we grasp that merely maximizing performance with technological wizardry isn’t the goal. Without the friction of oar displacing water, the stretch and release of rib cage, the rush of self-propulsion, what, after all, are we left with?

Annie Dillard writes, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” When it comes to writing and making art, we’re talking about the making of meaning itself. For that, in fact, is so much of what I am striving for in my teaching. I’d say the making of meaning is itself a kind of muscle, one that calls not for artificial intelligence but what we might call artful intelligence. (Note: The internet tells me this is far from an original coinage — it has, of course, been used and copyrighted, and is being monetized.)

Like my students, I’m anxious about what happens when we yield the capacity to make meaning to a mechanism. AI might be capable of great, life-saving and -enhancing feats. But we need to get far savvier at discerning who we are and what kind of world we want to live in. Otherwise, I shudder at how much of our humanity we’ll cede in our thrall to algorithms; I wonder if we risk becoming a democracy of ghosts.

 

Tim Horvath is an instructor in English at the Academy and teaches creative writing in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He is the author of Understories and Circulation, and his stories have appeared in Conjunctions, AGNI and other journals. He is working on his first novel.

Professional

Professional

Development

Lava flow from a recent eruption blocks the road.

“During a truly immersive learning week, every day was packed with both knowledge of facts and visceral experiences. While we were on a land of many active volcanos, we were at ‘the safest place on Earth,’ according to our group leader Olafur Jon Arnbjornsson, or ‘Oli,’ because seismic activity is continuously monitored and broadcast like the weather is in the U.S. Icelanders receive SMS alerts on their phones from the Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management; there is careful mitigation planning and the precautions and alerts are obeyed.”

“On the way to climb a glacier, Oli cautioned us, ‘nothing is as it seems …’ The solid ice is covered with black granular deposits from nearby volcanoes, and it looks like a lava hill; yet, we were stepping on ‘solid’ ice, covered with a thin layer of volcanic debris and a veneer of vegetation — mostly mosses and lichens. Eventually, we found ourselves on ice that looked as expected — white and bluish. Sadly, from that vantage point, we could see the extent of the retreat of the melting glacier. Considerable volume has melted within the past couple of decades; the melted footprint area is now a sizable valley with a lake.

“We heard the cracking of the ice as it cleaved and melted. We knelt and drank water from the rivulets running rapidly in shallow spots — might this be glacier tears?”

“Traveling by car each day, we saw miles upon miles of hot water pipes along the road and zigzagging the valleys, going from the geothermal power plants to towns, for distribution in homes.”

“A parallel component of our education was the social history of the Icelandic nation. Our group toured historical places, and our guides explained how and why Icelandic culture is centered on personal responsibility, integrity and getting along for the good of the nation. It makes sense to evolve a community-minded ethos, as it is necessary to do so when living and facing nature on the island ‘of fire and ice.’

“Indeed, there is an overabundance of geothermal energy. So how much should a nation use? When should it stop excess profiting? At Gullfoss waterfall (pictured above) we saw a bit of Icelandic ethos.

“Sigridur Tomasdottir (1871–1957) advocated to keep Gullfoss waterfall undeveloped. She opposed the group of farmers (including her own father) who wanted to sell the power generated to industrial concerns. We walked along and were awed by the power and beauty of the water. Had she not fought for the waterfall, there would probably be an aluminum smelting plant in this paradisiacal spot today. ‘Just because the energy is there and it is free, the nation should not ruin its nature just to make money,’ she advocated.”

“Our visit at the Hellisheiði Geothermal Power Plant was filled with chemistry and physics: energy cycles, geothermal dynamics and systems (physics of feedback loops), and also Iceland’s role in geothermal innovation and mitigation of climate change. We learned about the CarbFix project, of carbon capture and its mineral storage in underground basalt, and the chemistry of sustainable solutions. Our guide proclaimed, ‘The whole of Iceland is a geothermal power plant!’”

“Our meeting with writer Andri Snaer Magnason was a muchanticipated event as we had read his book On Time and Water before the trip. Our discussion with Magnason was a master class on human psychology, shortcomings, possibility and hope for solutions.”

“On our last evening, we were treated to a dinner cooked by our guides at their farmhouse. They keep instruments at home — for their guests! Oli read to us a bit of a saga, and [science instructors] Brad [Robinson] and Jim [DiCarlo] played guitar and whistle. The family joined in with a traditional song.”

Nicholas Benson ’84: The Daily Grind

Nicholas Benson ’84 roasts small-batch coffee with a purpose

On any given morning, an unusual aroma emanates from the barn on the property where Nicholas Benson ’84 lives in rural Washington, Connecticut. The air is redolent with notes of walnut, dark chocolate and licorice as gentle crackling and popping sounds hint at the source. This is where Benson roasts beans for his passion project, the smallbatch coffee brand Zero Prophet Coffee.

Benson’s portfolio includes both distinctive single-origin coffees and well-balanced blends that he roasts to order on his 10-pound-capacity Diedrich roaster. He offers a flavor for every palate — including a classic, full-bodied Sumatran, a white coffee from Ethiopia and a water-processed, low-acid decaf from Mexico. The Hidden Valley blend, Benson’s favorite, layers notes of smooth dark chocolate and pecan, and is named for the land preserve next to the roastery.

