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

Emma Ward

Exploring how goodness fits into the future

Have you ever stopped to consider the ethical implication of clicking “like” on an Instagram post? Or whether digital assistants like Alexa and Siri have First Amendment rights to free speech? What about corporate social responsibility? Is that a thing? These are some of the salient questions bubbling up in the world today that, more often than not, go left unexplored — especially by many adolescents.

Religion Department Instructor Peter Vorkink P’95 is working to change all that and help keep Exeter’s curriculum in step with the times. Last winter term, the department offered Religion 597: Silicon Valley Ethics: Case Studies in the World of High Tech, an experimental new course Vorkink designed that required students to think deeply about the complex ways in which technology has altered not only how they live their daily lives, but also their values.

Connecting with Silicon Valley

Vorkink knew he had to connect Exeter with the epicenter of innovation, California’s Silicon Valley, in order to make the class authentic and relevant. But how? The idea he landed on was crowdsourcing — ask Exonians currently working in the technology field to take part in the class as co-designers of its syllabus. Vorkink leveraged his Rolodex — populated during his 47 years of teaching — and enlisted alumni from such high-tech giants as Google, Apple, Oracle, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube to collaborate one-on-one with students over the course of the term as mentors and resources in developing case studies. It was a first-of-its-kind experience at the Academy. “I know of no other secondary school offering a course like this, and few colleges, either,” Vorkink says, “and what a wonderful way to connect alums to the life of current students.”

Among the 40 experts Vorkink tapped was Christine Robson Weaver ’99, project lead for Google’s Machine Learning Division. “I’m thrilled that Exeter is diving into such a relevant and timely area of study,” Weaver says. “Right now, in Silicon Valley, and in my role at Google, these issues are top of mind.”

Next-gen problem solvers

Anna Richardson White ’98, brand communications director at Instagram, readily participated as well. “It was an honor to be part of such an important and groundbreaking class,” White says. “I’m pleased that Exeter would create this critical course for the next generation of leaders, creators and problem solvers.”

When Religion 597 hit the Courses of Instruction, Vorkink was overwhelmed with registrants, enough to fill three full sections. Students were attracted to the class’s contemporary practicality and how it could teach them to make a difference. “As a person with a computer science background and interest in entering Silicon Valley,” Pavan Garidipuri ’19 says, “I wanted to explore Silicon Valley’s ethical dilemmas so that, in a non sibi spirit, I’ll know how to create products that will help society, not harm it.”

Parsing the Digital Age

Over 10 weeks, the students parsed some of the serious questions of the Digital Age. They took internet truth quizzes (Can you spot fake news?) and read the technology section of The New York Times, plus articles in Wired and on Slate. They listened to TED Talks and watched documentaries on extremists and conspiracy theorists and prank videos on YouTube. They scrolled through Twitter and Instagram (as well as Finsta, or fake Instagram) accounts. They did all of this with an eye on identifying ethical conundrums, and figuring out how they differed from political, legal, sociological, historical or technological issues.

As questions arose, the alums, via email, Skype and cellphone, stepped up to provide context, to frame the issues as constructively as possible, to offer resources for further inquiry and to be solid sounding boards. “This is the first exercise as an alum where I felt clear and direct attachment to a student,” says Quincy Smith ’97. “My mentee shared accountability, we used teamwork and gang tackling on top of Google docs, Sunday calls and a flurry of text messages. It was like Fortnite.edu.”

The term’s efforts culminated in the production of a student-written case study on a single issue. Students chose from a broad list of nearly 70 topics that Vorkink supplied, including body scanners, the surveillance economy, virtual currencies, the gig economy, public shaming and fake news. “Writing the case study was an eye-opening experience,” says Gordon Chi ’19. “I didn’t realize how complex the ethical considerations for self-driving cars could be. I started to question whether the design rationale of our algorithms should be determined by the government of the country where the product is used, or rather simply the programmers that create the self-driving cars.”

“Know thyself”

On high school campuses where many students may not align with a single religion, broadly scoped classes like Religion 597 offer another avenue for understanding what it means, at the deepest level, to be a person. “When I think about teaching religion to adolescents, I think about ferreting out, identifying, naming, discussing and comparing the personal and practical pieties, the value systems by which our students live, that which they hold most dear in their hearts, what’s really real for them, what really matters, what constitutes the center of meaning for them — all of which is encapsulated for me in the term ‘religion,’” Vorkink says.

An Episcopal priest and ardent world traveler, Vorkink has taught philosophy and religion at the Academy since 1972. He graduated from Yale and earned a divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York. When he was 20, he spent a summer in Florida volunteering for Martin Luther King Jr. “Working closely with King showed me a different side of religion, namely, religion as praxis, or the practice of faith,” he says. He went on to study philosophy and religion at Harvard, leaving the doctoral program ABD (without writing his dissertation) to come to Exeter. Then in 2015, Vorkink wrote his thesis, entitled “Know Thyself: Why and How to Teach Religion and Philosophy to Secondary School Students,” and fulfilled the final requirement for his doctorate.

A key part of Vorkink’s unwritten lesson plan for the Silicon Valley course was to help students figure out how all of their individual choices in this technologically charged world pertain to their philosophical search to “know thyself.” “In a generation where our influences have expanded from our parents to millions of online users around the world, it has become harder for us to determine our own morals and make our own decisions,” Mia Kuromaru ’19 says. “This class helped me realize that every student should understand the importance of their own autonomy.”

