Exeter Innovates: new courses challenge old constructs

In late 2016, with the generous commitment of a five-year grant from an anonymous alumnus and his wife, Exeter announced an initiative to create an “experimental space” for transdisciplinary courses that would embrace the confluence of learning at the table and the meaningful experiences that students find in cocurricular and extracurricular activities. The call for course ideas sent to faculty cited these criteria: advanced topics with a creative rethinking of the experience of uppers and seniors; interdisciplinary and/or problem-based focus; opportunities that blend curricular and applied or service learning; expansion of relationships with universities, alumni and organizations; innovative use of technology; and cross-department teaching with faculty teams.

Accompanying the call was a set of proposals from seniors in Religion Instructor Peter Vorkink’s class Imagining Your Future. As a starting point, the students’ 33 concepts confirmed a hunger for courses that cross subject borders, and gave insight into students’ interests, which spanned everything from deep dives (Culinary Chemistry) to broad inquiries (Exploring Foundations of Identity and Nationhood), and from quirky (Super Villain Ethics) to socially engaged (Activism in Small Communities).

After receiving a host of proposals from faculty, many building upon themes highlighted by the seniors, the Exeter Innovates review committee selected five to launch this year: Green Umbrella Learning Lab (sustainability); Identity, Empathy and Cross-Cultural Understanding; A People’s War: Digital Humanities in the Study of America’s Civil War; Advanced Ceramics + Chemistry; and Bioethics.

“We’re just embarking on the Exeter Innovates program,” says Brooks Moriarty, dean of studies and academic affairs, who has overseen the rollout of the new courses, “and it’s already clear that there’s intense interest.” All Exeter Innovates courses are co-taught, have a hands-on component, and target uppers and seniors. “Faculty want to collaborate and experiment within the ongoing curriculum,” Moriarty adds. “Students love the broadening of focus that courses like Bioethics afford, and the ability to learn experientially as well as at the table.”

This initiative follows upon years of interdisciplinary exploration that started in 1991 with Literature and the Land, a course that is still taught today. Recent highlights include popular new courses, such as Epistemology; a burgeoning number of custom-designed senior projects; and cocurricular ventures using leading-edge methodologies, like Exeter’s design thinking-based Maker Fest.

“Each step along the way has allowed us to assess student interest and need; create innovative learning opportunities that have a positive impact on curriculum across the board; and integrate tools and skills needed in the 21st century,” Moriarty says.

The excitement of working with cutting-edge technology shows in the students’ faces on a mid-October morning as Chapman invites them to pair up for the Bioethics CRISPR Cas9 lab.

Chapman briefly summarizes the main points at the beginning of class: They will replace a gene in bacteria that normally responds to an antibiotic with a gene that is resistant, and then place the bacteria into a growth medium mixed with that antibiotic. “If we come back and find little colonies of bacteria growing, we’ll know that our experiment worked,” Chapman says.

Students look wide-eyed as they move to well-equipped lab tables. Each station is outfitted with special micropipettes and tips of varying size; nonpathogenic bacteria (no potential for disease transmission); Cas9 (a protein that will be used to “cut” DNA like a pair of molecular scissors); tracrRNA and crRNA (which together tell Cas9 where to “cut”); a variety of solutions (transformation for the “cutting,” agar for growth); and collection tubes.

As the students work, Chapman and Friedlander move among the stations, answering questions. One lab group struggles with the micropipette, which does not want to take up liquid. Easily fixed by swapping out for the pipette from another team. Students work with audible excitement punctuated by occasional requests for clarification. At the last minute, there’s a scramble for a bit more Cas9 — one pair has not yet finished the lab, and the protein has been used up. The biology lab technician, Cheryl Rotondo, quickly locates more.

The Bioethics labs provide a grounding in biological science and a framework for understanding broader issues, both ethical and scientific. To supplement the CRISPR lab (which was entirely successful — all seven lab pairs observed bacterial growth in their specimens), students discussed the implications for human embryos of CRISPR technology.

“Coming into this class, most of the kids had heard of CRISPR, but they didn’t understand the biology involved or the ethical ramifications of the technology,” explains Chapman. “They learned that you don’t need to be in a research lab to do CRISPR — you can do it in high school. Bioethics helped them get a sense that there’s a spectrum of uses for these types of technologies. Some uses seem ethical, as in treating disease, but in the case of CRISPR, the possibility of gene-editing in human embryos is much more controversial.”

Housing close to 60 boys, Wentworth Hall sees a lot of takeout pizza boxes pass through its heavy green doors every week. Its residents order an average of three large pizzas a night, for a total of 630 gooey pies per academic year. All those pizza boxes add up to a whole lot of waste — to say nothing of the pollution generated by the production of the boxes. Scale those numbers out to the rest of the country, which consumes 3 billion pizzas a year, and you’ve got a great big greasy cardboard mess on your hands.

