Exeter Summer: an unbeatable mix of Harkness and fun

Ask Exeter Summer students to describe the nation’s longest-running summer education program and you’ll get different answers:

"It’s about making friends with people from all over the world."

"It opened my eyes to new ways of learning and thinking."

"It helped me discover who I am."

The students arriving today have traveled from 38 states and 50 countries, including Ghana, Slovakia, Australia, Bahrain and Guatemala.

The global connections and shared cultural learning that happen at Exeter Summer are standout experiences for many students. For most, this is their first experience with Harkness learning, one that will change their approach to learning forever.

Acting out

Exeter Summer celebrates the new Goel Center for Theater and Dance with a host of courses focused on performance and stagecraft. Highlights include:

Movie Time: Exeter’s Filmmaking Academy, one of 10 intensive theme-based clusters for rising 8th and 9th graders, introduces students to screenwriting, video production and film history. Students produce their own video by the end of the term.

Invitation to Theater combines the fundamentals of acting and stagecraft. Students work as an ensemble company and will perform “A Night of One-Act Plays” on our new mainstage theater.

Dance workshop gets students moving in several genres: jazz, modern and hip-hop. Original choreography is encouraged in this intensive course that is open to everyone from beginner to advanced.

Clothing Design and Construction is a hands-on introduction to conceptualizing, designing and building a garment. Students learn and work in our expansive, well equipped costume workshop.

Innovative curriculum

We’re always expanding our curriculum to keep up with student interests. Here are a few new options:

Partner with Stanford researchers to develop new fruit fly strains in Molecular Biology to Construct Transgenic Animals. Successful new strains could become staples in the national fly strain repository, a source for scientific researchers around the world.

Ever wonder how to seek out happiness? The Science of Happiness taps into this curiosity and explores practical lessons from science and psychology.

Kind by Design: Make it Big in a Good Way takes budding young entrepreneurs through the invention process, from concept to design, product pitch and the opportunity for development, all with goodness at heart. Along the way they learn about ethical marketing and how to assess product concepts against 12 principles of green chemistry.