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

Patrick Garrity

Leaving the table,

Leaving the table,

exploring the world

Harkness tables offer a wonderful setting to explore new ideas and tackle foreign concepts. But sometimes, you just have to get out there.

Dozens of Exeter students are carving out time from summer break and availing themselves of a Global Initiatives experiential learning program that reaches around the world. From Iceland’s geothermal pools to Berlin boardrooms, Exonians are gaining first-hand experience in geology, biology, economics, language, archaeology and more.

“At the end of one of our days a student said to me, ‘This has been the best day of my life — I have never been in nature before’,” said Anne Rankin, instructor in biology and a faculty chaperone on a trip to Iceland. “I am sure this student has had many ‘best days of their life’ — but the chance to expose a student to something completely new is rewarding.”

Even several time zones away from the nearest Harkness classroom, Exonians bring the tools they learn at the table to reflect on their experiences.

“Chatting about the day over dinner and realizing each of us loved a different moment of the day or remembered a different part of a story feels easy with a group of Exeter students,” Rankin said. “They are very practiced at sharing their reflections, listening to the thoughts of others and synthesizing a more complete whole than any one of us could have created alone.”

Iceland: A geologic marvel

It is no coincidence that Jules Verne used Iceland as a gateway to the Earth’s core in his novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Exeter travelers to Iceland, in partnership with GeoCamp Iceland, experienced one of the most visibly geological active places in the world in a place that not only inspires imagination but also provides an active showcase on earth formation, access to unique geological areas and use of indigenous renewable energy resources.

Students were introduced to the unique and vibrant geology of Iceland and witnessed the regional impact of climate change, environmental challenges and sustainability measures. The group visited some of the youngest landmass on Earth, observed the impact of warmer climate on the island’s glaciers, learned about natural hazards in the Westman Islands, listened to sagas that inspired both Tolkien and the Marvel movies, and experienced culture and museums in Reykjavik. Together they relaxed in geothermal pools, experienced breathtaking waterfalls and savored the tranquility of unspoiled natural wonders.

“[It] was my first time outside of America, and the journey affected me more than I thought it would,” Levi ’28 said. “The awe-inspiring landscape, the rich and layered culture, the close-knit community and the delicious food all added up to an exquisite trip. But what I enjoyed most was exploring a beautiful foreign land with a group of new friends. In particular, I remember a steep hike on the Westman Islands that rewarded us with gorgeous vistas of mossy cliffs — and puffins! My largest takeaway from that hike was not the beautiful views though but the importance of determination and grit that kept us together from start to end.”

Principal Bill Rawson was one of the chaperones on the excursion. “It was a very special experience exploring a new country with 15 curious Exonians,” Rawson said. “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.”

Taiwan: Immersion therapy

Taipei — the economic, political and cultural center of Taiwan — is known for its rich history, vibrant cuisine and iconic architectural landmarks. In this three-week immersion program, participants develop their Mandarin Chinese skills and understanding of Taiwanese culture through interactive classes, community-based activities and host family placements in Taipei.

On weekday mornings, students attend three-hour language and culture classes; in the afternoon, they participate in a variety of local activities. Excursions include visits to the National Palace Museum and a local high school and trips to the historic towns of Jiufen and Shifenin. Students make traditional Taiwanese pastries and dishes and participate in a traditional tea ceremony, youth-friendly Karaoke and martial arts lessons; in the evening, they eat dinner and spend time with their host families. Weekend activities with host families include hiking in the mountains of the Shiding district, taking a ferry to Ba Li, going to the beach, visiitng the Taiwan Fine Arts Museum, eating traditional Taiwanese foods and picnicking in the Yangmingshan national park.

“Through 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 ’27 said. “One of my favorite parts of the trip was coming home after a day of Chinese classes and activities 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. The best part of these conversations is that they were all in Chinese, so I got to learn about Taiwanese culture while my host family helped me practice my Chinese.”

“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,” said Ning Zhou, instructor in modern languages at Exeter. “Like my own high school study abroad trip, I know it will be a memorable experience and life asset for students. Students know that in addition to their own home, they have another home in Taipei!”

Yellowstone: From the table to the park

A trip to America’s first and arguably most famous national park offered Introductory Biology students the opportunity to relate their spring-term curriculum to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Selected students spent spring term together in a special section of BIO 230 that approached the curriculum through the lens of the biology happening in the park. They spent a week making day trips into the park and working with instructors from Yellowstone Forever Institute. Topics covered included wolf reintroduction, grizzly bear conservation and the Bison/Brucellosis dynamic. Students had the opportunity to see thermal features such as Mammoth Hot Springs. They also contributed to a citizen science project to monitor the effects of climate change in the park.

Thinking about the value of studying ecosystems of Yellowstone in class together before traveling to the park, Anvi ‘28 reflected, “By learning about niches and resource partitioning, I could understand the habitats of animals in Yellowstone. Additionally, keystone species and ecosystem engineering helped me understand what the wallows of buffalo do for the environment as I saw them wallow. The study of climax community, and especially us in class talking about pyroclimax communities, helped me understand why so many lodgepole pines were in areas affected by fire, for example. In terms of other terms of biology, the ideas of selective breeding helped me understand more about the cattle at the ranch, and the study of digestive systems in the winter helped me understand how different animals (herbivores, omnivores, carnivores) digestive food and expel it at different rates.”

Greece: Digging into their work

Experiential learning often requires students to get their hands dirty, some more than others. Three Exeter students who have 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, are quite literally digging into their studies.

The trio and an Exeter faculty member are spending six weeks this summer with a team from the University of Arizona, directed by Exeter alum David Romano ’65. They are working in the lower mountain meadow, where excavation and survey has been underway. Mount Lykaion and the sanctuary was a destination for ancient Greeks to worship annually. Temples, altars, houses for attendants, fountains and a racetrack for running competitions have been identified along with many objects of daily life and ritual celebrations.