Classmate Tina Wang ’19 noticed her habits changing throughout the term. “I’m much more aware of my own technology use now,” she says. “I often find myself pausing to think about the ethical dilemmas behind news stories I see. … This course pushed me, it taught me to question and challenge what we too often blindly accept.”

Vorkink was pleased to hear that what the students were learning in the classroom carried over into their everyday lives: “Probably the most encouraging comment any student made, and I heard it again and again in different contexts during this course was, ‘You know, I never thought about that.’ That was encouraging in terms of why the course was valuable to offer. … It made them think.”

In a final act of reflection inspired by Jill Lepore’s New Yorker article “What 2018 Looked Like Fifty Years Ago,” Vorkink asked the students to imagine the technologies of 2069. Some prophesized a data-driven society completely devoid of privacy, while others saw the end of livestock farming in favor of cellular cloning of lab-grown meats. Many noted an increased reliance on robots to perform low-level jobs and the replacement of traditional “screens” with holograms. Each futuristic prediction was placed in the Academy Library vault as a time capsule, waiting to be opened during the classmates’ 50th reunion.

Beyond the table

Exeter students feed their hunger for discovery with passion projects outside the classroom.

Not every inspiration occurs at the table.

Harkness works up an appetite for ideas and possibilities, for figuring out how things work and why things happen. That hunger for understanding continues to grow beyond the classroom door. Like a flame given oxygen, Harkness and its lessons spread.

Whether it’s inventors flocking to Design Lab during open hours or a blossoming poet filling her free blocks with verse, Exeter students are constantly exploring. Many of their biggest discoveries and brightest ideas are of their own making. Our fledgling robotics team tried-and-erred its way straight to the world championships. The collapse of a family beehive inspired a trio of seniors to study causes and seek solutions. Two members of the class of 2019 took advantage of the senior independent study program to pursue their arts in self-designed projects.

They represent a culture of invention and ingenuity at Exeter. Here are their stories.

Rookie robot team has all the right stuff

“They are VERTEX!” shouts the ref in a red Hawaiian shirt as he announces this match of Rover Ruckus, the regional FIRST Tech Challenge event held in February. He points to three Exeter students wearing protective goggles, nervous smiles, and red T-shirts emblazoned with VERTEX and the lion rampant: Vincent Xiao ’22 and Joy Liu ’20 (robot drivers) and Neil Chowdhury ’22 (match coach). Whoops from the crowd of thousands resound through Southern New Hampshire University’s athletic complex as VERTEX’s partner for this match and their two opposing teams are introduced.

As the racing bugle sounds, the teams’ four robots, simulating lunar rovers, drop from their tethered parking spots on the red landing craft to start their three-minute navigation of the pitch. The rovers, with long metal extenders and heavy-duty wheels, are designed to pick up “minerals” (in reality, Wiffle balls and plastic cubes) and deposit them in designated spots. After 30 seconds of entirely autonomous driving, buzzers blare and the driver-led portion of the match begins.

Clutching an Xbox controller wired to an Android phone that communicates with a second Android on the rover, Xiao gives robot 15534 a burst of speed. Its intake pulls in two balls, maneuvers one into the robot’s carrying cabin and releases the second back to the “crater.” 15534 swiftly backs up 4 inches, extends a long ladderlike arm above the landing craft and tilts the ball onto the craft’s roof. It bounces off. Again 15534 tries, this time with a cube. It goes in, but to the wrong spot. Two more attempts and success. “Nice job!” intones the ref.

The VERTEX alliance has won the round.

Begun as a PEA club in September 2018, VERTEX walked away from Rover Ruckus with the prestigious Inspire award, given to the team that, in addition to being strong technically and creatively, is an ambassador for FIRST programs, showing graciousness on and off the pitch, and sharing knowledge, excitement and experience with other teams and the community. Judges commended the work on autonomous operation and the engineering notebook, as well as the extensive community outreach programming. VERTEX was also praised for its inclusiveness: members hail from around the world and half identify as female or nonbinary. The Inspire award guaranteed VERTEX a spot at the FIRST World Championship in late April, where 1,400 robot teams from more than 70 countries gathered.

Although they call themselves “rookies” — about half the VERTEX team had no previous robotics experience and seven are new to Exeter — they bring hours of teaching programming and robotics to peers, and hours more in self-taught skills. It clearly shows. The FIRST regional judges singled out the team’s work with open source image recognition software — the robot must be able to “see” where it is going and what to pick up — because the students had mastered the software and identified flaws in the algorithms.

But when you ask the students what really counts, it’s not the technology.

“It’s the impact we make on the community,” says Penny Brant ’20. “Diversity in STEM was really an issue we wanted to focus on.” Through presentations and interactive events, VERTEX showed community groups that robotics is fun and everyone can do it. Brant is most proud of STEM Day, a student-run event in January that gathered more than 100 Exonians and community members for presentations by Harvard and MIT researchers, a tech fair of student projects and participatory challenges.

“STEM Day was a revolution,” adds David Song ’21, the self-taught CAD guru who is widely credited with jump-starting the robotics team. The turnout and excitement, he explains, especially on a Sunday, showed the pent-up demand among students for opportunities to collaborate on STEM projects outside of the classroom.

Kai Lockwood ’21 remembers coming to Exeter as a prep and asking, “Where’s the robotics club?” A year later Lockwood, who identifies as nonbinary and uses the pronoun they, joined the fledgling FIRST robotics team as its electrical lead, happy to be working with their hands again, something they craved. Lockwood is fulfilled and inspired by the robotics demonstrations for local organizations including Girls Who Code, the YMCA, FIRST LEGO League, ESSO robotics club and Seacoast Outright, a LGBTQIA+ support group.