Benson cultivated his taste for high-quality coffee while living abroad as the child of a diplomat. Born in what was then West Germany, he was raised primarily in Eastern Europe. There he developed an appreciation for Turkish coffee and Vienna-style roasts — as well as ice hockey and Rachmaninoff. By the time he was in the eighth grade, he was officially a coffee drinker.

When Benson returned stateside in 1980 to attend the Academy, he found the coffee underwhelming. He jokes that the Italians would disparage it as “aqua colorata,” or “colored water.” “My older brother and I commiserated for years about the poor quality,” Benson recalls. “We had the dream of starting a roasting business a long time ago, but we never did it.”

Until 2005. During a faculty meeting at the Frederick Gunn School in Washington, where Benson has taught English for the past 17 years, “I had the lightbulb, the brain wave,” he says with a laugh. He even sketched what would become his brand’s logo.

The timing was right, with an American coffee renaissance of sorts finally underway and the introduction of home roasting machines. “Everything sort of converged,” he says. “So I had to do it — to translate a long love of coffee and cooking.”

Benson started out using a Whirley Pop popcorn maker to roast the beans, turning them with the hand crank. “You get a real feel for how roasting looks, sounds and smells,” he says. The process takes about 13 minutes, and even now he prefers to use his senses instead of timers to gauge readiness. In 2009, he officially entered the market as a wholesaler. He currently sells Zero Prophet Coffee in a dozen farm markets and specialty food stores in Connecticut’s Litchfield and New Haven counties.

The name Zero Prophet Coffee conveys an emphasis on creativity over profitability as well as a commitment to supporting worthy causes. Benson regularly donates a portion of sales to two organizations: the Steep Rock Association, a nonprofit land trust near his home, and Fundacion Perros Sin Nombre, which provides veterinary care for stray dogs and cats in Honduras.

“Prophet” is also apropos to Benson’s pursuits outside the coffee realm. He has a master’s degree in writing, and in 2024 published a collection of his poetry, I Commissioned Some Wooden Luggage. He is also an acclaimed translator, with a Ph.D. in Italian from New York University. In January, he published (°) – seed: and other poems, a translation of selected poems by Maria Grazia Calandrone and edited by Beppe Cavatorta.

This fall Benson is a visiting artist and scholar at the American Academy in Rome. It’s a pilgrimage back to one of the places in Europe that most captured his heart as a child and inspired his self-described “restless life” of writing and travel.

Coffee, it seems, provides a measure of balance, a daily ritual connecting past and present. Yet despite its success, Zero Prophet remains a side project, and this is the way Benson prefers to keep it.

Finis Origine Pendet: My Ontology

Exile noun | ˈɛɡ‚zaɪlˈ | 1. The state of being barred from one’s home country. As in, fleeing in exile, clutching what little could be carried. A grandmother’s candlesticks. A father’s prayer book. A mother’s lullaby, soft in a foreign tongue. 2. A forced departure, a scattering. As in, exiles from Spain, wandering through Europe, finding refuge, then losing it again. As in, fleeing the pogroms, the homes burned behind them. As in, pushed from professions, universities, neighborhoods — told: You don’t belong here.

Exile verb | ˈɛɡ‚zaɪl, ˈɛk,saɪl | 1. To remove, to cast out. As in, laws that exile without saying exile. Quotas. Restrictions. Signs that say, “No Jews.” A house that should have been home, taken. 2. To live, always carrying an escape plan. As in, a suitcase packed, just in case. As in, passports ready, just in case. As in, remembering what happens when they say it can’t happen here.

 

Ari Benenson ’27 was recognized with a Lamont Younger Poets Prize for this poem in May. The prize honors poems of exceptional promise written by preps and lowers, and commemorates the dedication of English Instructor Rex McGuinn to student poetry at Exeter. This poem was originally published in the Fall 2025 edition of The Exeter Bulletin.

Memorial Minute: John Joseph Kane

Instructor in English; Rupert Radford 1915 Faculty Fellowship (1939-2023)

John Joseph Kane was born in the Bronx on March 24, 1939. He graduated from the prestigious Regis High School on the Upper East Side—just across town but worlds away, he recalled—going on to receive his A.B. at Fordham University and his M.A. at Johns Hopkins University; later, he pursued doctoral work in English Literature at the University of Virginia. He taught English at Loyola High School in New York City and at Dartmouth College before coming to Phillips Exeter Academy in 1973, where he was appointed instructor in the English Department, joining that legendary generation of Harkness teachers, also recently or soon-to-be appointed, that included Charlie Pratt, Peter Greer, Harvard Knowles, Charlie Terry, Mike Drummey, Fred Tremallo, Dolores Kendrick and David Weber.

