Exonians Prep for 2013 Summer

Even though school will not be in session, members of the Academy’s community have found a myriad of ways to fill their summer schedules, participating in a variety of programs and internships. In many cases, work conducted over the summer has direct relations with current initiatives the Academy is involved in.

"Faculty summer plans reveal how professionally active, creative, and productive teachers are throughout the year," Dean of Faculty Ron Kim said. "We have faculty members pursuing advanced degrees, learning more about particular areas of interest, travelling to places connected to what they teach, learning more about academic technology, and engaging in substantial revisions of existing courses."

English Instructor Jason BreMiller will travel to Alaska this summer to do preliminary research and planning work for a potential trip with Exonians to the area in the summer of 2014.

He plans to meet with a number of prominent figures in Alaska, such as Michael McBride of National Geographic and the Kachemak Bay Wilderness Lodge, Alaska Lieutenant Governor Mead Treadwell, curator of the Anchorage Museum Aron Crowell, and leading orca scientist Craig Matkin.

BreMiller first travelled to Alaska in 2002 and fell in love with the untrammeled wilderness in the area.

"I first went to Alaska in 2002, when I drove down from New York to the Kenai Peninsula where I hopped a bush plane to Dillingham and worked in a salmon cannery," he said. "In graduate school, I again travelled to Alaska during two summers, working on my graduate degree through Middlebury’s Bread Loaf campus in Juneau."

In the past, BreMiller, who is a National Outdoor Leadership School educator, has led community members of other schools on wilderness trips. "I have worked as an outdoor program director at Hotchkiss. In the past, I have led trips for community members for other schools to wilderness destinations like Tanzania, Utah, Argentina. A group of my students summited Kilimanjaro," he said.

BreMiller added that a combination of Alaska’s raw natural backdrop and the nature-centric lives of the people there inspired him to take a group of students to Alaska.

"It’s a place where people are living very closely to the land, where the twining of culture and place remain visibly intact. In other ways it’s a microcosm for relevant current environmental issues because you can experience tangible effects of global warming like glacial rebound," he said. "I’ve felt a strong pull to this place for a very long time, and I’ve been wanting to take a group of my students up there to experience firsthand the impact of its aesthetic and cultural appeal."

Several faculty will also be involved in education outreach programs across the country, bringing the Harkness pedagogy and the Exeter philosophies to public schools. Many others will be chaperoning students on ESSO trips all over the world, including to China and Costa Rica.

For students, Student Council’s summer fellowship program has allowed them to explore a variety of interests.

With the fellowship, upper Kieran Minor plans to intern at a nonprofit music studio in Haiti. According to Minor, he came into contact with a man that had co-founded a nonprofit music studio and music school called Konbit Mizik with his college roommate after attending the Berklee School of Music.

"They took artists off the streets and recorded them, in addition to hosting concerts in Haiti and in Manhattan," Minor said. "The idea of using music to heal the community after the 2010 earthquake appealed to me, and from the moment I met the guy, I knew I had to go with them."

Minor, who has worked as both a DJ and General Manager of the WPEA radio station on campus, will be researching Creole hip hop music, conducting radio interviews with the artists and their families, and following camera crews as they film music videos.

"There is a lot of independence in the twelve days I will be down there, as I formulate and execute my plan of action by myself," he said. "My final project for the community will include a forty-minute radio special, for airing on local radio stations like WPEA to stations in Boston. It will consist of interviews and original music from the studio. I am very excited to put my WPEA skills to work, as it is a key part of the project."

Other students will work on other projects unrelated to the Academy. Lower Christina Savvides plans to intern at the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD this summer.

She applied to the high school internship program for a position at a biomedical research lab, where she will spend 11 weeks working under a developmental endocrinologist in pediatric genetics. The decision to devote her summer to scientific research stemmed from a deep-rooted passion for biology.

"The first time I took bio was in eighth grade in an AP bio course, and that’s where I’ve focused my energy since," she said. "The last two summers I’ve interned at a lab at Case Western Reserve University in the department of genetics researching colorectal cancer and working on a drug that’s currently patented and undergoing the FDA approval process."

Savvides is now excited to take the next step with the internship at NIH. "The people who work at NIH are truly the best in their professions, some of the best in the world, and it’s humbling to even be at the same lab as them," she said.

Upper Rohan Pavuluri will be participating in a Telluride Association Summer Program at the University of Michigan entitled "Dark Phrases of Womanhood: Black Feminist Approaches to History and Literature." The six-week program for high school juniors is centered around three-hour seminars every weekday morning, in addition to guest speakers and a public-speaking program.

Pavuluri underwent a rigorous application process, including the submission of essays and transcripts, and an invitation-only interview. Last year, 1300 students applied for 64 spots.

"I was attracted to the academic rigor of the program and to the people that I might meet at the University of Michigan," Pavuluri. "I imagine these kids are equally motivated and have the same amount of intellectual curiosity."

Other students will travel abroad for the summer. Lower Amy Azubuike will travel to Germany and the Czech Republic as part of the Experiment International Living (EIL) program. Each year, thousands of students apply for a coveted twenty spots per host country. Azubuike, a passionate German learner, chose EIL because it blended a multitude of her interests into one organized structure.

"I’m really excited about this program, because I’ll be in Germany and immersed in a local culture, so my language skills will improve, but I’ll also be learning about local cultures and doing community service," she said.

"The idea is to give back to the community you visit in a meaningful way; by being immersed in the local culture, I hope to gain an understanding of what ‘meaningful’ is to residents."