On a Wednesday afternoon in late February, a few weeks after the regional win, VERTEX members gather in the busy Design Lab on the third floor of Phelps Science Center.

Xiao, the mechanical captain, stands next to the table where 15534, currently shorn of many components, is undergoing major redesign for worlds. The table is strewn with colorful zip ties, wires, screws, gears, clamps and bands. Xiao works silently, and, as people approach the table, he connects. Two students have recently joined the project, and he talks to them about mechanical priorities. “If you use this, remember that you need to get the screws out of the way — they need to be in really tight,” he explains as he holds a metal fitting in the air.

Liu comes over to the table and picks out a part from the box labeled “Mech Kit.” She wonders aloud if it will adequately maintain rigidity if they use it to fix the intake. “The robot is never done,” Liu frequently points out in conversation. The team’s try/fail/regroup/try approach is in clear evidence today as she and Xiao discuss what has worked, what has not, and paths for moving forward. This openness to challenge and change has successfully survived several serious tests already, including an unexpected software breakdown during Rover Ruckus, and the disruptions to progress that occur every time the team disbands for school breaks.

Lockwood wanders in around 3 o’clock, cheeks still flush from swim practice. They immediately bend down to the table and get busy — hands confident and strong as they pull apart wires, then brace them on the robot with duct tape. Lockwood notices that a new part has arrived. Soon, Lockwood and Nico Gallo, the Design Lab coordinator and VERTEX adviser, are holding ends of the large blue coiled air hose, flexing it and talking about tensile strength and where points of resistance will occur.

Panda Atipunumphai ’20, a CAD specialist, is over by the window working on a project that is a direct offshoot of her robotics work. Although she doesn’t yet know it, in a few days she and her team will receive the Innovation award from LaunchX, an MIT entrepreneurship program, for their plan to reuse single-use plastics as 3D printing filament.

Song, tall and quiet, wanders fluidly from the robotics group to another table where an AI-driven recycling sorter is undergoing a final build for presentation at LaunchX. Recognized for his leadership and dedication at the state championships, Song is waiting to hear if he will make the FIRST Dean’s List at worlds, an honor given to only 10 students.

Liu has left the Design Lab, carrying a part that is not working as predicted. Suddenly, a question comes up and Xiao asks, “Where’s Joy?” There’s a ripple of disruption as team members query each other, across tables busy with activity, to see if anyone knows where she has gone. “There she is!” announces Xiao with relief as Liu returns a few minutes later. VERTEX gets back to preparing for worlds.

Creating buzz in the fight to save bees

It’s a startling statistic: Approximately one in every three mouthfuls of food comes from crops pollinated by bees. But commercial honeybee colonies around the world are failing at an alarming rate, declining by 30 to 40 percent over a seven-year period in the United States alone.

Vinny Kurup ’19 hadn’t heard the buzz around honeybee die-off when he started fall term in Social Innovation, a senior elective. But three months of collaboration, many hours of research, one video and an oral presentation later, he has in-depth knowledge of how this impacts food sources worldwide. In January, Kurup and classmates Jenny Yang ’19 and Cooper Wolff ’19 unveiled their solution, BeeInnovative, at the New Hampshire Social Venture Innovation Challenge (SVIC). The trio captured first place in the competition’s high school track for their proposal to create a mobile application and monitoring device that alerts beekeepers of hive health issues. “I was a little nervous about the competition and didn’t know what to expect,” Wolff says, “but we were really prepared.”

That preparation is thanks, in part, to their teacher, Director of Service Learning Liz Reyes, and the way Social Innovation is structured. The course is designed to get students out of the classroom and into the community. “The students have to study root causes of problems in society, like environmental concerns, health care, refugee rights — issues that negatively impact well-being,” says Reyes. Students are challenged to understand issues by engaging one-on-one with stakeholders. “I ask them to partner with people in the field to develop solutions,” she says. The class breaks into teams during the course to study a specific problem and propose a potential solution. The culmination is the SVIC.

The BeeInnovative team came together around an issue that Yang was already studying: the failure of one of her family’s beehives. Last summer, she programmed a computer to identify hive-health problems by interpreting images collected from other beekeepers and disseminating her findings on social media. But she was eager to dig deeper into the problem. “I was excited to see how my research could be applied in the real world and figure out how this system could really look,” Yang says. “I knew there was still a long way to go.” The project also intrigued her classmates. “We’d heard about Jenny’s work with bees and knew we wanted to expand off her research,” Wolff says.

To get started, Wolff interviewed Exeter staffer Linda Safford P’12, P’14, a local beekeeper who explained the effects of mites on honeybees and how timely monitoring of hives could prevent their failure through early identification of disease. Combining this knowledge and additional research with Yang’s efforts, the students developed an early-warning solution designed to identify disease before it spreads and triggers a hive failure.

The BeeInnovative team proposes placing a small camera connected to a Raspberry Pi (a single-board computer) at the entrance of a hive to continuously monitor and record bee activity. The camera sends video footage of bees traveling in and out of the hive in real time to the Raspberry Pi, which uses machine learning technology to inspect the video frames for behavior or appearances that may be indicative of disease. The data is sent to the BeeInnovative mobile app so that beekeepers can monitor their hives’ status. Should an anomaly be detected, the app alerts the beekeeper, displays potential treatment methods and provides a listing of beekeepers within the app’s community.

Yang’s strong STEM background and her knowledge of honeybees, Kurup’s public speaking and coding abilities, and Wolff ’s writing and interviewing experience were complementary skills during their project’s development phase. Yang worked on the project’s written summary; she and Kurup presented a two-minute oral overview to a panel of judges during the competition; and all of them worked on a three-minute video.