South Korea: Witnessing an Asian powerhouse

Once a recipient of global development aid, the Republic of Korea today is a donor, a true success story of economic growth and industrialization. The country now stands as a global industrial powerhouse, known around the world for advances in shipbuilding, steel working and electronics. The growing popularity of all things Korean, from fashion, beauty products and sneakers, to film, music and cuisine, has made South Korea the preeminent conveyor of “modern Asian culture” to the West.

On a 10-day program, Exonians immersed themselves in the modern world of South Korea while also learning about the fragile peace with North Korea, visiting the Demilitarized Zone, and meeting with defectors from the DPRK. They explored Korean spirituality during an overnight at a Buddhist temple. Buddhism, one of the major religions in South Korea, has a rich history that dates back over a thousand years and is an integral part of Korean culture and has shaped spiritual, ethical and philosophical values.

“I really enjoyed seeing how so many different cultures were so deeply integrated into Korea,” Euphoria ’27 said. “In the food, the language, the art, the architecture, to see how one complete, very prosperous culture came from so many different ones. Going to the DMZ made me realize just how heavy the weight of the Korean War was, especially since learning about it from 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 was still so relevant in the present world today.”

Added Alex ’27, “This trip has truly been an unforgettable experience! … What I will truly not forget about this trip are the people. With the little kindergartners who bowed to us in the subway station, or the halmonis [grandmothers] who spoke in broken konglish in the park, it has been incredible to see how culture all over the world is built on its people.”

Berlin: Economics with a German accent

Berlin is a world city of culture, politics, media and science. The city has become an entrepreneurial hub over the last decade, and its economy is based on high-tech firms and the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations and convention venues.

Exeter’s ECON 502: Principles of Economics and Business course, offered in spring term, was redesigned to increase students’ economic literacy within the German context as an intensive, place-based and experiential learning opportunity. Students studied macro- and microeconomic concepts at work in Germany’s economy and the role that the government play in the country’s economic life. Homework assignments are geared toward the economic history of Germany, recent trends in the German economy, immigration, environmental policy, and the role Germany plays within the European Union. Exonians also study fundamentals of business structure and operation and why some businesses succeed while others do not, the role that businesses can and do play in German society, and the complementary roles of consumer and investor. Guest speakers enhance students’ understanding of the historical and contemporary trends in German economy. The program concludes at the end of June, and students will receive academic credit.

“The program allows 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,” said Ally ’26. “Our group has visited places that have only furthered my interest in the field of economics, whether that be visiting the BMW factory or talking with members of the German parliament and learning more about what they do. Overall, this trip has furthered my passion for economics and has allowed me to gain a new perspective about Germany and the culture and history that makes it what it is today.”

Colorado: Every rock tells a story

The Rocky Mountains in Colorado offer iconic natural panoramas and contain a remarkable geologic record of the evolution of the North American continent. Over the course of one week in mid-July, Exeter students will learn from host and Exeter alum Richard Chuchla ’74 about the mountain-building events that created current landscapes starting almost 2 billion years ago and continuing to the present.

By driving, hiking and rafting through this terrain, students will come to understand how geologic history is unraveled through careful observation and synthesis and appreciate the geologist’s adage that “every rock tells a story.” Key topics covered will include how continental collisions grew mountains and created volcanic events that resulted in the formation of large ore deposits and geothermal systems that we are exploiting today for energy, 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 one of the bellwethers of climate change.

Academy Building makeover is underway

A once-in-a-century renewal of the iconic building is underway, with work to include 45 refurbished Harkness classrooms, an Assembly Hall makeover and a new state-of-the-art Design Lab.

The venerable Academy Building, the epicenter of Exeter academic life and perhaps our most recognizable landmark, is undergoing a well-earned renovation for its next hundred years of service.

Assembly Hall had barely emptied on the last day of spring term before work began. When the work is finished, the building will have refurbished classrooms, an Assembly Hall re-do and a Design Lab, among many other improvements. Parts of the building will remain open and online throughout the project, which is intended to be complete by opening of school in 2026.

The Academy Building the fourth of its kind, its two immediate predecessors each consumed by fire. Dedicated in 1915, the building has served in nearly every academic capacity while also at one time hosting a bowling alley, a rifle range, a photo darkroom, a copy center and many other elements of campus life, past and present. On any given day, more than 50 faculty members teach nearly 200 classes in the building. Nearly every student on campus passes through its doors each day.

The project is significant, including:

  • 45 updated Harkness classrooms
  • An expanded Assembly Hall for seating of approximately 1,300 to accommodate every student and instructor
  • A state-of-the-art Design Lab
  • New common areas, including a 1,300-square-foot hall on the first floor
  • Complete replacement of building systems, including a transition from steam to geothermal heating and new air conditioning

As the project moves forward, some of the school’s treasures must be stored for safe keeping. Among them are the 35 portraits that hang in Assembly Hall.

These works honor Exeter’s most respected leaders and benefactors, from founder John Phillips to the first woman to serve as principal, Kendra Stearns O’Donnell. The variety of the styles and subjects reminds us of the school’s long history and recognizes the legacy of the individuals who have shaped the Academy.

Some portraits will return to be displayed in a new Assembly Hall when it opens in the fall of 2026. Others will find places of prominence in other Academy buildings.

 

Nate McBride ’70: Building by listening

Architect 'Nate' Donald Craig McBride ’70 shares the secrets to his success.

When he was a child, Nate McBride ’70 asked his father, a doctor, what he did all day. “I listen,” his dad replied. “If I listen long enough and well enough, the patient will self-diagnose.”

As an architect, McBride doesn’t treat patients, but he likewise finds that he cannot do his job without careful listening. It’s a skill that comes naturally to someone who has always been curious and, in his own words, “compelled to understand more about human nature.”

