‘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.