Based on positive feedback from the SVIC judges, Kurup, Wolff and Yang are continuing their research and creating a business plan for BeeInnovative. They’ve turned the project into an independent research course for their senior spring term. Using their skills in physics, computer science and electrical engineering, they’ll delve further into the project, building a mobile app as well as a prototype hive monitor. “There are so many variables we don’t know,” Kurup notes. “We have to make sure we’re using the right kind of camera, whether it’s recording the information we want, and if its relaying that information to the app.” They’re excited about the possibilities.

Support from Exeter students and staff has been key. “I didn’t envision the project coming this far when I started it last summer,” Yang admits. “The fact that I’ve been able to continuously work on it at Exeter with the support of the school, Mrs. Reyes, and my friends and teammates is really energizing.”

Kurup agrees. “Exonians are used to being challenged in a narrow sense but we also have the support of the school to take risks in fields we’re passionate about,” he says. “The truth is, I don’t think any of us would’ve been able to do this project outside the environment Exeter provides.”

Harkness for one: seniors hone solo projects

Kate Denny ’19 knots a salmon-pink apron around her waist, grabs a dish cloth and sops up an imaginary spill from an empty diner table. She complains about her manipulative mother, who, it just so happens, she murdered.

Moments later, she beseeches her husband, Agamemnon, to spare their daughter and not sacrifice her to the Greek gods.

In another moment, she sings at Don Quixote in a scolding alto to see her for who she really is, not a lady but a prostitute. “I am not any kind of lady!” she chides.

This shape-shifting performance, carried out on the stage of The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center’s Actors Lab, is Denny’s senior independent study project on full display. For weeks, she worked to memorize six monologues and two songs from disparate sources, all with one commonality: They are the words of strong female characters. The show, presented three days before spring break, is Denny’s de facto final exam.

At an institution where collaboration is canon, the independent study program for seniors remains a popular outlet to go it alone. The goal of the program is to allow Exeter students the opportunity to explore areas of interest that fall outside traditional course descriptions. Seniors, with approval from the faculty, may design individual projects of comparable value and scope to those of an academic course. Each student keeps a faculty adviser updated on their progress but generally works independently throughout the term. The time and resources poured into projects often exceed those dedicated to many senior-level classes.

Recent projects have included writing and producing a bluegrass album, designing and conducting a Harkness class for adults on campus and constructing a 150-squarefoot tiny house on wheels. During winter term, eight students devised independent study projects ranging from Denny’s one-woman spectacular to Yasmina Abukhadra and Tony Ye’s exploration of ways to harness solar energy.

For Denny, a solo project comes naturally. Theater is a passion she hopes to make a career one day, and she sees the acting process as an independent study each time she tackles a role.

“I love Harkness. I think it works really well in a lot of subjects,” she says. “I love Harkness math. … I love it in history, I love it in English. I think it’s really important to get all of the different perspectives and opinions when talking about a subject.

“But in acting, you kind of have to analyze a piece for yourself. You can’t let other opinions influence what you think about a piece, you can’t let other influences tell you how to play a role. Obviously, a director is there to guide you along the way, but ultimately the way you decide to create a character for yourself and create a persona is all up to you.”

Denny worked with Theater and Dance Department Chair Rob Richards to choose the roles. She wanted variety — different eras, different ages, fictional and actual — as long as the voice was that of an inspirational female character. She called her project “Femme Play-Tale: Exploring Strong Female Leads in the Theater.”

A day student from Exeter, Denny juggled her regular course load, playing the Wicked Witch of the West in the Mainstage production of The Wizard of Oz and singing in Concert Choir, all while trying to organize and memorize the monologues. She then mapped out the order of a show that wound up being 38 minutes long.

Between each act, she gives the small audience a brief description of the character, the challenges the role presented and why she chose it. She closes the performance with a song from the Broadway hit Rent.

“The only thing to do is jump over the mooooon,” she sings.

Natalie Love’s independent study project also revolved around female characters. She chose six young women on campus — friends, dormmates, one of her younger sisters — to serve as the subjects of a series of portraits Love re-created using serigraphy, or silk-screening.

Unlike Denny’s personas, however, Love’s subjects did not have overt statements to make. Her inspiration came from studying essayist Leslie Jamison in a creative nonfiction class during fall term. Jamison, in her introduction to the collection Best American Essays 2017, laments that the only art worth making it seems in this charged era is “political with a capital P” — “a pointed commentary on mass shootings, a vocal critique of our current administration, a harsh op-ed about race relations.”

Love, a senior from Arlington, Virginia, has focused on having “deeper meaning” with her art projects in the past, but this time she wanted to zero in on the individual. “I just wanted to look at people up close, just as people,” she says, “not with any sort of agenda behind it or extra meaning, but that people in themselves, just being people, have meaning.”

Many seniors choose to focus on a calling for their independent study, a project that serves as a precursor to a college concentration. Love chose a hobby. She is an aspiring physicist and mathematician; she’ll study both at Brown. The printmaking project offered her a chance to step outside exploring electricity and magnetic fields in her Advanced Physics class and the geometry of polyhedra in her Math 690 course.

But Love insists her interests in science, math and art all go together.

“I don’t really believe in this whole right brain-left brain thing. Type A, Type B, whatever,” she says. “Because the thing is, there is a science in doing this kind of art.”