During his two years at Exeter, McBride read Erich Fromm and Malcolm X in his (decidedly non-theocentric) religion class. As a Stanford undergraduate, he studied cultural anthropology, psychology, poetry and literature — “anything to help me understand what humankind is about,” he says.

At the same time, he was fascinated by the spaces and structures surrounding people. Exeter’s dorms prompted an epiphany: “My relationships with people in Hoyt — which were ‘What floor do you live on?’ — were entirely different from those I forged when I was in a cluster in Main Street B,” he says. Different spaces, he realized, had the power to “engender profoundly different human experiences.”

He ultimately earned a Master of Architecture degree at Yale School of Architecture and founded McBride Architects in 1983.

Exterior and interior views of the multi-cabin compound Nate McBride ’70 designed overlooking Penobscot Bay in Maine.

Now, 40-plus years later, McBride presides over an eclectic oeuvre. He has constructed snug seaside cottages and renovated palatial midtown Manhattan town houses. He has built art galleries and institutional spaces. He has designed houses of worship. His clients include homeowners, business moguls, artists, colleges and Tibetan monks, among others. Not bad for a guy who says half-jokingly that he hopes his epitaph will read, “He Almost Crossed Everything Off His List.”

Differences notwithstanding, every project he undertakes relies on the same figurative foundation. “I have to be humble enough to listen,” he says. “To do a project, I need to understand who the person is that I’m sitting with and talking to, what their larger context is. If I’m going to make art and also make responsible buildings, I need to have a deep understanding of somebody other than myself.”

Gently but relentlessly, he mines his clients for insights: What do they do when they get up in the morning? How do they spend their days? What are their habits or rituals? What is their connection to or history with the physical site? How do they plan to use the space? And the underlying critical question, “What is most important to you?”

“What we’re doing is a process of self-discovery, then building something that’s reflective of that,” McBride says. He is simply the self-described “trip guide,” asking the right questions, challenging preconceptions and offering suggestions (“sometimes softly and sometimes adamantly”) with the goal of creating a structure that reflects the client’s deepest self. He has discovered that uncomfortable budget conversations are a blessing, because “you really get to essentials. You can’t have all that, so what’s really important?”

When a friend offered him a pro bono job designing community, spiritual and educational buildings for Tibetans in Nepal and India, McBride, a native Iowan, knew he would have to educate himself. Harking back to the Harkness table, he turned the initial client meetings into lessons.

“You need to teach us first what Buddhism means,” he said. Visiting Tibetan monks in red robes (“Such pageantry!” McBride says) flowed into his Tribeca office, where they ate plain lettuce and taught McBride’s team about Buddhism, about the diaspora that landed Tibetans in Nepal and India, and about the importance of helping the next generations of Tibetans “understand their traditions, history, who they are and who they could be in a new world.”

As a result of such intensive cross-cultural lessons, McBride was able to design a Buddhist monastery in Pokhara, Nepal, and a school and community center in Mundgod, India, for which the Dalai Lama laid the cornerstone. The sites are quite different: The colorful Nepalese monastery manages to be both imposing and festive, while the low Indian buildings exude serenity, rising organically from the surrounding green. Both feel consistent with the equanimity that characterizes Tibetan Buddhism.

In obvious ways, these projects were anomalous for McBride. But at a deeper level, he says, they were simply “an extreme example of what should happen on every project.” Whether a house, a library or a spiritual center, he adds: “There’s an element of ritual to the day. Some of us call it habit, but you take it to another spiritual level and all of a sudden, it’s a religious set of traditions. Understanding and building the experience of the spaces around those rituals is essentially no different than what I do with a client at home.”

Depending on the project, McBride might need to consider yet another partner: the land itself. “I need not just a humility about whom I’m building for, but a humility about the place in which I’m building,” he says. “To do that sensitively and successfully requires listening to the land. It sounds very woo-woo. (I am a ’60s child, and I did do time in California!) But to feel the wind, and see how the sun grazes the land in the morning and evening, really informs how the building, as Louis Kahn would say, ‘wants to be.’ ”

Sometimes, he’ll have one idea but the land will have another. A few years ago, clients hired him to build a house on a particularly dramatic site: a tumble of undulating green, ribbed with piney ridges, culminating in a spectacular precipice overlooking Penobscot Bay in Maine. Awed by the immense grandeur, McBride could not figure out a way to fulfill the clients’ request. “To build the [desired] square footage in a singular structure would have been in competition with what is astoundingly beautiful on its own, which is the landscape,” he says. “How to be reverent and meld with the landscape, instead of trying to command the landscape?”

McBride designed this Buddhist monastery in Pokrah, Nepal.

As he explored the area, an unexpected mental image took shape. Instead of one massive structure, he envisioned a small compound of three wooden cabins, each with a unique view. “The cabins began to find their place in the land,” he says. “The land was informing the position of those places.” These days, McBride lives in Connecticut with his wife, an interior designer and frequent collaborator, in an 18th-century wooden house: a cozy hobbit home, with low beamed ceilings and cheerful floral wallpaper, renovated and decorated by the couple. He’s considering collecting his thoughts in a book, “not because they’re necessarily original,” he says, but because it would “in a way be more meaningful to me than putting together the oeuvre because these thoughts are what’s led to the life’s work.”

And what is most important to him? “Dreaming, imagining, seeing and understanding.” Also, an outdoor shower. “It will change your experience of yourself and your world,” he says. Take it from the architect.

This story was originally published in the spring 2025 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Democracy through dialogue

Instructor in History Bill Jordan reflects on educating for civility.

Exeter doesn’t have a required civics course, but for the past 20 years or so, I’ve been teaching one that comes close: HIS550: American Politics and Public Policy. So, I’ve given some thought to what an American civics course should do.

The nuts and bolts of government and the U.S. Constitution are obviously essential to learn, and students should discuss contemporary policy issues. Some teachers think it’s more import-ant to instill a passion for “social justice,” and to foster a sense of political efficacy and encourage civic engagement.