John and his family—his wife, Mary Ann, and their two sons, Justin and Owen—lived in Dunbar Hall from 1973 to 1985, where John served as dorm head, and then in Veazey House. Eric Burgofsky, who worked with John and lived above him in Dunbar from when he was first assigned to be dorm head in 1978, relates this memory as an illustration of “just how unflappable and even-keeled” John was, ideal qualities for a dorm head of sixty-three boys known for occasionally challenging behavior. Eric recalls:

This anecdote involves a young faculty member living above John on the second floor of Dunbar Hall in the year 1978-79. He will remain nameless, but his initials are E.B. and he is still on the faculty. It was a sweltering hot night in late spring when E.B. returned late at night to an apartment that seemed 100 degrees. Against the advice of his wife, E.B. decided to go into the basement and haul a rather large and heavy air conditioner up to the second-floor master bedroom for relief from the heat. The destined window happened to be directly above the patio of John’s first-floor apartment. There was a slight slip-up in the installation process that resulted in the air conditioner falling out the window and crashing onto John’s patio with a huge sound of impact. Being midnight or later, all was dark and quiet in John’s apartment until E.B. noticed a light go on and the door to the patio opening with John emerging in his pajamas. Leaning out the second-floor window, E.B. said to John, “Sorry, but my air conditioner fell from my window.” John looked down at the now critically injured hunk of steel on his patio and then looked back up and said without expression, “That’s OK,” then returned inside. In the following days, weeks, and in all the years they were colleagues, John never spoke to E.B. about it again.

Outside the dorm, John was involved with many faculty committees and extracurricular work including Admissions, Financial Aid, the Bennett Fellowship Selection Committee, Director of Poetry Stage, Infinity Thespians, the Merrill Speaking Prize and the Thompson Planning Committee, which recommended (under John’s envisioning) spacious quarters for day students in the new Academy Center. He was adviser to the Korean Society and WPEA, was a track official and led Drama Sports, and he coached Tai Chi, having first taught himself from a book. John also helped to establish the first Asian Student Society. In 2001-2002, he and Mary Ann spent a year abroad in Zaragosa, Spain, with SYA.

John served as Interim Director of the College Placement Office from 1981 to 1982 and was Associate Dean of Students from 1978 to 1979. He served on the task force that worked on the Academy’s Master Plan to strengthen the residential curriculum for all of its students, particularly day students. For this work, he was awarded a Rupert Radford ’15 Faculty Fellowship. In her citation, Principal Kendra Stearns O’Donnell said to John, “You are . . . the best kind of ‘yes man’. We are grateful for your skill, energy and good humor in tackling the many significant jobs you have said ‘yes’ to. We are particularly grateful for your years of ‘distinguished and faithful service’ as Day Student Coordinator, a role in which you have served the Academy by your masterful management of the Academy-based residential life of an important segment of our student and family population.”

“One man in his time plays many parts,” wrote Shakespeare, and alongside those of husband, father, teacher, adviser, administrator, John graced the stage of Fisher Theater in a number of student productions over the years, playing the parts of Polonius, Cyrano, Banquo, the Lord High Executioner, Judge Danforth in The Crucible, but perhaps most memorably, the Narrator/Stage Manager of Our Town. Of John’s performance in that production, Rob Richards wrote that though Paul Newman had played the part in a professional production, “he never drew me in the way John Kane” did. Rob recalls, “Watching John act . . . his mentoring and friendship . . . they are immeasurable gifts. [He was] a built-in dramaturg, and a superb model for the students. He came to rehearsal with his lines memorized! Ready to work. Ready to share such line deliveries. Forever my favorite actor, my own star. What a gift to a teaching career!”

Colleagues remember John as “small in frame, but a giant in intellect.” He was known for quietly, soberly clarifying issues and introducing new perspectives from his seat in the smoking section of faculty meeting, as well as for his kind and warm-hearted support of colleagues in the English Department. One testified that John was “a multi-talented individual who did not broadcast his gifts yet shared them freely. Non sibi was in his DNA.” Fellow colleagues and friends also appreciated and admired the astute—and deadpan hilarious—ways he “viewed and commented on the human comedy.” [from John’s obituary]

In a career review, John wrote, “Friends keep asking me when will I have my mid-life crisis. I’d have it in a minute if it would please you, but I can’t at the moment think of another kind of work I’d be more satisfied with.” Of course, that work was bound up in the teaching of English, work that John described as “teaching language . . . ways language can help discover, define, shape perceptions, thoughts, feelings, imaginings,” work that he hoped would “make students alive, eager and zestful . . . blithe for learning, as Sir Thomas More might have said.” [from John’s 25 Year Citation, written by Dean of Faculty Jack Herney]

His students fondly remembered Mr. Kane as a “man of good cheer, well known for his easygoing and approachable nature.” He was a “strong believer in the Harkness method, striving to foster a positive learning environment in the classroom and aiming to help his students cultivate a genuine interest in the English language.” He “never ceased to bring color into the classroom,” according to one, “even as we struggled to plow through Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure.”