She proceeds to explain how forcing ink through the tiny holes of a screen onto a canvas requires a scientific approach — and a weather report. “Like when you do the photo-emulsion, when you coat a screen, how long you let it rest will determine how long you have to cook it for, to harden the emulsion on to the screen. If I coated some screens a week ago, and today I’m going in to shoot the screens, you have to think about, is it a sunny day? Because if it’s sunny, it can change the chemistry of the emulsion.”

And as math and science seep into her art, art informs her science and math.

“For anything, creative thinking, creative problem-solving is really important,” she says. “And I think that doing the arts can help foster that creative-thinking spirit.

Love was drawn to the freedom of essentially being her own teacher — for one class, at least. Art Instructor Mary Claire Nemeth served as her adviser on the project, but as is typical in the independent study format, the oversight was mostly hands-off.

“I wanted that sort of trial and error, figuring it out,” she says. “I wanted to sit there and think, ‘What are the variables here, what can I adjust, and what effect will that have to solve the problems I’m faced with?’

“When you get out into the real world, you really are just accountable to yourself and your deadlines. And I set the deadlines for this project. … It’s nice to have that level of trust with a faculty member, where she’s like ‘You do you.’”

“You are ready”

“You are ready”

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Exeter senior captures nation’s top STEM prize

Achyuta Rajaram ’24 wins $250,000 as top finisher in the 83rd Regeneron Science Talent Search.

When the dust settled in Washington, D.C., this week, Achyuta Rajaram ’24 won the top award and took home a whopping $250,000 in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competition.

Rajaram’s winning project, an automatic method to determine which parts of a computer model makes decisions, aims to illuminate how these algorithms are “thinking” and make them more effective, safe and equitable as a result.

A senior from Hopedale, Massachusetts, Rajaram was one of three Exonians among the top 40 finalists, each of whom took home $25,000 for besting a total field of 300 scholars and 2,162 entrants. The Science Talent Search reported this year’s pool of applicants as its largest since the 1960s.

Alan Bu ’24, of Glenmont, New York, won 10th place and a prize of $40,000 for a math project that gave precise limits on how many spanning trees — the connecting points of vertices in a graph — that can exist in a planar graph, in which no edges cross each other.

Riya Tyagi ’24, of Short Hills, New Jersey, won $25,000 for placing in the top 40 finalists. Her project focused on using computer vision to investigate how AI determines patients’ race and ethnicity, with the goal of enabling the development of more ethical A.I.-powered healthcare software.

Representing 36 schools across 19 states, the finalists spent the week meeting with competition judges and other scientists as well as touring congressional offices and monuments and visiting the Smithsonian Natural History Museum and Johns Hopkins and Georgetown universities.

With their achievement, Rajaram, Bu and Tyagi join the ranks of Science Talent Search alumni, many of whom have gone on to acclaimed careers in STEM fields and captured international honors including the Nobel Prize, National Medal of Science, Fields Medal and MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Among those alumni is PEA’s Yunseo Choi ’21, who won the top prize three years ago for a project focused on matchmaking theory.

Existentialism on a Friday afternoon

F block at the end of a long week seems an unlikely venue to discuss the meaning of life, but the seven students in Tom Simpson’s Religion 560 class are eager to dig in.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground is where the Simpson seven pick up their discussion on this gray Friday afternoon. The group spent the first weeks of fall term reading and dissecting the book, which is credited as one of the first works of existentialism. Today, Simpson has them conclude that examination by reading aloud and discussing an essay from The New Yorker titled “Can Dostoevsky Still Kick You in the Gut?”

Heck, yeah, the writer contends, and the Harkness discussion triggered by the piece supports that notion. Simpson needs only to touch the tiller occasionally as the students steer the conversation. “What if our own interest, as we construe it, consists of refusing what others want of us?” the essayist asks, and then observes that “individualism as a value includes the right to screw yourself up.”

Sounds about right, the seven agree.

From Underground, the class moves on to discuss the previous night’s reading assignment: “The Grand Inquisitor,” the poem tucked inside Dostoevsky’s final novel, The Brothers Karamazov. The poem, and the novel in which it resides, have been cited as favorites of intellectuals, first ladies, poets and popes. In the poem, the title character explains to Jesus Christ why his return from the heavens would interfere with the mission of the church.

An upper from Connecticut says the poem reminds him of Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden,” drawing a parallel between that poem’s theme of Western society’s moral obligation to rule less-advanced civilizations and the church’s responsibility to shield and shepherd mankind in exchange for his freedom.

Such scholarly discourse feels right in Room 222 of the Academy Building. The room is a throwback, with bona fide blackboards and a squadron of pulldown maps seemingly on duty since existentialism was a fledgling philosophy and the Harkness table was new to campus. One can picture earlier generations of Exonians having similar exchanges here.

The discussion veers into comparing and contrasting Dostoevsky’s views about faith with those of the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard. Faith is a con (Dostoevsky), but continued introspection of that faith can confound the con man (Kierkegaard).

The bell tower gongs F block to a close, and the seven gather up their gear and go. It’s Friday afternoon. The meaning of life will have to wait till Monday.

Not by the numbers

Exeter’s custom-made math curriculum fosters understanding through problem-solving.

It’s nearly noon on a damp September day as uppers and seniors spill into Panama Geer’s second-floor classroom in the Academy Building. The students park backpacks beside their chairs and immediately head to the whiteboards sandwiching the century-old room.

In pairs, they talk through solutions to the advanced math problems assigned for the day. The hieroglyphics that take shape in dry-erase marker would be ciphers to many observers, but the students in Math 400-B seem comfortable with this code.

