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A winning culture

Building leadership, building culture and building community. These are all part of the game plan behind the Captains’ Council, an initiative implemented last fall by the Physical Education and Athletics Department. It brings together the administration and more than 70 Big Red varsity captains to discuss opportunities, challenges and ideas pertinent to Exeter teams.

“The first year of the Captains’ Council was a great way for us to get to know our leaders at a deeper level, have a two-way sharing of information and get the pulse of the student-athlete experience,” Director of Physical Education and Athletics Jason Baseden says. “The council is a place for students to talk to us about their experience and set the standard for what they want their experience as Exonians to be.”

This year, the council members joined proctors, student listeners and other student leaders on campus prior to the official move-in day to take part in leadership training workshops.

The Physical Education and Athletics Department also partnered with P/ATH, Progress Through Athletics, to further educate our students, coaches and the department on building a safe, equitable, inclusive and winning culture.

“P/ATH has invaluable tools and lessons that hit home to leaders in sports across all levels, high school through professional,” Baseden says, noting that the P/ATH curriculum touches on topics such as building confidence, identity, empowerment and being a great teammate.

“We want our athletes to set the objectives they have culturally, in the greater community, on their teams and on the field and have us, as the adults, give them the tools they need to reach their goals.

 

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Welcome to New Hall

Move-in day falls on a sunny Wednesday in early September. All over campus, welcome signs decorate open dormitory doors and chalk-drawn arrows point the way inside. Students lug crates and drag suitcases along the pathways, taking frequent breaks to hug friends and compare summers.

A bit of extra excitement fills the air, along with the smell of fresh paint, as students and their families make their way down Front Street and enter the newly constructed 42,000-square-foot dormitory, currently known as New Hall. Resident faculty members perched on red Adirondack chairs greet new arrivals as they pass through the window-lined entrance and step tentatively into the dorm’s light-filled common room, where proctors have gathered to answer any questions.

In a third-floor room, Kendra Wang ’25 unpacks while her roommate, Jackie Addo ’25, has most of her belongings neatly arranged on her side of the room. The cozy double is made roomier by built-in wooden desks and shelves set against the window and dressers tucked underneath raised beds. Tackboard covers the wall above each bed, awaiting each student’s personalized array of fairy lights, posters, photographs and other decorations.

New Hall is the first dormitory to be built on Exeter’s campus in more than 50 years. If that isn’t significant enough, the sustainably constructed building also houses an academic space with four Harkness classrooms, bringing living and learning at Exeter together under one roof for the first time. With its opening this fall, New Hall has created a vibrant community hub on the western edge of campus, furthering the school’s vision of residential life as an essential part of the Exeter experience.

Priya Nwakanma ’23

“There’s something really unique that boarding schools can offer to both day and boarding students,” says Carol Cahalane, the Academy’s dean of residential life since 2018. “It’s the opportunity to have many places and ways to gather with peers who are equally interested in connecting and learning about each other and the world together.”

Cahalane is far from the first school leader to place residential life among the most valuable aspects of an Exeter education. The process of converting the Academy to a residential school goes back to the construction of the first permanent dormitory on campus, Abbot Hall, in 1855 (see sidebar, “Abbot Hall”). In the early 1930s, Edward Harkness’ revolutionary gift funded the addition of Bancroft, Langdell, Merrill and Wheelwright Halls. This brought the school’s total to 13 large dormitories, each housing 35 to 70 students, in addition to eight smaller house dorms, and provided accommodations for instructors with families for the first time.

“The residential element is at the heart of the education we provide,” Principal Richard W. Day reported to the Trustees in 1971, two years after the last two large residence halls to be built, Main Street Dormitory and Ewald Dormitory, opened on the northern edge of campus. “Dormitory life is not separate from but an extension of what takes place in the classroom. The value of each experience is dependent upon the quality of both.”

This symbiotic relationship was on everyone’s mind in 2019-20, when more than 700 community members weighed in on a vision for Exeter’s future and composed a Campus Master Plan. Based on the result of a student housing study, the plan included the renovation of six existing dorms over the next decade, as well as the construction of a new residence hall to house 60 students. This new hall would allow for renovation of existing dorms without either executing that renovation completely in the summers or displacing students during the school year.

“The new dormitory is not about an expansion of student enrollment,” says Heather Taylor, campus planner and architect. “It’s about a long-term strategy to improve student life and housing options on campus.”

Following Wentworth’s renewal, Langdell and Merrill Halls are the next dorms scheduled for renovation, and students from both will be living together in New Hall for the next two years. Langdell and Merrill are expected to reopen in the 2024-25 school year along with an expansive new Wetherell Dining Complex. “We’re very fortunate in that all of these are good buildings with good bones that we will be able to renovate them for the next 100 years,”

Taylor says. “My hope is that the same is true for the new dorm. You want to design a building that is timeless and functions for generations of our students.”

Historic Dow Barn houses two of New Hall’s five faculty apartments.

In accordance with the principle of environmental stewardship, a key aspect of the Campus Master Plan, the primary structure of New Hall is wood frame rather than steel, which minimizes its carbon footprint. Inside, the building maximizes natural light in both the residential and academic spaces, and geothermal heating and cooling systems provide dehumidification to the student rooms and air conditioning and heating to the faculty apartments and academic spaces. Faculty apartments on each level include separate studies opening directly to student hallways, ensuring a strong faculty-student connection as well as privacy for instructors and their families.

The building also incorporates the historic Dow Barn, which dates to the mid-19th century. Previously used only for storage, the barn was adjacent to neighboring Dow House, a former clinic that the Academy purchased in 1967 to adapt into a student and faculty residence. Dow Barn’s original exposed wood beams now adorn the cathedral ceiling in a second-floor faculty apartment. The façade on the barn end of New Hall incorporates the double doors and diamond-shaped windows of the original barn, as well as the vented cupola and weather vane. The same angular windows, repeated along the rest of the building, echo the barn’s classic look and feel, creating a seamless blend of historic and modern.