One colleague in the English Department [T.H.] recalls sharing a classroom with Mr.Kane during his first year of teaching at Exeter. “I was impressed,” he wrote, “by the handmade cushions adorning each chair around the Harkness table (Mary Ann’s embellishment, as I later learned). All for nought, John later told me; when entering the classroom on the first day and finding their comfortably padded seats, the Exeter boys—and they were mostly boys then—stood each cushion on its end, preferring the hard wooden slab for their proper instruction. ‘Discomfort builds character’—in the old Exeter ethos. But it stayed with me,” continued the colleague, “John’s gesture, as emblematic of his kindness and warmth in a place that was rarely kind or warm, back then.”

Those qualities were echoed by one of John’s students who was a member of Exeter’s first female class [Jane Feldman]. She writes:

He was a gift to his students, colleagues, and the school. In an era when there didn’t seem to be a lot of empathy or compassion towards the students from the faculty, he was an exception. I wrote a short story in which there was pain and suffering, and he asked me if I was okay. To compare, a dormmate wrote a story about a rape (which was based on a true story), and her English teacher corrected her grammar. Mr. Kane was a great teacher and a very kind man. I always made a point of visiting his classroom when I was back on campus.

There are surely countless more stories such as this one circulating in the minds and memories of the students who sat with Mr. Kane around the table during his thirty-nine years at Exeter, up until his retirement in 2012.

While PEA certainly kept John busy, he remained active in the greater Seacoast community and arts scene. He won the NHCTA Actor of the Year Award in 1985 for his work with The Exeter Players and several theater groups in Portsmouth. Also in Portsmouth, he served on the board of Prescott Park and did extensive volunteer work with The Independence Museum in Exeter. He performed several musicals with The Exeter Players and sang for a time with the choir at St. Michael’s Church. He led the Shakespeare Society in Exeter, with participants reading through nearly all of Shakespeare’s plays under John’s leadership.

John’s final curtain came after a protracted illness; he died peacefully on December 26, 2023. He is survived by Mary Ann, his beloved wife of fifty-nine years; his sons, Justin and Owen; daughters-in-law Lee Ann and Hester; grandchildren Phelan and Isabelle; and stepchild Tig. Perhaps it is appropriate to end this memorial with their tribute to “Grampy,” a “quietly spiritual and faithful” man who was “hilariously funny” but who also “had more gravitas in his little finger than most people have in their entire body . . . He was content to be himself, to be in our company, to make us laugh, to share his knowledge . . . to love each of us as we were, and to make his small slice of the world a much, much better place. He was not a perfect human, but he was perfect for us, and we were lucky to have him.”

Those sentiments are certainly shared by his extended family, us.

I move that this Memorial Minute be submitted to John’s wife, Mary Ann, and be spread upon the minutes of the faculty.

Respectfully submitted,

Todd Hearon

Learning by Doing

From Berlin boardrooms to excavation sites at the Sanctuary of Zeus, Exonians and faculty explore the world together.

Wyoming

After completing a spring-term special section of BIO230 that approached the curriculum through the lens of the biology in Yellowstone National Park, selected students spent a week on-site this summer. The group made day trips into the park and worked with instructors from Yellowstone Forever Institute to learn about wolf reintroduction, grizzly bear conservation and the bison/brucellosis dynamic. Students also visited thermal features and contributed to a citizen science project to monitor the effects of climate change in the park.

“By learning about niches and resource partitioning, I could understand the habitats of animals in Yellowstone,” Anvi Murka ’28 says. “In-class discussions about pyroclimax communities helped me understand why so many lodgepole pines were in areas affected by fire.”

Taiwan

During a three-week immersion program in Taipei, Taiwan, students developed their Mandarin Chinese skills and understanding of Taiwanese culture through interactive classes, community based activities and host family placements.

“From learning to fish for shrimp from strangers at a shrimp pond to ordering boba at the night market, I was able to improve my language every day,” Logan Liu ’27 says. “One of my favorite parts of the trip was coming home to eat dinner with my host family. Dinner would end up taking two hours as we talked about Taiwanese politics, high school and culture over a hot bowl of beef noodle soup.” 

Ning Zhou, modern languages instructor and faculty chaperone, says, “I am so impressed by students’ rapid growth in their language-learning skills and also glad to see them converse with Taiwanese locals with confidence and curiosity.”

Greece

Three Exeter students joined an excavation at the Sanctuary of Zeus and Sanctuary of Pan at Mount Lykaion in Arcadia, Greece, under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Exeter faculty members Carol Cahalane and Paul Langford joined the students, who spent six weeks with a team from the University of Arizona, directed by David Romano ’65. They worked in the lower mountain meadow, where temples, altars, houses, fountains and a track for running competitions have been identified along with objects of daily life and ritual celebrations.

South Korea

On a 10-day program, Exonians immersed themselves in South Korea. They explored Korean spirituality during an overnight stay at a Buddhist temple and learned about the fragile peace with North Korea, visiting the Demilitarized Zone and meeting with defectors from the North. “Going to the DMZ made me realize just how heavy the weight of the Korean War was,” Euphoria Yang ’27 says. “Learning about it in history classes, you don’t necessarily feel how hard it was for the soldiers and how complicated this truce agreement was. It also made me realize how much history is still so relevant in the present world today.”