“OK, guys, we have to start talking about the problems pretty soon,” Geer announces as progress slows on a few outstanding problems.

“I see three hard problems still out there — well, there are more than three hard problems — but … let’s get going.”

 

The problems the class tackles on this day and every day are Exeter’s own. They are a handful of the more than 3,700 problems the Math Department has developed through the years to spiral concepts throughout the curriculum and build problem-solving skills that emphasize not the answer but rather the winding path to get there.

“I think there’s a general feeling in the way that we do mathematics that being wrong is part of the process here — and a good part of the process, actually,” says Geer, in her eighth year as a math instructor at PEA after years teaching internationally and at the college level. “And, that wrong answers are often more informative than correct ones.”

Recurring themes — symmetry, optimization, vectors, graphing, rates of change — are woven throughout the sets, so a student will encounter them repeatedly, from term to term, year to year.

“If you open up an algebra book, the problems at the end of each section expect the students to basically only use the algebra techniques of that chapter to solve any of the problems,” says Gwyn Coogan ’83, Math Department chair. “You’ll never have to recall ideas from geometry and you’ll never have to draw a picture. Same thing with your geometry class. Your geometry book doesn’t expect you to be able to do any algebra.”

If silos stifle understanding, so, too, does stagnancy. That’s why every summer, the math faculty gathers to make sure their custom curriculum is ship-shape. For a week in late June, instructors converge on a classroom for an exercise in mathematics democracy.

They debate alternative approaches to solving the problems — tapping into their own experiences with the curriculum and feedback from their students — and try to ensure that the content is current and relevant.

“The body of knowledge of math is getting bigger and bigger,” Coogan says, quoting her Math Department colleague Xitai Chen. “We want to make sure that what we show our students is as good as it can be.”

 

 

The new math

Exonians have been studying math since John and Elizabeth Phillips signed the Deed of Gift. Longtime teachers like Don Dunbar, Bill Campbell and Frank Gutmann steered generations of Exeter math classes with aplomb. Many studied math texts written by PEA instructors such as Dick Brown and Mary Spruill Kilgore.

When Rick Parris joined the Math Department in 1978, a new idea took shape. Parris began developing supplementary math problems to the approved texts for his classes. As he wrote in 1984 in a summary of grant work: “My interest in such problems is in part due to the pleasure I get from working them myself, but it also stems from my belief that the only students who really learn mathematics well are the ones who develop the staying power and imagination to be problem-solvers.”

By the early 1990s, Parris was teaching his classes almost exclusively using his problem-based materials. Parris, who died after a short illness in 2012, chafed against the routine of teaching material from a book in class, then assigning homework on that topic. He and some of his colleagues wanted to offer materials that fostered more agency.

With the support of Math Department Chair Anja Greer, Paris and fellow instructors such as Tom Seidenberg began writing a custom curriculum for 200-level courses. The teachers would gather at Parris’ house in the evening, writing problems for the following day and generally making them up on the fly. Over time, problems for the higher levels were added to the catalog. All emphasized discovery over destination. Rather than handing someone a hammer and nails and saying, “Build me a house,” the idea was to simply point them toward the toolshed.

Without the contextual clues, students must call on all the math they’ve learned through the term and over the years, not just from that day’s lesson and not just to heed a teacher’s prompt. The idea echoes “Pascal’s Method.” The 17th-century French philosopher argued that “people are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.”

The Harkness table has proved to be the perfect arena for this approach. Students dig into the material before class, then sort through their work together, bouncing ideas off one another and often winding up in a very different place from where they began.

“When I do math now, I do it without any prejudice,” says Jack Liu ’20, who is early into a two-term sequence of Math 610: Multivariable Calculus. “I don’t really think about whether this is a hard problem or an easy problem. I think about attacking it holistically, trying not to make any presumptions, trying not to jump to the answer. To really feel out the math, and be creative with it.”

That is precisely the point. Math is like an art form, and just as in art class, the idea is to develop an environment in which students’ creativity is fostered. Students figure out the rules on their own and apply those rules as they see fit.

Work in progress

The problem sets have become Exeter vernacular. Every student studies them. By the end of prep year, students are as familiar with the recurring character “Alex the geologist” as they are with their roommates.

But the sets are not dogma. The work Parris and company spearheaded nearly three decades ago was the foundation, but the house is never finished. Problems evolve as new paths to an outcome are discovered. Problem No. 155 in the Math 2 sets is a good example. Through the years, students from the classes of 2005, 2016 and 2019 have come up with viable solutions, as has a math teacher in Cleveland and a student in Chicago (the sets are published online). Each of these approaches was vetted by the math faculty at the conclusion of the school year and, once it passed muster, was added to the “commentary,” or teachers’ notes.

Last summer, several members of the math faculty gathered in Room 108 — Geer’s classroom — in the Academy Building to vet the recommendations and make the updates. Visitors to Room 108 are greeted by a cartoon from The New Yorker on the classroom door. In it, a group of lab-coated academics cower from a colleague gone mad above the caption, “Give him whatever he wants! He’s threatening to divide by zero!” It is an early giveaway that math happens there.

Geer guides the annual debate — which is limited to one week — in a process she calls collegial if not always smooth. “There are a lot of different types of mathematicians, and we all bring different strengths to the department, but it’s one of the few times when we, with all of our varied strengths, come together and really talk math,” she says. “It’s not necessarily about classroom techniques. … We’re really diving into the layers of mathematics. And because we are writing it ourselves, there’s a freedom associated with that. We’re uncovering the ideas, or trying to lead students to uncover ideas in ways that we think are the most fulfilling for them mathematically.”