“I’m proud of the many sustainable features of the new building,” says Mark Leighton, director of Facilities Management. “Especially the reuse of Dow Barn, enhanced building envelope, geothermal systems, low-maintenance materials, and efficient sizing and layouts of the student and faculty spaces.” In addition to its main residential space — bedrooms for 60 students, five faculty apartments, an airy front common room and ground-floor game room with kitchen and laundry — the building’s academic wing is home to the Health and Human Development Department, with four Harkness classrooms, a department room and a flexible common area.

New Hall was built on the former site of Fisher Theater, which was the hub of the Academy’s performing arts offerings from 1971 until the opening of The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance in 2018. The sloping topography of the building site allows the new dormitory to easily incorporate academic and residential space, while keeping them securely separate.

The academic entrance, on the north side of the building, opens onto a courtyard adjacent to the Forrestal- Bowld Music Center and is a short walk from both the Lamont Health and Wellness Center and the Phelps Science Center. On the Front Street side, a broad campus green in front of the student entrance to New Hall links the building to two smaller dorms, Dow House and Front Street Dormitory. “I love how the topography allows for two distinct entrances, both of which have strong connections to campus,” Leighton says.

While the union of Merrill and Langdell in New Hall was born of necessity, it’s also an unprecedented opportunity. For the first time, former residents of two different dorms, their affiliated day students, and a small group of new students have come together to create a unified dorm

identity and forge the enduring bonds so many Exonians take away from their time on campus. “I do think each dorm has a very unique culture, and I’m fascinated to see how they mix,” says Troy Samuels, the head of New Hall and an instructor in history. “I’m excited to get to play around in terms of building community.”

The main floor conference area.

While Samuels and other dorm faculty members take the lead in this process, they will rely on the support of senior proctors for the vital task of building dorm unity. Other large dorms on campus typically have six to eight student proctors, but New Hall has 10, five from each former dorm. “At the beginning of the year, we’re going to be doing double duty,” says Bronwyn Hall ’23, a senior proctor who spent her first three years at Exeter living in Merrill. “Two people on duty every night, one from each dorm, so that we make sure everyone gets a chance to get to know people that they don’t know, and even the proctors get to know the other dorm’s proctors.”

Hall and her fellow proctors also played a key role in helping their dormmates prepare for the transition during last spring term. Merrill and Langdell residents went through the process of room draw together and also gathered on a few more informal occasions, like toasting s’mores on Wetherell-Ford Quad. “I think they’re going to be a little cautious at first,” Samuels says, adding that the new dorm “has just so many wonderful spaces and wonderful opportunities for them. It’s going to be great.”

Students Jackie Addo ’26 and Kendra Wang ’25 are one of several cross-dorm pairings in New Hall.

After meeting for the first time during an off-campus dinner outing at a local Thai restaurant, Addo and Wang became closer friends when they both ran winter track. As preps, Addo lived in Langdell and Wang lived in Merrill, but they decided in the spring to room together this year, becoming one of several cross-dorm pairings in New Hall.

A week after move-in day, their double looked well lived-in. They have both ordered shelves to attach to their beds for phone chargers and alarm clocks, and tacked up photographs, prints and collages over their beds. A shared built-in desk, which runs the length of the wall beneath the windows, is loaded with textbooks, laptops, Clorox wipes and other dorm room staples.

“I really like the view, especially when I’m studying,” Addo says. “When times get stressful, it’s really nice to look out at the trees.” The desk is so roomy that she has placed a second chair at the end, ideal for study sessions with a friend. Wang, a self-proclaimed “super clothes shopper,” loves the big closets.

Addo and Wang acknowledged having mixed feelings over the summer about the move to New Hall, and they worried about missing the close-knit culture of their former dorms. Now, however, they are optimistic. “There was a lot of emphasis in the first dorm meeting of everyone really trying to make the effort to see us as one big dorm,” Wang says. “I think that’s actually going really well.”

Addo agreed, saying: “There are a lot of people from Merrill that I wanted to talk to — people in leadership roles or people that play on the volleyball team — but never really got to know. I’m still working on that since it’s only been a week. But I feel really close with the Merrill people, and I’m really excited to see what we can do as one dorm.”

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

The joys of persistent curiosity

For many Exonians, the summer months offer that rare opportunity to follow their passions unhampered by school-year schedules and commitments. We caught up with four seniors as they settled on campus this fall and asked the time-honored question: How did you spend your summer?

 

James Clavel ’23

Baseball Statistician

Big Red ace James Clavel ’23 first played baseball in Japan, where he lived from age 8 to 12, so it was fitting that he returned there this summer as an intern with a professional team. Thanks to his Japanese maternal grandmother and family trips to Japan every summer until COVID hit, Clavel has stayed fluent in the language and interested in the culture. Through some local contacts, he secured an internship with the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, a member of Nippon Professional Baseball.

Clavel spent three weeks conducting statistical analyses for the team, which has won 11 championships. “They liked me because I understood both U.S. and Japanese baseball,” Clavel says.

His primary focus was on trends among American batters in Japan, analyzing what made some more success-ful there. He looked at walk rates and noted that the higher the rate, the more successful the Americans were in Japan. Interestingly, he also determined that players who tend to strike out in American baseball, where success is measured in home runs, did well in Japanese baseball, where the game is less focused on power.

The internship reinforced Clavel’s plans to make a career of scouting or other off-the-field work in baseball.

And though he would have welcomed the opportunity to throw a few pitches, Clavel was happy to spend time focusing on a sport he loves in a country that means so much to him.

“I was really interested in working with a baseball team; I would’ve done anything,” he says, acknowledging that he did some homework on stats and Excel spread-sheets before heading to Japan. “Once I got there, they showed me a lot of it’s just using your eyes and looking for trends.” He also used his eyes and his expertise to scout high school and industrial league tournaments in Osaka, tracking pitchers with video and a radar gun. At least two of those pitchers are likely to be drafted this winter.

With a population of 1.5 million, Fukuoka, in southern Japan, is not a small city, but Clavel, who lived there on his own, was noticed enough to be interviewed on national television.