Iceland

Exeter travelers to Iceland, in partnership with GeoCamp Iceland, were introduced to the country’s unique and vibrant geology. The group visited some of the youngest landmass on Earth, observed the effect of a warmer climate on the island’s glaciers, learned about natural hazards in Westman Islands, listened to sagas that inspired Tolkien and the Marvel movies, and experienced culture and museums in Reykjavik.

Levi Stoll ’28 says the trip was “my first time outside of America, and the journey affected me more than I thought it would.” Stoll added: “The awe-inspiring landscape, the rich and layered culture, the close-knit community and the delicious food all added up to an exquisite trip.”

Principal Bill Rawson ’71, who was a chaperone, says: “It was a very special experience exploring a new country with 15 curious Exonians. We were all learners every step of the way. And for me, it was quite special observing firsthand the impact our global studies programs have on our students.”

Berlin

ECO502: Principles of Economics and Business, traditionally offered at Exeter in spring term, was redesigned as an intensive place-based and experiential learning trip to Berlin that qualifies for academic credit. During the program, students dived into macro- and microeconomic concepts and the role that the government plays in the country’s economy. Homework assignments covered Germany’s economic history, immigration and environmental policies, and its role in the European Union. Exonians also studied fundamentals of business structure and operation, and the roles of consumer and investor.

“The program allowed us to learn about principles of economics in a classroom setting while also being able to apply our knowledge to the vibrant city of Berlin,” Ally Rubin ’26 says. “Our group visited places that have only furthered my interest in the field of economics, whether that was the BMW factory or talking with members of the German Parliament.”

Colorado

For one week in mid-July, students learned from host Richard Chuchla ’74 about the mountain-building events that created Colorado’s current landscapes starting almost 2 billion years ago and continuing to the present.

By driving, hiking and rafting through the Rocky Mountains, Exonians came to understand how geologic history is unraveled through careful observation. Key topics discussed were how continental collisions grew mountains and created volcanic events that formed large ore deposits and geothermal systems that we are exploiting for energy today; how mining of these ore deposits has enhanced our lives but has created environmental problems; how relatively recent glaciation has sculpted the Rockies into their current craggy form; and how glacial retreat is a bellwether of climate change.

 

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

Exeter Annotated:

Exeter Annotated:

The Storyteller’s Stage

“We’ll do scenes from The Miracle Worker — the story of Helen Keller — and there’s a moment when Helen hides a key because she doesn’t want to be locked in her room. But the metaphor is that her teacher, Annie Sullivan, is actually her key. Once Helen learns to associate a noun with a name that you can spell out, then the world just opens. So, while these old Fisher Theater keys are just props now, they represent the power of learning.”

“My neighbor worked for General Electric for 70 years. When he was moving, his son said: ‘I’ve got these old wooden TVs. Do you want them?’ So, I cut them down and made scenes from the movies Alien, The Lord of the Rings, Frankenstein and The Mummy. When I was a kid, I would watch those classic movies, and there’s just something about an old TV. I couldn’t let them be thrown out.”

“What I love about Exeter is that people come here to work hard, but I also like to have the hard work be playful. I like having the Mr. Potato Heads — I think they used to be my daughters’ — out on the table for the students as a reminder not to take things too seriously.”

“My mother was a puppeteer. She made 75 to 100 hand puppets and marionettes. She would carve every foot, every hand, all the bodies and would make the heads out of clay and string them up. We would put on shows at our home. The townspeople would come and park in the fields. My dad would direct traffic, my brother did the tech, my sister did the box office and stage management, and eventually I became a puppeteer.”

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

Empathy and Gratitude

At Opening Assembly this year, I told new and returning students the same three things I tell new and returning students every year: You can do the work. You will make lifelong friends. Absolutely, you belong here.

Following Academy tradition, I then spoke of our school’s mission — to unite goodness and knowledge and inspire youth from every quarter to lead purposeful lives — and reflected on our five core values  — knowledge and goodness, academic excellence,  youth from every quarter, non sibi and youth is the important period — all of which can be traced to our  Deed of Gift, written 244 years ago.

I then spoke about the importance of empathy in all that we do and all we seek to accomplish at Exeter. As I told the students, empathy is important because it opens our hearts and minds to the kind of learning and growth that we seek to encourage at Exeter. It helps us to be curious about how and why others might see the world differently.

Empathy is fundamental to our Harkness pedagogy. It helps us learn to be comfortable having our thoughts and ideas tested by others whose ideas, perspectives, experiences or identities are different from our own. In this way, it leads to deeper learning, greater personal growth, more effective leadership, and more meaningful contributions to the lives of others.

I hope that our students — this year and every year — lead with empathy in all they do.

At my first Opening Assembly as principal seven years ago, I told the students, “We are not special merely because we are here, but because we are here, we have the opportunity to do special things together.” I repeated that sentiment this year, and I added that I will be excited to see what special things our students will do in the coming months and over the course of the year. I promised them that I will be there every step of the way, cheering them on alongside their teachers, advisers, coaches and other mentors.