I’ve come to the conclusion that to prepare students for democratic citizenship at a time when Americans are splitting into antagonistic political tribes and mutually incomprehensible information bubbles, and credible commentators talk seriously about a coming civil war, it’s even more important to cultivate certain dispositions toward fellow citizens and the truth.

Over the years I’ve been influenced by others who have been asking the same question: teachers I met at the Exeter Humanities Institute, Harvard Professor Danielle Allen and her writings on citizenship, assembly speakers, a presenter at a National Association of Independent Schools conference and a number of “civic dialogue” organizations.

I read about one of these, Braver Angels, in a 2019 Atlantic article, “Can Marriage Counseling Save America.” Its mission statement, “The Braver Angels Way,” could hang comfortably above our Harkness tables. It reads:

  • We state our views freely and fully, without fear.
  • We treat people who disagree with us with honesty, dignity and respect.
  • We welcome opportunities to engage those with whom we disagree.
  • We believe all of us have blind spots and none of us are not worth talking to.
  • We seek to disagree accurately, avoiding exaggeration and stereotypes.
  • We look for common ground where it exists and, if possible, find ways to work together.
  • We believe that, in disagreements, both sides share and learn.
  • In Braver Angels, neither side is teaching the other or giving feedback on how to think or say things differently.

No one may be teaching, but everyone is learning. One of the priorities I adopted from that NAIS presenter for teaching citizenship is to cultivate the skill and inclination to practice “cognitive empathy,” understanding why other people think the way they do. That, combined with epistemic humility — appreciating our own intellectual limitations — leads to political curiosity, and the aha! moments for which Braver Angels leader (and Exeter assembly speaker) Mónica Guzmán named her 2022 book, I Never Thought of It That Way.

After I met Guzmán at a principal’s dinner in the fall of 2023, I decided to finally join Braver Angels and attend its June 2024 convention in Kenosha, Wisconsin. When I registered for the convention on the lovely lakeside campus of Carthage College, I was handed a name tag with a blue lanyard. Like all the civic dialogue groups, the 15,000 paying members of Braver Angels skew left — or blue in the Braver Angels argot. But unique to the Braver Angels, every convention, debate and workshop must be equally divided between blues and reds (righties), with a few (somehow unaligned or centrist) yellows mixed in.

Over the next three days I encountered the three Braver Angels approaches to conflict: dialogue, debate and communion. Most of my experience at the conference involved dialogue and communion.

This was the friendliest group of people. Guzmán’s political curiosity infused every interaction: We chatted across the lanyard line while waiting for a session to begin, while walking the paths between sessions and during meals in the dining hall. These encounters confirmed the argument of another depolarization outfit, that Americans on opposite sides of our great divide have “More in Common” than our differences. I even made some friends — yellow lanyards who write for conservative publications — that I’ve kept in touch with.

If all Americans could attend one of these conventions, we might not solve all of our problems, but we would stop hating each other.

I sat in on different kinds of Braver Angels debates, one in which “the point isn’t to win; it’s to understand the other side a little better”; and another in which the goal was to come up with a list of policy ideas both sides could agree on. The most momentous debate took place at a plenary session among all the convention goers to choose an issue to focus on in the coming year. Immigration won after a vigorous — but civil — discourse.

The only disappointing debate was the one between Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, which happened on the first night of the convention. We gathered to watch in the assembly hall. It led all 750 attendees to agree on one emotion: dissatisfaction with the options our two major political parties were offering us.

Of course, there’s a selection bias that made this group unrepresentative of the American electorate. Not likely to attend: Twitter trolls and others who see the solution to America’s problems in defeating political “enemies,” not in finding common ground or reaching compromise with “rivals.” But they make up only 33 percent of us, according to a More in Common poll.

I agree with David Blankenhorn, Braver Angels’ founder and president, who said in his plenary address, “Democracy is government by talk, and when conversation ends, the only thing left to advance your argument is force.”

Maybe if every high school in the country would teach cognitive empathy, along with epistemic humility and other elements of “The Braver Angels Way,” we could produce a generation of citizens that might reverse the tide of polarization and save democracy.

Bill Jordan has been an instructor in history at Exeter since 1997. He has been adviser to The Exonian student newspaper, dorm head of Amen Hall and chair of the History Department. He has directed Exeter’s Washington Intern Program since 2020. His essay was published in the 2025 spring issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Exonians in Review: Spring 2025

The latest publications, recordings, exhibitions and films by Exeter alumni and faculty.

 

The Etruscans and the Jews: New Orleans Echoes, Sardinian Shadows, Roman Shame.
Peter M. Wolf ’53, Xlibris, 2025

“Postmortem neuropathology in early Huntington disease,” article
John Hedreen ’56, with Sabina Berretta and Charles L White III, Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology, Volume 83, Issue 5, March 2024

The Helper’s Apprentice: The Jackson Skye Mysteries
Carl Pickhardt ’57, WP Lighthouse, 2024

Breath Lines: How Poems Work and Why They Matter
Jan Schreiber ’59. LSU Press, 2025

Winter Light: On Late Life’s Radiance
Douglas Penick ’62, Punctum Books, 2025

The Wind in the Trees
Gordie Chase ’66, Self-published, 2025

Diversity Dysfunction: The DEI Threat to National Security Intelligence
John A. Gentry ’68, Academica Press, 2024

Long Short Fiction Truth
Tony Seton ’68, Self-published, 2024

Wallace Stegner: Dean of Western Writers
Alex Beam ’71, Signature Books, 2025

Racquets & Rivalries: Tales and Profiles from 100 Years of New York City Squash
Rob Dinerman ’72, Self-published, 2024

“What Should Health Professions Students Learn About Data Bias?” — article
Douglas Shenson ’73, with Beverley J. Sheares and Chelesa Fearce, AMA Journal of Ethics, Volume 27, Number 1, January 2025