That the discoveries often come from students makes the work even more rewarding, Geer says.

“We might have viewed a problem as, ‘OK, this is a kind of problem students really need to do algebra for. Or they might need to do a lot of pencil calculations for.’ And then there’ll be a student who does it completely differently. Like they’ll just completely tackle it from some obscure picture, or make a connection to something that they did in a science class and they’ll say, ‘Well, if you think about it this way instead…’ That’ll peel the layers off the onion and suddenly open up a new way of visualizing, a new way of allowing the students to uncover the ideas.

“Once that seed has come up in a classroom, a colleague will say, ‘Hey, my students did this. Isn’t that cool?’”

Technology has forced the problem sets to evolve, too. When Parris began writing problems, Bill Gates had yet to launch Windows and the internet was years away from popular embrace. The tools available to students have changed, and asking them to do certain things they were asked to do 25 years ago is akin to a mandatory course in cursive writing.

“If the curriculum that most kids are learning before they get to our school has changed, certainly we want to change to reflect that, to move them from wherever they are to wherever they think they should go,” Coogan says. “You have to move kids closer to the edge of mathematics.”

Back to class

The seniors and uppers in Geer’s Math 400-B class get stuck on No. 714, a three-part problem about how lottery commissioners should invest their revenue. Bona Hong ’21 rattles off her work for parts A and B to consensus, but Part C remains elusive.

“I guess I’m not really understanding the question,” someone says.

“It’s a geometric series,” Cheikh Fiteni ’21 submits.

“Let’s write it out, so we can all see what you’re suggesting,” Geer says.

As Fiteni scrawls an equation on the whiteboard, his classmates start to plug in the numbers to find the solution.

“The initial investment must be $363,344.40,” announces Jackson Carlberg ’21. The other students agree. No. 714 is solved. Next problem.

“That was a pretty good collaborative endeavor, everyone,” Fiteni declares. “Teamwork!”

The class works through more problems, with the discussion punctuated with words of encouragement from Geer: “Perfect!” and “You guys are gooood.”

B block concludes with Problems Nos. 722 and 723 left unresolved. They’ll be first up the next time the class meets.

As the seniors file out, Geer congratulates them on their effort.

“Super productive today, guys,” the teacher says.

“Thank you, Ms. Geer,” shout back several of the students. “See you tomorrow.”

Learning to listen

Four students sit on Academy Building steps

Student Listeners convene to understand how to offer support, lend an ear.

In the early days of the school year, a group of more than 80 uppers and seniors met in the basement of Phillips Church to share stories, exchange ideas and above all else, practice effective listening techniques.

The gathering was the first of a recurring weekly meeting for the members of the Student Listener Program. A leadership position within each of the 25 dorms on campus, Student Listeners provide a valuable resource for fellow dorm mates and day student affiliates by offering peer support and serving as an outlet for advice on any number of topics related to life at Exeter.

Johanna Mautz, a licensed clinician and member of Exeter’s counseling team, along with Health Education Instructor Liz Hurley and longtime program coordinator and Associate Director of Counseling and Psychological Services Connie Morse, provides the framework, guidance and training for the program.

Mautz opened the meeting by reading a poem appropriately titled “Listening.”

“You are listening to me when you come quietly into my world and allow me to be me,” Mautz recited.

With the tone and theme for the meeting set, second-year Student Listeners Leah Cohen ’20 and Shelagh Coombs ’20 broke the group into teams to work through a series of hypothetical situations. The prompts included scenarios regarding students struggling with homesickness, academic pressure and roommate issues. The exercise provided those new to the program an opportunity to learn from returning Student Listeners about how best to support dorm mates going through difficult times.

Second-year Student Listener David Kim ’20 spoke about how he encourages someone upset over a poor test score.

“I’ll remind them ultimately you’re here to learn,” Kim said. “If you’re just getting good grades and not really trying, that’s not the purpose of Exeter.”

The gathering was the second of a two-part orientation. The day prior, students spent four hours at Camp Lincoln navigating high and low ropes courses and other team-building exercises while developing listening skills, communication and trust.

“There was a lot of connectivity,” Mautz said. “It was very experiential and they had a chance to build a team and cohesion.”

First-year Student Listener Cristian Molina ’21 said he was eager to join the program in an effort to help students who are struggling to find their place on campus.

“I had a tough time assimilating, so I want to be able to help out students in a similar situation,” the Webster Hall resident said.

Deniz Akman ’20, in his second year as a Student Listener in Dow House, also decided to apply for the program to help new students ease into life at Exeter.

“I came here as a new lower and that was really challenging, so I understand how the new students feel,” he said.

Akman spoke about the importance of making his presence in the dorm known early in the school year when new students may be feeling their most vulnerable.

“At the beginning of the year I let new students know I’m available to talk whenever,” he said. “I’ll put up posters in the dorm with my name and contact info so if anyone needs someone to talk to, they know who to call.”

Cohen talked about her approach to supporting new students in Amen Hall and certain signs she looks for that may indicate a student is going through a tough time.

“If they’re not going to their activities or not coming to meals, I’ll notice that,” she said. “With the new students, especially toward the beginning of the year, it’s our responsibility to look around and make sure everyone is OK.”

Student listeners are trained to involve dorm faculty should an issue extend beyond the scope of a peer-to-peer conversation. In addition to program sponsors and dorm faculty, student listeners are supported by campus safety and on-call counselors at the Lamont Health and Wellness Center, which is open 24/7.