“I guess it was a bit of a novelty to have an American person there,” he says. “My boss told me they thought it was really interesting that there was a foreigner who was working in baseball.”

 

Minseo Kim ’23

Non Sibi DreamCatcher

Insomnia keeps Minseo Kim ’23 up at night, but she is sleeping fine. “I would start in the afternoon and just keep coding and fixing bugs,” she says. “Night would pass by and before I knew it, my mom would knock on the door and bring me green tea.” That coding was integral to DreamCatcher, a product Kim is co-developing that uses photoplethysmogram (PPG) data to track sleep.

Early in the pandemic, while attending classes from her home in Seongnam, South Korea, Kim became aware that her fellow Exonians and millions globally were struggling to get a good night’s sleep. With tech and design thinking in her blood — she has lived in tech hubs Silicon Valley and Seattle — Kim and a teammate began exploring a new way for people and their doctors to track sleep data as part of the POSCO ICT AI Youth Challenge.

Sleep is routinely monitored with an electrocardiogram (ECG), which tracks heart rate, heart rate variability and other health data. But it requires the user to wear multiple sensors that can make it difficult to sleep. A PPG, however, requires only a single sensor — think Apple watches and oximeters — though the data it provides aren’t as detailed. Using artificial intelligence, Kim and her teammate were able to “train the model” to estimate an ECG wave accurately from a PPG wave and provide detailed data on how well and how long the user slept.

They encapsulated the circuitry in a forehead sensor Kim designed using Blender, a computer-aided design program, and produced with a 3D printer. Through Bluetooth and an Android app the teammates developed, the sensor could submit data to the user’s phone. The app also could provide pink noise, a blend of sounds that have been proved to aid with sleep. Research shows that back-ground sounds can be disruptive during deep sleep, so the sensor could deliver a signal to the app to turn off the sounds when the user enters rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the deepest stage.

The resulting paper received a Samsung Humantech Paper Award competition bronze medal in February 2022. Kim and her collaborator have a patent pending on the hybrid AI architecture they developed, a generative adversarial network and a convolutional neural network.

DreamCatcher isn’t Kim’s first use of AI and technology to respond to a health concern. In middle school, alarmed by the increase in suicide rates among her peers due to overwhelming academic stress, she developed a “mind lightening pen.” A combination of programming and heartbeat sensors that responds to an increase in stress level, the pen buzzes to remind the user to take a break from studying.

This summer, in addition to refining the DreamCatcher, Kim volunteered as chief technology officer for the South Korean branch of United Nations Volunteers and was an intern at the Way Maker School in Seongnam, helping to build a computer science curriculum that includes AI, emotion classification and empathy. “That got me thinking a lot about what it really means to care for someone else,” she says. “What does it mean to be non sibi? And what does it mean to incorporate that into technology? It’s about fully understanding the person and the problem, and finding the solution together.” 

 

Isabella Vesely ’23

Galactic Imagineer

By fourth grade, Isabella Vesely ’23 was focused on science. The Wisconsinite started robotics teams and later “stumbled upon” weekly lectures at the local university’s planetarium, where she took notes eagerly, surrounded by college students. By the end of middle school, she was two years ahead of her class in math, and a teacher recommended that she apply to Exeter.

Delighted as a prep to be able to choose classes in any branch of science, Vesely quickly realized her favorite was physics, for its expansive focus on everything, including particles and galaxy clusters. She barreled through Exeter’s entire physics curriculum. “Physics really helped me have this analytical mind, always questioning.”

This summer, Vesely participated in the QuarkNet Summer Research Program, a paid virtual opportunity for high school students. It is supported by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and is home to the world’s second-largest particle accelerator.

Vesely and a partner were assigned to imaging galaxy clusters across millimeter, optical and X-ray wavelength bands. Those were combined with the rest of their research group’s findings to create hyperfast, analytic model-based simulations of galaxy clusters to deter-mine their mass through an artificial intelligence neural network. That kind of information, Vesely says, along with research in dark matter and dark energy, will some-day play a role in developing as-yet-unrealized uses here on Earth.

“The base of physics is really just asking questions about what’s going on around us,” she says. “Once you find a discovery and know more about the world, you can have meaningful applications. The first step is experimenting and observing, using our eyes or, now in modern physics, computers, simulations, neural networks and AI.”

This fall, while continuing research for Fermilab, Vesely will tackle special types of problems in quantum mechanics and apply so-called deep neural networks and physics-informed neural networks as part of her senior project. She’ll review existing research to re-create results and hopes to help make the process more efficient.

Next spring, though, she’ll be a congressional intern. “We need better public policy that’s actually based on things that are pertinent in modern science,” Vesely says of her somewhat incongruent interests. “A lot of new public policy — in technology and energy, especially — has ties to physics and computer science. In the future, I hope to use what I explore in physics and engineering and computer science to make sure we have a very ethical way of living that’s more efficient.”

 

David Kim ’23

Budding Diplomat

Iran might not be at the top of everyone’s travel bucket list, but for David Kim’23 it is. So, two years ago, limited by quarantine and other restrictions at home in Hong Kong during the pandemic, Kim did the next best thing to traveling: He visited the local consulate — considered “foreign soil”— with a friend. The Iranian consulate general enthusiastically welcomed his two unexpected visitors.

“That was great luck on our end in terms of meeting him first,” Kim says. “That gave us confidence going forward.” It also inspired the two to make a formal plan to visit as many of Hong Kong’s 64 consulates general and 56 honorary consulates as they could, then share information and highlights from the ensuing discussions with their peers. The result: Consulate Review, a global organization whose mission “to bridge current and aspiring world leaders through open, meaningful conversations” is carried out today through chapters run by students in San Francisco; Cairo; Bogotá, Colombia; and Dubai, among other cities.

Together with Exeter friends Drew Smith ’23 and Jayson Tung ’23, Kim brought the project to New York and the United Nations last fall. They have met with ambassadors from every continent except Antarctica, asking challenging questions about education, gender equity, human rights, economics and climate change. They then share information with interested students through their website and Instagram feed. Kim says some conversations have been particularly notable, such as one with a member of the Israeli delegation and another with the Russian ambassador shortly before the war in Ukraine. This summer, Kim juggled a social media internship at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of The Gambia to the United Nations with his consulate visits before returning to Hong Kong to work on rebranding Consulate Review. That meant designing a new logo and articulating objectives, but also broadening the organization’s social impact.