The Silenced
Mer Boel ’74 and Lucy Pantaleoni Bernier ’74, Self-published, 2024

Grandpa Used to Drive Big Trucks
Martha Nance ’76, with Steve Witebsky; Wise Ink Creative Publishing, 2024

A Closer Look at the Russell Paradox
Flash (Kenneth J.) Sheridan ’78, Logique et Analyse, Volume 262, 2023

“Parallel Line,” art exhibition
Ralston Fox Smith ’83, painter, Upstairs Artspace, Tryon, North Carolina, March 16 to April 25, 2025

I Commissioned Some Wooden Luggage: and other poems
Nick Benson ’84, Agincourt Press, 2024

Murder in Rockport Massachusetts: Terror in a Small Town
Rob Fitzgibbon ’86, with Wayne Soini, The History Press, 2025

Betting on Good: A novel
Wendy Francis ’86, Lake Union Publishing, 2025

Penitence: a novel
Kristin Koval ’88, Celadon Books, 2025

La Motte-Feuilly: Un château de familles en Berry; Son histoire, son architecture & ses secrets
Christophe Charlier ’90, with Marie-Pierre Terrien, Simarre, 2024

Against the Grain: Mass Timber in the Home
William Richards ’00, Schiffer, 2024

“North American red fox rabies immunity gene drive for safer (sub)urban rewilding,” paper
Vixey Foxwish Douglas ’11, Rio Journal, 2024

Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier
Brendan Rosseau ’15, with Matthew Weinzierl, Harvard Business Review Press, 2025

 

FACULTY

“Jus Post Bellum and the Moral Imperatives of Reconstruction,” chapter in Teaching Emancipation and Reconstruction, 1861-1876
Kent A. McConnell, Instructor in History, Peter Lang, 2024

‘Learning from the land’ on Climate Action Day

Exeter pauses, steps outside and connects with nature in the name of sustainability.

Exeter’s 11th Climate Action Day collided on the calendar Tuesday with the 55th Earth Day, a green-clad coincidence that underscored the Academy’s recharged commitment to sustainability.

As the global community renewed its vows to protect the environment, the Academy community took the day to “pause, step outside and connect” with local ecosystems and our place within them.

Patrick Kelly, an instructor in the Religion, Ethics and Philosophy Department and the school’s sustainability education coordinator, designed the day’s programming with the theme “learning from the land.” He urged the student body at a brief assembly to “slow down, recalibrate and reconsider ourselves” as parts of the surrounding natural world and intentionally engage all our senses when out exploring and wandering.

Before scattering across southern New Hampshire and nearby Massachusetts and Maine, the students were reminded by Principal Bill Rawson ’71; P’08 that Climate Action Day is one way the Academy lives up to the goals of its Sustainability and Climate Action Plan. The plan, adopted in 2023, aims in part to “ensure that every student graduates from Exeter with a fundamental understanding of the principles of sustainability and the issues posed by climate change.”

So, Exeter fanned out. Split up by advisory groups, students took a crash course in aquaponics at the University of New Hampshire or visited a fishermen’s collective in the Boston Seaport. Others did plantings to block nutrient runoff from entering the Exeter River. Most simply took a walk in the woods, soaking in the outdoors while dozens of Harkness tables around campus were given the day off.

‘We speak for the creek’

There was some actual work to be done, and Lionel Hearon ’25, Amelia Post ’26 and Lucia Rosen ’26 saw to it that it was completed.

The trio — along with Erin Chen ’25 — designed a project during winter term as part of INT 519: Green Umbrella Learning Lab. They called their plan to plant native species to combat nutrient pollution and riverbank erosion “Project L.O.R.A.X. (Land Optimization of River Areas in eXeter),” and they employed the free labor of their respective advisories to put the plan into motion.

Their target was a section of the Exeter River that snakes through campus. Human waste and fertilizer from lawns and farm fields fill the river with nutrients that can choke aquatic organisms and degrade water quality. To help stem that runoff, the students chose two sites — one on the riverbank; another along a marshy brook flowing into the river — to plant willow saplings and Joe-Pye weed. Hearon, Post and Rosen will return later this spring to fill in some of the areas with cat tails.

If they do their job, the new plantings will soak up some of the nutrients seeping into the river. By the time Hearon returns for his five-year reunion, the willows could be as high as a house.

Growing sustainable, nutrient-dense food

One group of students got off campus to visit the aquaponics research facility at the University of New Hampshire. Bonnie Brown, chair of the UNH’s Department of Biological Sciences, led an in-depth tour of the facilities greenhouse located at the UNH Kingman Research Farm.

Students and their advisers spent the morning getting a lesson in the basics of aquaponics. A new and growing type of agriculture, aquaponics is a science that allows plants to grow using recirculated aquaculture systems with fertilized nutrients from food fed to fish.

The large greenhouse was filled with water tanks that contained several types of fish, all chosen for their ability to survive in the New England climate. The water and nutrients from the fish tanks are then recirculated to plant beds, where several varieties of lettuce and kale grow year-round. Exeter’s contributions: Feeding the fish and sampling the sustainably grown lettuce and kale.

New award will celebrate sustainability

Principal Rawson announced to the morning assembly that a group of alumni has created a new year-end award to recognize commitment to sustainability. The Class of 1964 Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability Award, created and endowed by members of that class during their 60th reunion last spring, will be presented to three to four students each May.

 

 

Found in translation: Une aventure épique

Lianny Camilo '25 feeds her appetite for adventure with a term in France.

Late-day sunshine pours into the second-floor lobby of the Goel Center, belying the bite of the February breeze outside. Lianny Camilo ’25 has spent a lot of time in the Academy’s sublime theater and dance building during her four years at Exeter. She was the lead in last year’s production of Lost Girl and plans to audition for the spring play as well.