Need-blind admissions

Dear Exeter community,

We are excited to share the news that from this day forward all admissions decisions at Exeter will be made without regard for any family’s ability to pay tuition or other associated costs of attending the Academy. Beginning with students who will enter the Academy in the coming academic year, our admissions process will be “need-blind.” Cost will no longer be a barrier to any qualified students who dream of attending Phillips Exeter Academy. 

When Exeter was founded 240 years ago, John and Elizabeth Phillips made a commitment that continues to serve as one of our core values:

Expanding access to an Exeter education is central to our mission. The commitment expressed in our Deed of Gift ensures that all our students, regardless of economic circumstances, are not only able to attend but also know they belong at Exeter. Financial aid makes it possible for students from “every quarter” to join the Academy community and learn, lead and thrive here.

Today, we renew our commitment to youth from every quarter. Over the last two years, alumni, parents and friends have committed over $90 million in new endowment for financial aid. With this new support, building on support for financial aid provided over many generations, the Academy Trustees have voted unanimously to make this commitment to “need-blind” admissions.

The Trustees have made this commitment with the understanding that additional support will be needed to sustain our commitment into the future. Fundraising for financial aid will continue to be an important priority for our school, and will remain so always. Today almost half our students receive financial aid yet we must expand our reach if we are to ensure that economic circumstances will not be a barrier to any deserving students who wish to receive an Exeter education.  

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the founding of our school, we take inspiration from the ambition of our founders. It is humbling to consider the generations of Exonians who have come forward over the years to support the school, often inspired by the gratitude they felt for the assistance they received themselves. It is equally humbling to contemplate the generosity that will support our school and our commitment to youth from every quarter in years to come.

We are deeply grateful for the many ways alumni, parents and friends support our school. Whether it is through your philanthropy, your volunteer service, or both, we thank you for your generosity, and for your goodness.  

Best regards,  

William K. Rawson ’71, Principal

Morgan C. W. Sze ’83, President of the Trustees

Finding Joy

When I ask our students about their experiences at Exeter, they consistently express joy in being here, joy in their friendships, and joy in their sense of personal growth and accomplishment. And, of course, they express joy in being part of a school community blessed with an extraordinary range of opportunities. This feeling has been particularly palpable this fall term, as we have been able to be together on campus in ways not possible a year ago.

Our students also have a strong sense of purpose. They pursue excellence in their studies and all else that they do here. They are willing to work hard, and seek to be challenged. They do all this with the same purpose that our school has had since its founding: to prepare students to lead purposeful lives. It is with this sense of purpose, and in the spirit of non sibi, that we want our students to go forward in life.

As prior generations of Exonians know well, much of the joy and sense of purpose at Exeter also come from the way students learn from one another, through Harkness, inside and outside the classroom, and from the lifelong friendships that are formed in the process. We teach our students to listen and think critically, with open-minded curiosity about why others might think differently, and to engage across differences with empathy and respect. These are skills that our communities and the larger world need today. Learning in this way is challenging, yet fun, and a major component of the joy at Exeter.

Together with purpose and joy also comes gratitude, expressed powerfully by Dr. Emery Brown, class of 1974, last year when he accepted the John and Elizabeth Phillips Award for his extraordinary contributions in the fields of science and medicine. Speaking with considerable emotion, Dr. Brown said, “Exeter helped me become basically who I am.” Students share this sense of gratitude while they are here; some will tell you they spend their entire summers waiting to come back. But my experience is that the sense of gratitude students have when they leave Exeter deepens with the passage of time, as they understand more fully the impact on their lives of their time here.

As you read through this issue of The Bulletin, you will see purpose and joy in all that our students are accomplishing, and in the impact Exonians are having in the larger world. I hope you will read these stories with pride and gratitude, and be inspired by all that it means to be part of the Exeter community.

What to pack for PEA

Exeter is awesome. It's even more awesome with the right stuff.

You have your charming personality, your brilliant mind and your boundless curiosity. But did you remember to pack your shower shoes? 

As summer break winds down and Move-In Day nears, we’ve compiled a packing list to ensure the “boarding” part of your boarding-school experience is a hit. 

Electric fans: Until New Hampshire gets really cold, New Hampshire can be really hot. Exeter’s dorms are hallowed but they don’t have air conditioning.

Bedding: Each boarder is issued sheets, pillow cases and towels, and woolen blankets and pillows are available on request. Your own pillow, a mattress pad and a cozy comforter or quilt can make a big difference in a good night’s sleep.

Chargers: Bring two for every device: One for the room, one for the backpack.

Eye mask and ear plugs: Roommates won’t always be in sync, so well-positioned masks and ear plugs can keep the peace.

Shower shoes and caddy: Every good day starts with a well-organized bathing experience.

Alarm clock: Smart for when the smartphone dies.

Clothes hangers: Hang ’em up and beat wrinkles.

Under-the-bed storage bins: A safer, more practical use for milk crates.

Area rug: Just be sure not to block the door.

Air freshener: Laundry pick-up is only once a week.

Raincoats and rain boots: Exeter gets 48 inches of rain a year, on average (that’s not counting the 55 inches of snow annually).

Bike lock and helmet: Secure your bike, secure your brain. New Hampshire state law requires those under the age of 16 to wear a bicycle helmet while riding on a public way.

And here are some things to leave home (because they’re not allowed):

  • Upholstered furniture
  • Monitors or TV screens larger than 32 inches
  • Refrigerators
  • Microwaves
  • Portable space heaters and all heat-producing items, including flat irons, coffee pots, corn poppers, hot plates, toasters and halogen lamps
  • Candles and incense

Consult the E-Book for a full list of banned items.