To that end, Consulate Review is assisting the Iranian consulate with an event introducing Hong Kong residents to Iranian culture and geography, volunteering at the Panamanian consulate’s booth at the Belt and Road Summit, and initiating a pilot program to bring diplomats to schools in New York City’s five boroughs that might not otherwise have the means to do so. The team also hopes to begin filming informative documentaries.

“In so many different ways, this project entered my life and helped improve it,” Kim says, noting that the other country he would most like to visit is North Korea.

“Obviously, we’re ‘on different sides,’” Kim, a native of South Korea, says of his meeting with the North Korean consulate general. “But once you speak with someone, if you’re kind and respectful, they usually reciprocate. That has helped me tremendously — not just in that regard, but also at school, communicating with different people. You should be open to conversation, open to learning somebody else’s opinion, and willing to adjust if you learn something that’s different from what you think but aligns with the general moral truth.”   

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

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Lessons in empathy and identity

Abbot Hall

For nearly 75 years, the Academy operated without dormitories. Instead, “the boys boarded about town,” as one Exeter historian writes. But as enrollment grew, along with the cost of living, the Trustees recognized the need to offer on-campus housing to help ensure equal opportunity for all students. Charles H. Bell explains this thinking in his 1883 book Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire: A Historical Sketch, writing that the Trustees “determined to establish at the charge of the Academy, a dormitory and commons hall for the members of the school of limited means, by which the expense of living should be reduced to the minimum.”

The school experimented first with housing students in an Academy-owned building on Spring Street, which had been the J. & B. Williams printing shop. The arrangement worked so well that in September 1852 the Trustees voted “to erect a more suitable and capacious building for the same purpose, in the Academy grounds,” Bell writes. “It opened for use in 1855. It was constructed of brick, and contained rooms for fifty young men, with a dining hall and other needful accommodations; and cost about twenty thousand dollars.”

Abbot Hall, room 13, circa 1879

As Frank H. Cunningham details in his book Familiar Sketches of The Phillips Exeter Academy and Surroundings, the rooms were “furnished at a nominal rent, so that fifty boys are thus supported at about one half the cost of living at the ordinary boarding houses.” Residents paid $1 a year for a room. “The Trustees believe that no other institution of the kind in the country has approached this Academy in giving substantial aid to young men of poverty and merit,” Cunningham writes.

The building was named Abbot Hall, in honor of Benjamin Abbot, the Academy’s second principal, who served from 1788 to 1838. Abbot was a respected and beloved instructor, teaching such subjects as Latin and Greek for 44 years and counting among his pupils statesman Daniel Webster.

Ever considerate of the Academy’s mission to educate students in goodness and knowledge, the Trustees voted to post, inside each student’s Abbot Hall door, a set of eight rules, including: “There shall not be in or about the building, during study hours, any singing or playing of musical instruments, or any other noise inconsistent with the quiet study; and good order shall be preserved at all times.”

Abbot Hall remained the only on-campus dormitory until Soule Hall was built in 1893.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Healthy living and learning

Exeter’s Health and Human Development Department makes its home in New Hall.

To accommodate its expanding academic curriculum, as well as the Academy’s commitment to promoting students’ physical, mental and emotional wellness, Exeter’s Health and Human Development Department now makes its home into the spacious lower level of New Hall dormitory after years in the Lamont Health and Wellness Center.

New Hall’s academic space features four Harkness classrooms, a departmental office and a flexible lobby that can be used for group activities such as yoga, meditation and cooking, or just relaxing and connecting when not in class. Bookshelves lining the walls are home to an expanded library of health- and wellness-related books that students can browse and borrow.

While living and learning are kept securely separate — dorm residents have to exit the building to access the academic space — every Exeter student has the opportunity to take classes in New Hall. “It used to be that only ninth graders and new 10th graders took health,” Department Chair Michelle Soucy says. “Right before the pandemic, we changed it, and now students from all four years take at least one class in Health and Human Development.”

In addition to introductory courses aimed at helping all new students acclimate to the school, the Health and Human Development curriculum includes a Teen Health course for each class year, including one designed to help prepare seniors for life beyond Exeter. “We cover finances, learning to cook for yourself, and a bunch of other stuff for what we call the emerging adult phase of life,” Soucy says.

In the courtyard outside the building’s entrance, a circular medallion with the words “youth from every quarter” and an engraving of a lion rampant adorn a stone wall. An anonymous donor intended the medallion, and a soon-to-be- installed stone bench, to serve as a corner of campus dedicated to wellness reflection. The feature complements one of the department’s long-running fall programs, a positive psychology fair where students gather to paint and decorate rocks with messages of positivity. “We’re envisioning that we’ll have a little rock garden there as well,” Soucy says. “We’re always talking about the psychology of looking at things in the positive, and how you can raise your mental health.”

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Faculty in residence

Ellee Dean ’01 is still settling into her home on the second floor of Exeter’s newest residence hall. “We’ve had two all-dorm meetings so far, and I think the vibe seems really playful,” she says. “The kids and adults are all talking about this being a historic moment … and a real opportunity to create something fresh.”

An instructor in English and one of five resident faculty members taking charge of New Hall, Dean shares the apartment with her husband, Porter Hayes, a regional director of major gifts in Exeter’s Office of Institutional Advancement; their sons Bode, 10, and Wyatt, 8; and the family’s dog, Bruno. It’s one of five faculty residences in New Hall, including at least one on each floor of student living space.

All feature hardwood floors, spacious open-plan kitchens and living areas, and air conditioning, in addition to separate faculty entrances, dedicated parking spaces and two shared patios.

“We’ve talked about how nice it’s going to be to have our dorm team meeting and sit outside,” Dean says. “I’m also so excited about the bigger common spaces for the students. … I think having that big outdoor space in front of the dorm is going to be incredible. I can already imagine the kids having picnics out there.”