She missed the show her senior fall term, however. She was an ocean away, immersed in a term-abroad program in Grenoble, France, as part of the Global Initiatives offerings.

Camilo jumps in, both feet, when it comes to new experiences. A Bronx, New York native, she applied to and enrolled at Exeter without ever visiting. She bonded instantly with her McConnell Hall dormmates and landed a part in the ensemble of a theater production her prep fall. She quickly found her place here, she says.

“I like to consider myself an extroverted person just because I like interactions,” she says, “but I don’t know, I’ve always felt welcomed here at Exeter in every space, in every aspect.”

That ability to fit in served her well in September, when she and three other Exeter students traded the New Hampshire seacoast for the French Alps. Each year through the Academy’s Global Initiatives office, more than 450 students and 70 instructors embark on travel and learning opportunities. Recent term-abroad deployments have included France, England, Italy, Japan, Germany, Spain and the Bahamas.

Camilo took a few minutes recently to share highlights of her experience in “the capital of the Alps.”

When did you start to think about the Global Initiatives program and spending a term abroad?

Almost immediately. I remember I was speaking to one of the seniors from theater during my prep year, and she was telling me about the [Stratford-on-Avon] program for Shakespeare. I started doing my research and I realized that, if I’m taking French, I can go to France. Then pretty much immediately I was like, this is what I want to do. I was just waiting for the moment I could apply.

You’re fluent in Spanish. Where did French come in?

I didn’t want to take Spanish because for me, Spanish is more of a familiar thing. I speak it with my family. It reminds me of my culture and home, and I just wanted to kind of get out of my comfort zone. And so I took French. My mom always told me that they’re pretty similar and she took French in college. I really like it. I mean, I think it’s a really pretty language. I’ve always wanted to know how to speak it. I love French. I plan to continue studying it, hopefully.

What were your first impressions when you arrived in France?

It was beautiful. I mean, we were in the Paris airport lounge for a while, and I was just looking around and I was like, oh my gosh, we are in Paris. And then we landed in Lyon and took a bus to Grenoble, and then that’s when I met my host sister and my host mom. I immediately was like, oh, I’m going to get along with them. My host mom just looked so hip, so cool. And my host sister was my age and she looked like someone I would be friends with. So I was just like, this is amazing. And we got lunch and it was so amazing, and my first impression was, I’m going to have fun.

It’s such a big transition, but you had already made a big transition coming to Exeter, right?

The only difference I would say was the language barrier was a little bit difficult for me because they spoke fluent French and I was like, I’ve only used it in classrooms. But other than that, the transition from New York to Exeter and then Exeter to Grenoble paralleled in a way, and I felt prepared. I feel like that was why I was so willing to go. It was a great experience and I’m happy with how easily I was able to incorporate myself into this new world.

Did they speak any English?

No.

Your host family did not speak any English?!

None. It was funny, because the other Exeter kids who went to Grenoble, they had families who spoke some English. So, if there was a word that they didn’t know, it was easier to translate. But my host mom, she’s very French. And my host sister, she isn’t that good at English. She doesn’t do spectacular in her English classes. And so she’s like, I’m sorry, I can’t help you there. But that made my experience so much more fulfilling because I was able to find ways to communicate with them or I had to really sharpen up my French. It was hard at times, but they really appreciated me trying, which is something that I think was a common theme throughout my experience. They just appreciated an American girl who was trying. And so, yeah, it was hard, but it was fun. And my French has been at its best because of that experience.

What did you do when you weren’t in school? Did you guys travel a lot?

My host mom loves food. She would take us to restaurants. She loves shopping. She was the ideal host mom for a teenage girl. And so she took us, me and my host sister, we would go to the mall, we would go to restaurants, we would hang out with the family, have dinners. We made pizza one night, and it was just things like that. And then there was one weekend where we literally went to Italy, we went to Milan, and I was like, this is insane. I was so grateful. I’m eternally grateful to them for that experience. Aside from my host family, I also had a friend group from the school, which was really nice because then I got to hang out with them. Sometimes we’d go out into the city. There was a small little part of Grenoble that everyone hung out in. It was just the downtown area. And we would go there and we would just get Cokes and just talk about life. And I would just sit there and I wouldn’t say much, but just hearing them talk was like, oh my gosh, I’m in France.

Would you recommend to your school mates to think about a term abroad?

Oh yeah! I’ve already been promoting it so much. I’ve been going around to dorm members, to people in my advisory, to people in my French classes urging them to apply to Grenoble. It was the best experience of my life. You need to go, even if you’re uncomfortable and you feel like you won’t fit in because you’re an American or you don’t speak good French or that you don’t know how to speak French to that capacity, you’ll find a way. I found a way to incorporate myself into that community, and it was the best decision that I’ve ever made.

Exonians in Review: Winter 2025

The latest publications, recordings and films by Exeter alumni and faculty.

 

Learn, Lead, Serve: A Civic Life: Thomas Ehrlich ’52 Indiana University Press, 2025

Nation Building in Japan, 1945–1952: The Allied Occupation and the US-Japan Alliance, Peter Frost ’54 Routledge, 2024

Behind the Law, Bob Matisoff  ’67, self-published, 2024

Who Killed Sir William? A Community-University Research Alliance Seeks Justice for Injured Workers, Steve Mantis ’68, with Marion Endicott FriesenPress, 2024

The Larger Reality: The Realm of Higher Consciousness, Tony Seton ’68, Self-published, 2024

100 Years of Princeton Fencing, Rob Dinerman ’72, 2024

Blood and the Liquid “I”: Carl Jung’s Black Books, Constance Hamilton Jameson ’74, The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism, ARAS Connections, 2022, Issue 2

“Directors & Officers Liability Perspectives,” article, Alan W. Borst Jr. ’75, Arias U.S. Quarterly, Q4, 2024

“The Ambivalence of Laughter: Carnival and Politics in Dostoevsky’s Devils,” article, Peter B. Josephson ’80, with Erik Cleven Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, 2024, Issue 3

To Reach the Source: The Stepwells of India, Claudio Cambon ’85, ORO Editions, 2025

Soy Sauce!, Laura Lee ’95, Hatchette Book Group, 2025

Christmas in the Spotlight, movie, Eirene Donohue ’96, writer Premiered on Lifetime, November 2024

 

FACULTY

I Like Birds, Too, Alexa Caldwell, Instructor in History, Palmetto Publishing, 2024

Impossible Man, album, Todd Hearon, Instructor in English, 2024

“Temporality in Maria Adelmann’s How to Be Eaten (2022),” paper, Nova Seals, Instructor in English, Presented at the Northeast Popular Culture Association’s annual conference in October 2024.