A small group of Exonians may have found a solution to help manage that mess. Four students in Exeter Innovate’s Green Umbrella Learning Lab (GULL) have designed a working model of a reusable metal pizza container. Partnering with local favorite Front Row Pizza, they instituted a successful pilot program to use (and reuse) the containers for deliveries to Wentworth Hall. The group has plans to pursue a patent on the box once they’ve perfected the design.

Community classroom

GULL was born out of conversations between Jason BreMiller, English instructor and sustainability education coordinator, and Jill Robinson, senior manager of sustainability and natural resources. “There [is] a lot of work on campus that could provide positive learning opportunities for students,” BreMiller says. “And yet, it was challenging for students to find time in their schedules to do the work. They had a lot of ideas and interest, but they didn’t have the bandwidth to be involved.”

He and Robinson decided to design a course that would allow interested students to carry out a campuswide sustainability project of their own design. “The project-based, design-thinking model had been on my radar for a long time,” BreMiller says. “To me, it seemed like the logical extension of Harkness. These kids have been developing their collaborative skills in the classroom. Why not give them the opportunity to employ those skills to do good work for the PEA community and beyond?”

Background in design thinking

Robinson and BreMiller divided the term into several phases. Building in time for leadership training and teamwork during the first phase, the teachers drew on curriculum from the National Outdoor Leadership School and supplemented that with a visit to a nearby ropes course. They also arranged a visit from Eugene Korsunskiy, who teaches at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering. During his crash course in design-thinking theory, Korsunskiy pushed students to rethink old ideas about success and failure. “He told them to keep working through the failure, because you’re going to eliminate what doesn’t work and come up with a better design,” Robinson recalls.

Brainstorming

As they began to brainstorm, students were encouraged to think about an existing issue or problem in the community, and work backward toward designing and implementing an effective solution. The class proposed 70 possibilities, which were vetted by the teachers. “One of the things we thought about was, ‘What scale projects make the most sense?’ ” BreMiller explains. “We selected those that had a reasonable chance of completion in a single term.” (Their guideline squared nicely with another Korsunskiy principle: “Do a small thing and do it well.”)

Four core projects emerged through a series of class votes: the “Thinking Outside the Pizza Box” project was one. Another, “Exeter Exchange: Combating our Community’s Consumerism,” worked with the Facilities Management team on relocating the student-run thrift store, the Exchange, to expand its space and provide better access to gently used, affordable clothing and goods for the community. Students in the “PO Box Buildup” group set up cardboard box break-down stations near the post office and in Peabody Hall to raise awareness about the environmental and social impact caused by the surge in online shopping. A fourth group investigated ways of integrating more sustainability initiatives within the Athletics Department.

Project work 

During the project phase, ideas became actions. Students learned how to draft professional emails, conduct business phone calls, assert their needs in a respectful way, look for ways to get the rest of the community invested in their concepts, and troubleshoot as problems arose.

When the pizza box designers discovered that the seemingly durable plastic they used in their original prototype could not withstand the heat of commercial dishwashers, “It was quite a step back,” says Pedro Haegler ’18. “We had done a lot of planning, and we were really inclined to use it,” he adds. “It even had our logo.” Fortunately, Haegler says, he had a proactive team. Jane Li ’18 suggested they go with the first thing they could find and complete at least one trial run before the term ended, so they purchased metal pans, and with the help of Gerry Hill and Marshall Miller from Facilities Management, they designed a reusable lid that would fit on top. “That [decision] was pivotal for us in our project,” Haegler says.

When senior Olivia Peterson’s initial calls to Front Row went unanswered, the team strove to find key players in person to get the job done, keeping in mind another Korsunskiy nugget: “You can’t design without concern for the stakeholders.” They interviewed Wentworth Hall dorm faculty to learn more about their pizza buyers’ needs, invited feedback on their prototype from the staff at Front Row and presented a persuasive economic model, demonstrating how the restaurant could recoup the cost of reusable pans after just one year. To seal the deal, they offered to take on the task of dishwashing, but the Front Row staff was willing to own that chore and enthusiastic about doing a trial run.

Looking ahead

Speaking in the Academy Center amid the clangor of his fellow Exonians on a midmorning break, Haegler reflects on the experience and outlines next steps for his group, including the expansion outward of their service dorm by dorm before making the reusable pans available to the wider public. “We know there’s a consistent desire for pizza. It’s ordered every day,” he says. “And we know we have a concept that’s environmentally and economically sustainable. That’s why we’re happy to work beyond the fall term GULL class.”

To fulfill their plans, Haegler and his teammates will need to depend on Grace Gray ’19, the only group member who won’t be graduating this year. As BreMiller and Robinson craft their vision for the future of GULL, they are pursuing the possibility of offering the class each term, which would allow for greater participation and enable students to scale up to larger projects that could be passed down from year to year.