Dean’s apartment, like the other faculty residences, has a study that opens directly into the student hallway. The setup is ideal for dorm duty and fosters strong ties between resident faculty and students. Dean’s study contains a table with four chairs and a roll of kraft paper mounted on the wall, perfect for students — and kids — in the mood for a writing or drawing session.

Dean has more experience than most with dorm life at Exeter. A resident of Amen Hall during her student years, she has lived in Webster Hall and Merrill Hall since joining the Academy as a faculty member in 2013. As a parent, she admits that living in a dorm has its perks. “There are always a ton of kids volunteering to babysit,” Dean says. Bode and Wyatt have also taken piano and chess lessons from student members of the Exeter Student Service Organization.

For their part, her children seem relatively unfazed by their new surroundings. Bode likes living closer to his elementary school, and to the adjacent fields where he plays baseball and lacrosse. Although Wyatt’s bedroom has a stunning view of the Academy Building’s bell tower, he’s far more excited to show off the LED lights his parents installed and his collection of Boston Celtics gear.

Wyatt does muster some enthusiasm for seeing familiar students and meeting new ones as the school year begins — particularly if those meetings involve the dorm’s basement game room. “I might play some Ping-Pong,” he says hopefully, before rushing down the hall to join his family.

Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in the fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Stepping-off places

In my recent correspondence with John Irving ’61 (via email and a phone call that lasted almost two hours), it was difficult separating the author from Adam Brewster, the narrator of his latest novel, The Last Chairlift. Taming this conflation, trying to keep these voices in their own corners, was harder than I thought it would be.

I was feeling like a hypocrite, too. Though I retired from Exeter’s English Department in June, I had been bludgeoning my students for decades with Vladimir Nabokov’s mantra for good readers: “We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world … having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know.”

Whatever you assume about skiing and ski culture, let it go when you read Chairlift. Secure your boots to your bindings and enjoy negotiating the intertwining trails of Adam’s quests. Whether he’s searching for his father’s identity, nudging into place the puzzle pieces of his skier mother’s evolving love life or his own, or brooding over the ghosts of Aspen’s Hotel Jerome, it would be a shame to project our own experience onto the narrative’s screen or try to decode the artist’s life there.

We must surrender to the story. Which is hard to do if a chunk of it is hunkered on a setting the reader knows well. Like Exeter, for instance. If you’re a devoted Irving fan and have spent time with The Cider House Rules, A Widow for One Year, The Hotel New Hampshire, The World According to Garp, the more recent Avenue of Mysteries, or any of his 14 previous novels, you might appreciate a few echoes in The Last Chairlift (e.g., wrestling!). But Irving, who turned 80 last March, is an author who can conjure a distinct world upon what we believe are the foundations of the familiar —even if we can identify the thematic and topical watermarks of his previous fictions, especially while reading the book in the very town he’s describing.

“Fiction writers like what we call truthful exaggeration. When we write about something that really happened — oral most happened, could have happened — we just enhance what happened. Essentially, the story remains real, but we make it better than it truly was, or we make it more awful — depending on our inclination.” This is the voice of writer/narrator Adam Brewster, so you get my point about authorial ambiguity, which only intensifies in the stitched together conversation that follows.

Reading this novel, just shy of 900 pages, in two and a half weeks was a full-time job, especially when anticipating dialogue with its author. I loved every word, every minute of it. Not only the gravitational pull of my empathy for Irving’s characters and being subsumed by a tangled plot and historical commentary, but its patterns and refrains, its almost Homeric epithets. Epic is not an exaggeration for the author’s heroic management of language and scope. Like Adam says, “Unrevised, real life is just a mess.”

Ralph Sneeden: Early in our correspondence, I betrayed my dread of not being able to finish your book before our first phone conversation.

John Irving: What a blow it must be to your retirement — to be reading a novel longer than [Charles Dickens’] Bleak House. My Chairlift is still shorter than David Copperfield (barely). That said, it’s a relief to know that Chairlift really will be my last long novel. I know the approximate length of the boxcars in the train station, the novels not yet coupled to an engine. I’ve been trying to write the longest trains first — either the longest or the most difficult, for reasons other than their length. It looks like shorter trains from now on. I’ve always imagined dying at my desk, midsentence. I can accept dying in my sleep, only because it would be less of a nuisance for my wife. I’m not saying I’m going to become a novella man overnight, but that’s the direction I’m going in.

You’ve written about Exeter before, sometimes in disguise, indirectly. But this novel calls Exeter by name. Did this most recent fictional foray back to the culture of the school in the mid-20th century generate any unanticipated revelations, memories? 

Nothing unanticipated. The farther I get from being the faculty brat I was lucky to be, the more free I feel to take liberties with what happened to me. The surroundings feel autobiographical, and some of the core relationships to the school are autobiographical — like the faculty-brat connection, like the townie connection. I like to use my autobiography as a stepping-off place … to make something sound grounded in the real, in the actual. Then, when the exaggerations commence, you’ll think it’s all real. What develops from these familiar circumstances never happened to me. … Sometimes I change the name of Exeter, but there’s a familiar small town and a boarding school with an insider-outsider student population.

he farther I get from being the faculty brat I was lucky to be, the more free I feel to take liberties with what happened to me."

The word “normal” and its counterparts — weird, bohemian— come up later in the novel in the context of what sort of life Adam wants to live in comparison with his experience with his immediate family.

The basic circumstance of Adam’s situation is one we’ve seen before, too — a boy with a mysterious (or elusive) mother and an unknown (or absent) biological father. This is another stepping-off place; from this familiar premise, unfamiliar things develop. Adam is the lone straight guy in a queer family; even his extended family (including Nora, his cousin) is queer. Two lesbian couples and a trans-woman stepfather are the people looking after him; they’re his support group. Adam is afraid for them. “The Honeymoon on the Cliff” could have worked as a title for the novel. Yet Adam is the one who needs looking after; he’s more badly behaved than all of them, sexually. Of course, Nora is a troublemaker, a magnet to danger, and Em (her partner) is right to see the hatred coming — to be afraid for Nora. … Adam is both the out-of-it one and the odd man out. Adam is a slow learner, the last to learn.