“ŠTO TE NEMA: The Evolution and Transformation of a Participatory Monument to the Srebrenica Genocide,” paper, Tom Simpson, Religion, Ethics and Philosophy Department chair, with artist Aida Šehović Presented at the annual BiH Diasporic Conference in June 2024.

Look, Arabic-English play, Sahar Ullah, Instructor in English, premiered in Tunisia at the Theatre Zendela, 2024.

Submit your work

Alumni are encouraged to advise the Bulletin editor (bulletin@exeter.edu) of their own publications, recordings, films, etc., in any field, and those of their classmates, for inclusion in future Exonians in Review columns. Please send a review copy of your published work to the editor to be considered for an extended profile in future issues. Works can be sent to: Phillips Exeter Academy, The Exeter Bulletin, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833.

Weatherspoons to receive Founders’ Day Award

Couple will be honored for more than 30 years of joint service to the Academy.

Exeter’s General Alumni Association has announced the selection of Russell and Jackie Weatherspoon as joint recipients of the 2025 Founders’ Day Award.

The Founders’ Day Award is given annually by the GAA in recognition of exceptional service to the Academy. Conceived by Principal Stephen G. Kurtz, the award was established by the Trustees in 1976.

Russell Weatherspoon ’01, ’03, ’08, ’11 (Hon.); P’92, P’95, P’97, P’01 began working at Exeter in 1987 as an instructor in Religion, English and Drama. Over nearly four decades, he served as dean of residential life, dean of multicultural affairs and director of Exeter Summer, in addition to his work in the classroom. He also coached girls JV basketball, and advised several student clubs, including the Young Brothers Society, Precision and Journalists for Human Rights. In 2021, he became Exeter’s dean of students, and remained in that office until his retirement three years later.

Since 1991, Jackie Weatherspoon P’92, P’95, P’97, P’01 has held positions in 11 departments across campus, including Admissions, Multicultural Affairs, Exeter Summer and the Academy Library. She was also a longtime adviser of the Democratic Club. Outside the Academy, she has served as a New Hampshire state representative, represented the United Nations and worked for the U.S. State Department and the federal Civil Rights Advisory Board.

The Weatherspoons are the parents of four Exonians, and shepherded and supported hundreds of others over their 12 years living in Cilley Hall and beyond.

Russell and Jackie Weatherspoon, who both retired last year, will receive the Founders’ Day Award and speak during assembly on May 16.

Exeter salutes King’s lasting legacy

Academy's 35th observance of civil rights icon's birthday includes celebration, introspection.

On Monday, Exeter hit pause on winter term to commemorate the life and legacy of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. with a busy slate of speaker presentations, workshops and discussion.

“I think if there was any place I wanted to be today to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and legacy, it would be with young people, it would be with educators, and it would be with people who live and learn in communities,” the poet and writer Saeed Jones said in his keynote speech, delivered before an audience of students, faculty and staff in Love Gymnasium.

Jones, author of the memoir How We Fight For Our Lives (2019) and the poetry collection Alive at the End of the World (2023), among other books, read from his work-in-progress, a memoir titled “Home Out There.” In the passage, Jones recounted some of the difficult early experiences that shaped one of his “queer black poet ancestors,” Langston Hughes.

A leader of the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes exchanged letters with Martin Luther King Jr., who admired Hughes’ work and even included lines from his poems in some of his speeches, Jones said. “Something that I think both of these figures, these titans of American history and thought and letter have in common is love,” Jones said. “For both of these figures, their love was not diminished by hate or adversity… . I think with people like Dr. Martin Luther King [and] Langston Hughes in particular, it’s like giving oxygen to a candle. The flame just gets brighter.”

The event had kicked off with a performance by baritone Philip Lima, who delivered a stirring operatic rendition of King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Student dance groups Precision and Outkast also took to the floor during the program, while Vera Aimunmondion ’24 got the crowd clapping and singing along during her performance of the gospel song “This Little Light of Mine.”

 

 

In his welcome remarks, Principal Bill Rawson ’71; P’08 recalled a trip he took with his son to Mississippi and Alabama, where they visited various sites important to the Civil Rights Movement. When they visited the Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama, where King had preached, the guide showed them a wooden lectern King had used when he spoke outside the state capitol in Montgomery at the end of the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march. “How long?” King asked in that speech. “Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Rawson recalled how the guide asked him and the other members of his group to step behind the lectern and recite a few words of King’s famous speech. “I don’t think you can have an experience like that and not in some way feel changed,” he said. “That’s my hope for all of you today…that at the end of the day you feel in some way that you’re not quite the same persons you were at the start of the day.”

 

And a child shall lead them

Before Rosa Parks came Claudette Colvin. Nine months before the famed heroine of the Civil Rights Movement was yanked off a Montgomery, Alabama, bus for refusing to give up her seat to a white person, 15-year-old Colvin did the same thing on the same bus line in the same city. She was arrested and jailed, too, but Colvin’s name is mostly lost to history.