As I begin my last year as principal, I find that I don’t want to wait until the end of the year to express my deep gratitude for the encouragement and support that I have received from the entire Exeter community — on and off campus — during my time here. We all seek purpose and meaning in our lives. Having the opportunity to help this school change the lives of our students, as Exeter changed my life many years ago, has been deeply meaningful to me. I am grateful for the many ways we have worked together, motivated always by a deep commitment to the mission of our school and an abiding belief in the capacity of our students to take what they have learned here and make a positive difference in the world.

I have been asked several times in recent months about my plans for my final year. We have important work to do and projects to complete, as is the case every year, but our main objective is always to be the best Exeter we can be. I closed Opening Assembly by saying: “Let’s commit ourselves to the mission and values of our school and approach each day with gratitude in the spirit of non sibi. Let’s aim high, have fun and find joy in all we do.”

That’s my plan.

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

Cabinets of

Cabinets of

Curiosities

Bird Study Skin Collection

 Exeter’s bird study skin collection resides in a large metal cabinet about three feet tall stacked with eight rows of wooden drawers. Inside are 120 specimens — all native to New Hampshire — including Blackburnian warblers, woodpeckers, hummingbirds, cedar waxwings, scarlet tanagers and woodcocks. Many were donated by the Smithsonian and the University of New Hampshire. As those institutions updated their holdings, older specimens were gifted to the Academy, which holds a federal and state salvage permit allowing the legal possession of deceased wildlife.

“These collections are a big part of how we teach here,” Matlack says. “They are critical to the  learning that goes on.” He uses the bird study skin collection to teach his ornithology, biology and marine biology classes. “When we have a bird lab for all the bio kids,” he says, “they have a list. And I have an old dining hall tray. I put birds on there, and they have to respond to different questions, like, ‘Looking at the beak, what does it mean?’ Thing is, birds are always in motion. So to see them like this, you really can study them.”

For students who may be squeamish? Matlack, a fan of puns, says, it’s OK, just “don’t grouse about it.”

Fossil Collection

The Academy’s fossil collection, combined with the personal collection of Science Instructor Townley Chisholm, includes dozens of skulls, bones, fish and plant fossils. There’s a gingko leaf from Wyoming that dates back 60 million years and a plaster copy of the classic Archaeopteryx fossil from the Jurassic period, discovered in a southern German mine in 1861 and dating back 150 million years.

Chisholm’s favorites are the Pleistocene megafauna, large mammals that lived from 2.5 million years ago to about 12,000 years ago.

“A Glyptodon is an animal about the size of a Volkswagen that had these little bony plates in its hide to form an armor,” Chisholm says, holding a piece of the armor he found in the Peace River in Florida. “You find something like that and you say, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s got to be a Glyptodon fossil — nothing else looks like that.’ That’s a great thing about all these fossils: They’re such wonderful things for students to hold and look at.”

They’re also especially helpful in teaching evolution.

“Evolution doesn’t invent new things all that often,” Chisholm says. “It’s typically just sort of re-engineering — making something slightly bigger, slightly smaller. Bringing out these bone fossils from different ages and showing them to students, and having them hold them, they can start to see the differences.” Other fossils reveal the difference between time periods.

“You start thinking about how things change across geographic space and through geological time, which is always good to think about because it expands your thinking,” Chisholm says. “It’s helpful to show students something like this piece of quartzite from 560 million years ago. When you look at it, it’s just a sandy seafloor, and about the only animal life living in it was worms.

“Contrast that with this fossil from about 60 million years later — it’s solid shells, animals all over the place. That shows you the difference, before and after the Cambrian explosion.”

A mammoth vertebra and three long pastern bones of different fossil horses (left)

Other Specimens of Study

Big Cats

A museum in South Boston donated two taxidermied tigers, a lion, a black panther, a jaguar and a leopard skin — all of which are housed in the Science Center.

Human Brain Specimen

A sagittal-sectioned human brain — real and preserved — is used to teach neuroanatomy.

“This is a fantastic way to teach neuroanatomy and brain anatomy because you can see the meninges, the membranes on the outside, the gray matter, and then the white matter — the browner stuff,” Chisholm says.

 

Coral and Shell Collection

Used in marine biology and diversity classes, the school’s coral and shell collection is a unique and valuable reference.

“It’s just great to be able to pull out a whole bunch of examples of coral and then relate that to the living organism that students can see in the tank downstairs,” Science Instructor Sydnee Goddard says.

Fluid-Preserved Animal Collection

Metal cabinets in the science lab contain jars of various sizes, each holding a preserved specimen: an opossum, a deer, spiders — all suspended in formaldehyde or ethanol.

“Kids get excited when they can look at what was a living organism and pass it around and handle it,” Science Instructor Sydnee Goddard says. “It just brings it to life — even though it’s dead. Compared to just looking in a book.”

Goddard’s favorite is the polychaete worm.

“I really love this,” she says. “I use this in teaching about diversity and evolutionary change, and how specialization of segments and appendages allows organisms to subdivide tasks in their body.”

Goddard developed a fondness for the parchment tube worm (Chaetopterus variopedatus) in graduate school, when she collected them from local mudflats.