LGBTQIA+ themes are laced into the DNA of your work from The World According to Garp to In One Person, but now it seems the reading world might be better equipped to appreciate what you’ve been doing all along. In an email, you were passionate in your recommendation of James Hannaham’s new novel, which you reviewed for New York Times, as a must read, because of its titular main character, Carlotta. You wrote, “It’s a time in the U.S. when state legislatures are passing anti-trans legislation — a good time to heroize a trans character!” I think Chairlift is a bold foray into that territory.

Elliot Barlow [a character in the novel] isn’t called “the only hero” for no reason; she’s a brave soul. My singling out the lonely bravery of the snowshoer owes a debt to my trans daughter, Eva. My third son, Everett, began the transitioning process to female less than six months before I began The Last Chairlift [in 2016]. Eva read my first draft when I’d only written half the novel. She has always been a writer — a playwright, a screen writer and an actor. We show each other our first drafts. She’s been doing an M.F.A. in film and screenwriting at York University in Toronto, where she’s also had a teaching assistantship. The name she’s chosen for herself as a writer, actor, director is Eva Everett Irving, which I like, because it’s totally accurate, but I call her Eva — she’s just Eva to me. I’m very proud of her.

You seem to be working out some of the great tensions of our time through what your characters say to each other, and how your narrator processes their ideas, their opinions. Chairlift seems poignantly current even in its evocation of the 1960s, from Adam Brewster’s childhood right up to the election of Donald Trump. The novel also enables the decades of the last 70 years to have their own conversation about the events, politicians, etc., that got us to where we are now. Though your plot broaches gun violence, religion, war, the brightest spotlight is trained on gender, Roe v. Wade, AIDS, sexual orientation and, especially, Ronald Reagan.

Reagan’s moral absenteeism was most apparent in the AIDS crisis. Of the Republican justices on the U.S Supreme Court who voted to overturn Roe, only one of them isn’t Catholic, and he was raised Catholic; his mother was an anti-abortion activist who worked in the Reagan administration. Those justices seem more in step with the Vatican than with the First Amendment — the part that says, “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.“

In the time of the Puritans, abortion was allowed beyond the first trimester — up to four or five months. Our founding fathers got this right; the choice to have a child belonged to the woman who was pregnant. For more than two centuries — beginning in the 1620s in Plymouth, Massachusetts — abortion was permitted. (It was prohibited for scarcely a century.) It’s ironic that we’re a nation founded by Separatist Puritans fleeing religious persecution in England. Now we’re doing the religious persecuting! An undeveloped fetus has more rights than an adult woman?

Pope Pius XII used the right-to-life term in an “Address to Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession”— a 1951 papal encyclical. Here are the pope’s exact words: “Every human being, even the child in the womb, has the right to life directly from God and not from his parents, not from any society or human authority.” The poor midwives! This amounts to mandatory childbirth. Freedom of religion is a two-way street. Yes, we’re free to practice the religion of our choice, but we’re also protected from having someone else’s religion practiced on us. Not now — not in these United States. What Dickens wrote about the law applies to those Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. “It is better to suffer a great wrong than to have recourse to the much greater wrong of the law.“

In the midst of what is supposed to be my publicity and promotion for The Last Chairlift, all these years later they’re screening Cider House at the Toronto International Film Festival again. I’m introducing the screening, telling the novel-to-film storyline — talking about the overturning of Roe, and how abortion rights were safer in 1985 (when the novel was published) than they are now. I didn’t think Roe v. Wade was safe when I wrote the novel, or when the film was made. There’s a moment in Cider House when one of the nurses says something to Dr. Larch about the law. “The law — what has the law done for any of us here?” Larch cries. (More déjà vu.)

I want my fellow members of the class of ’60 and ’61 to see my homage to Dick Pershing in Matthew Zimmermann, who — as a little boy at Exeter — grew big enough to achieve Dick’s heroic stature."

Let’s talk a little more about the commerce between your own life and one of the novel’s most compelling characters, Zim, based on Richard “Dick” Pershing, the grandson of John “Black Jack” Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. Dick graduated from Exeter in 1961 and his name is on the Korea/Vietnam memorial bench at the Academy. In a novel that features a lot of ghosts, Dick’s “spirit” provides a compass bearing for your exploration of the war in Vietnam and how it affects Adam and his family. With the character of Zim, the elegiac sonar pings you’re sending out to Dick Pershing are really gorgeous, subtle.

Thank you for noticing the elegiac sonar pings I am sending out to Dick Pershing — not the only friend I lost in that misbegotten war, but the one who always had a hero’s exemplary bearing. I’m a member of the class of 1960 and the class of 1961 — simply because I started with the class of ’60 but I graduated with the class of ’61. I have close friends in both classes. Dick Pershing was someone I admired at Exeter: a very entertaining guy, a three-sport athlete, he was someone I always looked up to. The school was a struggle for me. Dick did everything with seemingly effortless grace. I wished I could be more like him. My character, Matthew Zimmermann, is not Dick Pershing. Nothing comes easily to Zim. He is undersized for the lightest weight class in wrestling, but he bravely competes (and often gets mauled). Then Zim starts to grow. Yet Little Ray (the narrator’s mother) will always see him as the little boy she loved and sought to protect. In June 1965, Dick Pershing and I were ushers at a mutual friend’s wedding in Exeter — at the Exeter Inn. Our ’61 PEA classmate Don Hendrie was marrying an Exeter girl — Susan Niebling (like me, a faculty child).