Workshop leaders Amber Smith and Alicia Biggs shared Colvin’s story with three dozen Exonians in Grainger Auditorium to illustrate that teenagers and students like themselves have been pushing to make the world better for a long time, often without recognition. “You may not always be known for your advocacy, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t make an impact,” Smith said.

In “Advocacy in Action: Student Movements Change the World,” the Colorado educators shared many examples of largely forgotten young people as catalysts. Like 8-year-old Sylvia Mendez, the face of a desegregation lawsuit in California paved that way for the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954; like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, who trained its teenaged members to endure shameful harassment and abuse for the right to sit at lunch counters in North Carolina in 1960; like the hundreds of thousands of students who boycotted New York City public schools in 1964 to spotlight de facto segregation across the city.

 

 

Smith and Biggs reminded the Exeter students that young people are still among society’s most potent advocates, citing climate-change fighter Greta Thunberg, gun-control activist David Hogg and Afghan education activist Malala Yousafzai as examples.

“You’re not always going to benefit directly from your own advocacy,” Smith said. “Dr. King didn’t. But he would look at what’s going on in this room today and say, ‘OK, we’re getting there.’”

 

Finding purpose in King’s story

In Assembly Hall, students heard a presentation by Corey Johnson, an investigative reporter for the national news organization ProPublica. Johnson, the 2025 Richard and Joan S. Strickler Exonian Fund Speaker, shared the story of how he got started in journalism, after struggling to find a job just out of college and moving home to live with his mother.

“There was a time in my life when most people looked at me and considered me to be a…loser, somebody who had wasted a whole bunch of time and a whole bunch of talent and a whole bunch of possibilities,” Johnson said. But after reading a book about Martin Luther King Jr. and the FBI, the young Johnson was motivated to find out more. His persistence enabled him — months later — to connect with the widow of a man who headed Atlanta’s police intelligence division during the 1950s and ’60s; she let him look through boxes of files documenting the division’s surveillance of King and other civil rights leaders and activists.

Journalist Corey Johnson told Exeter students he discovered his purpose and pursued his career “just from studying what happened to King.”

“That’s how I discovered my purpose,” Johnson said of the experience. “That one of my purposes was revealing things of major importance to people, so that people can see it just in the way that people saw what was happening to King and the Civil Rights Movement.”

From that initial spark, Johnson ended up pursuing a career in investigative reporting, working for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Center for Investigative Reporting in California and the Marshall Project, among others. He shared three of his change-making projects with the students, including a three-part series for the Tampa Bay Times that revealed how a lead smelting plant in Florida endangered hundreds of its workers and polluted the surrounding community. The series, which won Johnson the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, led to record fines, stronger oversight, and immediate safety improvements.

“I’m talking about purpose, passion and persistence,” Johnson said. “Just from studying what happened to King, I discovered my journalism, my purpose.”

 

Institutions as vehicles of change

Exeter’s MLK Day observances regularly welcome back alumni as presenters. Their real-world experiences and messages can offer an authenticity to Academy students even the most polished professional speaker may not be granted. Certainly Jameel Mohammed ’13 has bona fides. An artist and designer, Mohammed founded luxury jewelry brand KHIRY in 2016 while an undergraduate at Penn. His jewelry has adorned the likes of Michelle Obama, Megan Thee Stallion and Halley Berry. In 2021, he was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 List in the Art and Style category. Last week, Mohammed was named the winner of the inaugural Tiffany & Co. and Council of Fashion Designers of America Jewelry Designer Award.

Jameel Mohammed ’13 spoke to students about institution building and how established institutions can be both a vehicle or an impediment — for change.

Mohammed spoke to a room full of students about institution building. “Bringing Black culture into the luxury space has been a confrontational objective for me, and the amount of work and effort over the last 10 years has been exhaustive. But how is that work being instituted so that it will survive me? That’s where I’ve been thinking about institutions and their roles.”

Mohammed said he has developed an appreciation that institutions — cultural, educational, commercial — are vehicles for lasting impact because they “are not just bound by one person or a small group that can be worn away over time.

“Whatever way you want to change the world comes down to either creating your own institutions or contending with the existing ones.”

He tasked students with coming up with a list of elements that define institutions, a list that included some degree of hierarchy, structure, ideology, adaptability, desirability and more. They discussion then steered toward how these elements might help or hinder every good Exonian’s purpose: to make an impact on the world.

“The world is thick; the way things are is deeply defined,” Mohammed said. “The world is not just waiting for you to amend it. Institutions are part of making change in the world.”

 

Man up for the ‘Beloved Community’

In the Forum of the Elizabeth Phillips Academy Center, over 100 students, mostly male, took in a workshop titled “Men and Masculinity in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Beloved Community.” Led by visiting presenter Rory Hart and student panelists Caspar Bailey ’25, Marcus Ingelfinger ’25, RJ Edmonds ’26 and Marco Rodriguez ’27, the topics put forth, and corresponding breakout discussions, centered on King’s message and the adverse effects of toxic masculinity on societal unity.

Paraphrasing King, Hart, chair of the History & Global Studies Department at the Hun School of Princeton, teed up the message for the workshop.

“We have to break out of our default settings for seeing and operating in the world so that we can share in the fruits of the world together and so that we can live and transcend discrimination and prejudice,” Hart said. “Gender is one of the qualitative and quantitative changes that stands between us and King’s vision of the Beloved Community.”

The session quickly became interactive as the moderators invited instant digital feedback to the prompt “What is masculinity?” The projected screen quickly filled with words like “strength” and “muscle.”

“I noticed a lot of the words have to do with characteristics or behavior or your mindset, which is very important in what masculinity actually is,” said Edmonds. “Our goal here is to kind of change that into something positive rather than the common association of some of the words — muscles or strength — things that are usually associated with being a man.”

The students then broke up into small groups to discuss male role models in their lives and the lessons, both good and bad, they have learned from those figures.