“I was so excited when I started here at Exeter and saw that we had one,” she says. Some specimens in the Academy collection were collected by Goddard and other instructors; others were donated. Many have unclear origins but have remained part of the collection for decades.

“This is my 35th year,” she says. “They’ve pretty much all been here since I’ve been here.”

Goddard knows the lamprey was found locally.

“It’s great when you can talk about how your students caught it, and the experience of catching it,” she says, recalling past field trips to local rivers. “We used to have the live lamprey attach to their arms — and that’s exciting.”

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

The Power of Struggle

How trial and error and, yes, failure are essential to learning.

A black plastic bin sits next to the 3D printer in Exeter’s Design Lab, the collaborative makerspace in the third-floor physics wing of Phelps Science Center. Labeled “Scrap PLA Only,” the bin contains a jumbled heap of distorted pieces of polylactic acid (PLA), the biodegradable plastic known for its low melting point that is typically used for 3D printing.

Some of the pieces are stamped with perfect round holes; others are so thin and twisted, they resemble spaghetti. Instructor in Computer Science Sean Campbell, who directs the Design Lab, jokingly calls this bin the “bucket of failure”: a physical symbol of the students’ trial-and-error and problem-solving process to turn their digital models into 3D-printed reality.

In Campbell’s fall-term integrated studies course, INT455: Principles of Engineering and Design, students take full advantage of the hands-on, project-oriented environment of the Design Lab. “The course is all about the process of design: Test, make your adjustment, try again,” Campbell explains. “It’s incremental improvement after incremental failing, I guess you could say.”

Aside from the engineering course, and the spring-term course INT554: Design Thinking, most of what students do in the Design Lab is not for a class but for their own independent work, or projects for an activity like the Robotics Club. The lab is intended to be a safe space for making mistakes, with positive results for student resilience.

“The stakes are lower,” Campbell says. “Failure is not as consequential, and there’s not this effect on their future. The hope is that feeling spills over into what they’re doing in class. That sensation of, OK, I messed up, but I can do it a little bit better next time.”

Campbell tries to foster that mindset in his computer science classes, where making mistakes is similarly part of the learning process. Students need time to adjust to this concept, especially those who may be new to Exeter and reluctant to show vulnerabilities in the classroom.

“Students will fret over their code,” Campbell says. “But I say: ‘Just write it and try it. The machine’s going to tell you if it’s right or wrong.’ … It’s really just the backspace key and try again.”

The word “failure” can elicit a negative reaction from many people. No one wants to fail, least of all the highly self-motivated and intellectually curious students who attend Exeter. But the latest thinking in cognitive development, psychology and education illustrates how failure — in the sense of struggling, making mistakes and trying things that don’t work out the first time — is essential to the learning process. Creating a safe environment for students to take risks, experience setbacks and keep their minds open to the possibility of being wrong is crucial, and it is at the heart of Exeter’s Harkness philosophy.

Amy Edmondson, a professor of leadership and management at Harvard Business School and author of Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well, writes about what she calls “intelligent failure,” which can be a key source of discovery and personal development. “Those who succeed significantly in any field are not people who have failed less often, they are people who have failed more often,” Edmondson says. Their success comes not from somehow getting things right the first time, but from trying, learning from their efforts, and trying again. “You don’t get to be a championship tennis player or an elite scientist or a judge … without putting yourself out there, and if you put yourself out there, you will have more things that don’t go your way.”

Another important step in reframing failure, Edmondson says, is choosing to actively value learning over knowing. This means not being afraid to speak when you’re not sure you’re right, to question your assumptions or to admit the possibility of being wrong — a mindset that serves students well around the Harkness table.

“Your peers stand to benefit from your risk-taking, or being wrong, or offering a different point of view,” Edmondson says. “You’re going to push them to be better, and you’re going to push yourself, too.”

Across departments, Exeter’s instructors strive to create an environment in which students can be unafraid to make the kind of “intelligent failures” Edmondson describes. The process of testing hypotheses in a science laboratory is one of the most clear-cut examples, but failure is also essential to learning in Exeter’s distinctive math pedagogy, which relies on an ever-evolving set of problems that are designed to be open-ended, with multiple possible approaches and answers.

Math Department Chair Panama Geer says the goal of each problem is not just getting a final answer, but the process of problem-solving and learning from mistakes. “One of the things that we value in the math classroom is risk-taking and daring to be wrong,” she says. “The process of getting to an answer is really where the thinking happens.”

The 3,700-plus problems in Exeter’s core curriculum, popularly referred to as Exeter Math, focus on recurring strands — among them optimization, symmetry, graphing, vectors and parameterization, and modeling — that build on themselves as students’ understanding grows. They are updated each year by Exeter math faculty, incorporating insights from the students and teachers who use them.

Geer stresses that for these problems, there’s not one right way to achieve a correct answer, and sometimes more learning happens when an answer is incorrect. “I’ve just said it today to a student in my first class, ‘This is incorrect, but it’s great,’” she says. “‘So let’s talk about why it’s great and what you learned.’”