I’d signed up for ROTC my freshman year at Pitt; I kept up the ROTC at UNH. I’d been accepted to the M.F.A. creative writing program at Iowa, but I always imagined I would be in service in the U.S. Army after my M.F.A. However, I got a girl pregnant on my junior year abroad, in Vienna. I married her; we had the baby. My son Colin was born in 1965. I was thereby dismissed from military service — 3-A, married with child. It was JFK’s ruling that at-home fathers should be ineligible for combat. I knew nothing about this; a ROTC officer told me. Unintentionally, I was out of the U.S. Army. (At the time, I was naïve enough to be disappointed.) I felt sorry for myself — to be married with a child before I graduated from college. I thought I’d missed an opportunity, as a writer, to “see” a war. I both envied and admired Dick that he was headed to Fort Benning, Georgia, to complete his training. Here I was at a party following Don Hendrie’s wedding, talking to Dick, wishing I could be more like him — as I remember wishing at Exeter. Dick was killed in action in Vietnam in 1968. In The Last Chairlift, I wanted to pay respect to Pershing’s heroism and to his illustrious military family. I wanted my character Zim’s heroism to mirror Dick’s. I never met the Pershing family, but I made their fictional counterparts as wonderful as I could imagine. I want my fellow members of the class of ’60 and ’61 to see my homage to Dick Pershing in Matthew Zimmermann, who — as a little boy at Exeter — grew big enough to achieve Dick’s heroic stature. I’m not the only one who misses him.

Chairlift can be described as “self-conscious” in a few ways; it’s a hall of mirrors in which the narrator is also a screenwriter who deploys his noirish screenplays in the hunt for family origins. But he’s principally a novelist who sees the world in terms of books, especially Moby-Dick, administered by his grandmother when he is a child. His stepfather, too — a searching, endearingly protean hero— is an English teacher at Exeter who often brings a wry literary sensibility to scenes. Melville, especially, gives Adam a way to appreciate destiny. I wonder if Chairlift might be a sort of love letter to great novels, to writers who’ve had an impact on you. 

I agree. Great Expectations was the novel that made me want to be a writer, only if it was possible for me to be a writer like Charles Dickens — to move a reader, as I was moved by reading him. (To make you laugh, and to make you cry.) The intention of a Dickens novel is to move you emotionally, not persuade you intellectually. I believe in, I aim for, the emotional payoff. … Having it both ways is a subversive intention of my writing. To be funny and serious at the same time.

Moby-Dick, which I read a couple of years later — when I was 17, almost 18 — showed me how to foreshadow an ending. I tried to pay my respect to the foreshadowing of that ending in the grandmother’s devotion to Queequeg and his life-buoy coffin. As for Melville’s bad reviews for Moby-Dick, those sloppy readers helped me put book reviewers in proper perspective. The Moby-Dick reviewers either skimmed the novel or skipped around in it. Yes, the novel can be tediously expository on the minutiae of whaling, but the intentionality of the foreshadowing couldn’t be more clear.

You mentioned in our last email exchange that Melville had inspired one of your last tattoos.

I was in my late teens or early 20s when I went to a maritime tattoo shop. I wanted the last line of Moby-Dick on my left forearm. In my imagination, I envisioned a sperm whale configured around that last line — “only found another orphan.” If I’d asked for a girlfriend’s name in a bleeding heart on my chest, the tattoo artist wouldn’t have hesitated, but he was worried about the last line of a novel. “I’ll give you the sperm whale, kid, but you should think twice about that quote from a book. You don’t know what you’ll think of that book when you get older.” (Hence no Moby-Dick tattoo — not then.) The line from Moby-Dick and the sperm whale would end up being one of the last tattoos I got — not the first. I have a maple leaf on my left shoulder, and the names of my wife and daughter on my left upper arm. I have the names of my two sons, Colin and Brendan, on my right upper arm. There’s the starting circle of a wrestling mat on the inside of my right forearm. I got all these before I got the sperm whale and “only found another orphan” on my left forearm. I found a maritime tattoo artist from St. John’s in Toronto. She told me my arm was too small for a sperm whale, but she did a good job. My last tattoo, on the outside of my right forearm, are the last lines of The Cider House Rules: Princes of Maine, Kings of New England.

Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in the fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Ralph Sneeden taught English at Exeter from 1995-2022, held the B. Rodney Marriott Chair in the Humanities, and is a co-founder of the Exeter Humanities Institute. His essays and poems have appeared in many magazines, including AGNI, Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, POETRY, The New Republic, and The Surfer’s Journal. His most recent book of poems, Surface Fugue (2021), won the Poetry Society of New Hampshire’s Best Book of the Year award, and The Legible Element, his collection of water-related essays, is forthcoming from EastOver Press.

Photo of John Irving

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“One reason I predetermine what happens in a story before I start a novel is because, once I start writing, I only want to be thinking of the language.”

John Irving ’61

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Roxane Gay

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​”Writing and compassion are absolutely connected. There’s just no separation there.”

Roxane Gay ’92

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“We think different things. We can talk about our ideas. … We’re all respectful of each other. That’s the world I grew up in.”

Dan Brown ’82

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Designing a better future

Eager students gather in the doorway of Room 317 in the Phelps Science Center like anxious ski racers at a start gate. When Instructor Nico Gallo gives the OK, the Design Lab quickly fills with laptops, backpacks and conversation. It’s early in the fall term and the rhythm of EXI555: Principles of Engineering and Design is beginning to take shape.

In this integrated studies course, students explore the engineering process through a series of projects including developing hand-sketched and computer-generated designs and producing tangible objects, all while asking, “How can we design and build for a better future?“

Students assemble around a large workbench in the middle of the room as Gallo lays out the expectations for the period. Gallo’s youthful looks may have the uninitiated visitor wondering, “Who’s in charge here?” But it’s soon clear, he’s fully in control, providing guidance and instruction on the trove of tools and machinery available in the Design Lab. It’s a space Gallo, now in his sixth year as the lab’s coordinator, knows well.

The day’s lesson plan, intentionally left loose, only asks that students take their tool case prototypes and make progress toward a finished product. Gallo’s preamble serves as a pep talk to push forward, even if initial designs must be altered, it’s all part of the process. “We need to make some choices early and commit to them fast,” he says. “Build something, test it, and build the next thing. It’s not always linear. … Don’t get too stressed out but move with a sense of urgency and commit to your decisions early.”

And with that the huddle breaks and students fan out to all reaches of the room. Joey Dong ’23, Jolie Ng ’23 and Casey Realini ’23 start at the laser cutter. The instrument will be in high demand throughout the period. Being first means they’ll have time to work out the kinks. The students place a three-foot piece of birch wood into the machine and move to the computer to pull up their design in Adobe Illustrator. Dialing in the intensity of the laser proves to be difficult and the group works through a series of test cuts with varying success as the smell of burnt wood fills the room.

While the troubleshooting at the laser cutter continues, Gallo gives Rianna Skaggs ’23 and Nana McBrown ’23 a tutorial on the band saw. The demo focuses on how to safely make precise cuts on small pieces of material. Skaggs and McBrown take turns using scrap wood as a buffer between their fingers and the buzzing blade as they feed slivers of birch into the saw.

A loud thud comes from across the room as Jacob Jamani ’23 drops a textbook onto his prototype tool case. He’s testing the strength of small pieces of rolled cardboard he’s added to his design to prevent the case from crushing under pressure. He gives a satisfied nod as both the prototype and the textbook escape in one piece.

With the time in the period running low and the laser cutter still occupied, Skaggs, with her newfound confidence on the bandsaw, suggests the group opt for using the lower-tech option to score the sides of the tool case. Nicholas Rose ’23 steps up to the machine and in a series of quick cuts walks away with what will become the frame.

Just as quickly as the period started, it’s over. Gallo has the students tidy up their workstations and, after a quick debrief, dismisses the class. Those who are able stick around for open lab hours, and the room again whirls with activity.

 

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

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Leading the library forward

Soon after arriving at Exeter, Laura Wood had a conversation with a former faculty member who expressed concern that students just weren’t using the Class of 1945 Library anymore.

“Then in the next breath, [the person] mentioned, ‘Well, the students are doing their research using databases,’ and then went on from there,” she recalls. “So, I brought the conversation back around to say that if the students are using databases for research, then they are using the Library. That is the Library.”

In our internet-dependent, post-card catalog age, Wood knows and embraces the challenges that come with ensuring that a school library stays relevant to students, teachers and other community members. This summer, she kicked off her tenure as only the fifth Academy Librarian in more than 50 years, having most recently worked as the associate university librarian for research and education at Harvard University.

An avid hiker and snowshoer, Wood lives off campus with her wife and 12-year-old son. As she settled into her new role this summer, we spoke with her about her background and her introduction to Exeter, as well as her strategy for collaborating with other departments and leading the Library into its next phase.

How did you decide to become a librarian?
I thought I wanted to become a professor. I was very interested in the study of religion, and I was pursuing a master’s degree [at Yale Divinity School]. But I came to the very quick realization that I did not want to be a writer, and that if I were to pursue being a professor, writing would be a major component. That got me thinking, what’s closer to what I do love? Finding information, supporting other people’s research, organizing things — the way that libraries do. I went on to get a library science degree, so I could put that into practice and have a practical application of my religion studies.
 
Having worked at the university level up to this point, what made you want to come to a secondary school like Exeter?
Like many people worldwide, I found myself rethinking how I spent my time before the pandemic. It crystallized for me some things that were important that I hadn’t prioritized and weren’t really present in the work that I was doing, like being a member of a community. I loved working in research universities and with librarians, but I didn’t get to work with students, and I didn’t get to participate in the life of the university in any kind of broad way. I’m interested in libraries being a part of the educational process. I think of myself as an educator, and I was looking for an opportunity where I could better identify as a member of a community of educators.
 
What are some of your initial impressions of Exeter and the Academy Library?
I don’t feel like I have the full taste [of the school] yet. Exeter Summer is great to see and to be part of, and it gave me a chance to focus on the staff and the day-to-day workings of the Library without being overwhelmed. The Library staff here have done a great job managing through a big transition; they have been experimenting with new programs and adapting existing work to the new constraints of the pandemic. The demands on them have rapidly changed, including how the building gets used to support PEA needs.
 
What do you think the role of the Academy Library is in life at Exeter?
Throughout my career, because of the rise of digitization, it’s been harder and harder for people to understand what the role of libraries can be. I always think of libraries as three parts. You have a building, a collection and expertise (meaning the people who can help the other stuff make sense). There’s a strong weight [at Exeter] on the Library as a building, but there may be opportunity for a better balance as we think about what libraries can do and what this library already does, much of which is hard to see because it is bits and bytes and digital. It’s a constant learning process for me, of how we can work with technology and with content in digital forms and maximize the library’s ability to help faculty and students as they pursue their intellectual questions and conversations (as well as assignments).
 
Could you share some goals for the school year ahead?
My goal is to be out of the library a lot. I want to understand the athletics program. I want to understand CAPS [Counseling and Psychological Services]. I want to understand the life of the classroom. My goal is to figure out how this library can continue with and increase its ability to partner with the rest of the institution, and to meet needs that maybe people haven’t even recognized yet. Because that’s what libraries do — we can provide things you didn’t know you needed.

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Diana Davis ’03

Girls Varsity Cross-Country

Davis takes over as head coach of the girls cross-country program, succeeding Gwyn Coogan ’83, who led the program for 17 years. As a student, Davis was a former captain of the girls cross-country, winter track and spring track teams. Coincidentally, she is the third member of Exeter’s Math Department to also serve as the head cross-country coach, following Coogan and Rick Parris, who led the squad for 27 years. Davis, who once ran at least two miles every day for over six years, competed for Williams College and has been an assistant coach with Exeter’s program since 2020.

Lovey Roundtree Oliff

Director of Tennis and Squash

In this role, Oliff oversees all operations of Big Red’s six interscholastic tennis teams and four squash teams. Oliff has served as the girls JV tennis coach for the last two years and as the girls squash coach since 2019. As a former classroom teacher and lifelong athlete, she brings to the teams her knowledge of physical and mental preparation, effective team dynamics, and the importance of balance between athletics and the Harkness pedagogy. Oliff is still active in both sports, competing in various United States Tennis Association and US Squash leagues.

 

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.