This kind of thinking is freeing for students, Geer says, because it takes some pressure off and creates an open-ended, safe space where students learn it’s OK to admit they’re struggling. This can be an adjustment for a lot of new students, she acknowledges, particularly those who are used to doing well in their math classes without much extra effort.

“Our students put a lot of pressure on themselves academically, and we’re asking them to stand up in front of an audience of peers and be vulnerable and make mistakes,” Geer says. “The sooner we get them accustomed to that, the more productive they are.”

Geer keeps an eye out for any students who seem to be holding back in her classroom, perhaps for fear of being wrong. “I’ll just try and read their faces and say: ‘I feel like you have an idea here that you’re not sharing. What are you thinking?’” she says. “They might say: ‘Oh, well Problem 6 reminds me of Problem 25. Does that ring a bell for anybody else?’ Then suddenly people will jump on that, and those are beautiful moments in the classroom.”

For Geer, the process of solving Exeter’s math problems through trial and error, throwing out ideas and having peers both question and support you, is just one form of the natural way that we as humans learn.

“You wouldn’t think being wrong is something that would give kids confidence, but it does,” Geer adds. “We’re creating a safe space to be wrong, where kids are encouraged to take risks. By taking those risks, that’s where one dusts off the corners between understanding and lack of understanding.”

A focus on process is no less important in Exeter’s English classes, especially when it comes to the way students learn to write and revise their work. “Part of what is supposed to be happening in rewriting is not just fine-tuning, but also reckoning with the choices that you’ve made in a first draft and deciding whether they make sense when you step back and think about what you’re really trying to do with a piece of writing,” says Barbara Desmond, instructor in English and chair of Exeter’s English Department. “In that sense, revision is about confronting mistakes or realizing that your original direction was not the best or most fruitful choice. That’s part of how you learn.”

Like Campbell and Geer, Desmond seeks to create an environment in the classroom where students feel comfortable speaking up at the Harkness table, even if they’re uncertain. New students in particular can be hesitant to jump in because they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing, Desmond says. “One of the things [teachers] have to do is help students stop seeing those moments as high-stakes moments,” she adds, “and instead help them to see them as a step they’re taking along the way to arriving at a different understanding.”

As students grow more experienced, they adjust to the idea that the student- centered classroom is not just about everyone getting to talk, but also about learning to work with the group and build off each other’s comments to arrive at a fuller understanding of the material.

“I don’t think that any of us ever get over that fear of making mistakes,” Desmond says. “I think that’s just human. In a good Harkness class, most students know to pull what is good from a comment and move forward with it, or to suggest an alternative perspective. Ideally, they stop seeing things in terms of ‘that’s right’ and ‘that’s wrong.’”

Paul Muentener ’00 recalls the four years he spent at Exeter as a time when he was surrounded by people who shared his love of learning and intellectual engagement. “What I enjoyed most about Exeter was learning from my peers around the table, and getting perspectives that I didn’t have myself,” Muentener says.

To do this, he had to embrace a willingness to be wrong, at least some of the time. Now an associate professor of psychology at Tufts University, Muentener sees his time at the Harkness table as an important stage in developing metacognition, or the awareness of his own thoughts and learning processes. “It’s basically the knowledge of what we do and don’t know,” he explains.

In addition to teaching psychology, Muentener is director of the Cognitive Development Laboratory at Tufts, where he studies the foundations of how children learn to explore, talk and think about the world around them. While his research focuses on cognitive development in the preschool to early elementary phase, he stresses that the ideas and concepts he’s studying are applicable to most stages of development, and likely to adults as well.

Through his research, Muentener has come to see failure as a unique opportunity for learning. “It triggers you to focus on what you don’t know, on what’s not going right, on what you could learn more about,” he says. “In some ways people view failure negatively, but I think it’s one of the times that it really puts you in a space to learn more.”

To explain the learning potential of these moments of failure, Muentener often gives his students the example of what happens when a TV remote control, a cellphone or another everyday piece of technology fails. “You don’t have to think about how your systems and tools work when they work as expected,” he says, “but when things don’t work, it invites you to ask yourself why. Are the batteries dead in the remote control? Did I point it in the wrong direction? Those are the types of experiences that prompt that type of question-asking.”

Muentener also sees failure as important relative to developing what Stanford University professor Carol Dweck has called a “growth mindset”: the belief that you can build on your abilities through effort, good instruction and persistence, and that failing and trying again are a key part of that process. By contrast, those with a “fixed mindset” tend to see setbacks as reflecting their inherent lack of ability. Because of this, they may tend to avoid taking risks and putting themselves in situations where such setbacks are a possibility, depriving them of key learning and development opportunities.

“If you never face a challenge, and you never fail, you aren’t given the evidence you need to think that you can grow and change,” Muentener says, adding that failure “promotes the idea that you can push yourself to gain new knowledge or new skills.”

For Muentener, Exeter’s focus on ensuring that students with different perspectives and opinions are listening to and learning from each other — even when they disagree — is part of what enables them to weather the inevitable challenges that provide opportunity for growth.

“A lot of the Harkness method is realizing what you know and where the gaps in your knowledge are,” he says. “Failure is inherently part of that process.

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