Faculty Gather for Second Year of Strategic Planning
Faculty members convened in Phillips Hall Wednesday, Oct. 14 for the first strategic planning meeting of the school year. Administrators and instructors discussed the Academy’s mission and topics such as mental health, sexual climate and stress.
This year’s meetings will shape the Academy’s future and culminate in an official vote on the Academy’s initiatives—as well as the budget for the strategic plan—for the next ten years.
The meetings, which began two years ago, were implemented to link the changing times and circumstances to the original virtues of the Academy.
According to Principal Lisa MacFarlane, the Academy is analyzing the demographics of the next generations of students and community members, learning about adolescent development, examining educational movements across the country, considering the effects of changing technology, assessing Exeter’s budgetary strength and seeking to understand and counteract the external conditions that could limit the Academy’s ability to serve its mission.
In moving toward the ultimate goal of a concrete strategic plan, faculty brought up many different ideas during the first meeting last Wednesday. “Major themes included students understanding their own learning process and leading more balanced lives, faculty well versed in the latest educational research and new ways of learning; more green space, travel, outdoor experiences and service; and even exporting Exeter’s curriculum to reach more people away from our campus” history instructor Amy Schwartz said.
History instructor Betty Luther-Hillman added that faculty discussed ways to diversify student life and create a more nurturing environment.
“We thought about ways we can do an even better job of respecting religious, racial or socioeconomic diversity so that everyone—students, faculty and staff—can really be their authentic selves, and they don’t have to fit into some sort of mold of what Exeter students, faculty or staff are supposed to be like,” Luther-Hillman said.
One of the prominent themes fleshed out during the meeting was mental and emotional health at Exeter—a concern that has also resonated deeply among students.
The faculty’s discussion on mental health actually began before the meeting. This past summer, instructors read Make it Stick, a book on the science of successful learning, and attended a lecture by neuroscientist Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, who proposed the important tie between emotion and reason. Accordingly, to kick off the meeting last Wedneday, where faculty reviewed Immordino-Yang’s idea and how it could apply to Exeter.
“We can’t keep our emotions out of our lives. The effort to do so just leads to depression and various forms of self-medication,” Brownback said. “So we need to feel them and understand where emotions come from and how to articulate them to others when we need to—as well as be able to hear them when they are expressed to us.”
The faculty’s main priority in its mental health agenda is alleviating stress for students. They began by examining the root of the issue: the different factors, external and internal to Exeter, that could be compounding pressures on students.
“I think there were certainly sentiments raised that we see that our students are very stressed. I think that there was a sentiment among the faculty that we would really like to ease their stress,” Luther-Hillman said. “Do we want to look at different daily schedules? Changing the graduation requirements? Or changing the academic structure?”
According to Luther-Hillman, although no single conclusion was pinpointed as the path for action, other concerns were raised in response to the question of stress at Exeter, from the homework load to parental pressures to the looming college admissions process.
Schwartz expanded upon the concern of the college-oriented culture underlying the current system and its effect on student mental health.
“One key theme was pushing back against the idea that Exeter is just what you do on the way to college and everything that happens here needs to be geared toward getting into an Ivy league college. We are interested in helping students prepare for their whole lives, not just college,” Schwartz said.
Other faculty suggested reexaming the busy Exeter schedule. With classes and sports spanning from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., faculty fear that Exonians are thereafter left with little time to complete their work adequately or explore pleasurable interests outside their curriculums.
“There never seems to be enough hours in the day to do all the things [one] need to do, and the faculty often feel the same way—that we can’t do well enough by… the students as we’d like to,” history instructor Michael Golay said. “I’m hoping that a lot of this process will get at what we can do to ease the pressure of some of those forces on us and on [students].”
Overall, the first strategic planning meeting served as a mass brainstorming session. With the process still in its developmental stages, according to Golay, there is little consensus amongst the faculty. For example, some faculty feel they assign too much homework. Others want to change the Exeter schedule or focus on understanding youth culture better, and still others feel that there needs to be more rigger in the academic program.
Despite the lack of harmony, the sheer number of opinions expressed demonstrated the care that will be put in the process. According to Brownback, more people spoke at the strategic planning meeting than in any other faculty meeting she remembers.
“Even though we didn’t all say the same thing or we didn’t all necessarily agree with each other, it was very clear that everyone in that room was really trying to think of ways that we want to see Exeter continue to grow and continue to be the best school possible for our students,” Luther-Hillman said.
As a better consensus builds, the Steering Committee, composed of nominated or self-nominated faculty, staff, trustees, members of the Principal’s Staff and the Principal Instructor, will draft the strategic plan. The trustees and Principal Lisa MacFarlane will ultimately approve the plan.
But, the successful answering of the questions at hand cannot come from one or even a few sources alone. Rather, the Academy is calling on all to contribute—students, faculty, trustees, families, alumni and stakeholders alike.
On Nov. 3, Student Council (StuCo) will be hosting an open forum assembly specifically focusing on mental health and wellness. There, according to senior and StuCo President Rebecca Ju, students will have the opportunity to ask questions they have never been able to ask before and receive explanations from a panel of four counselors, including Dean of Health and Wellness Gordon Coole.
Both of these discussions will serve as outlets for students to voice their opinions on mental health and how Exeter should approach the issue. The administration has expressed great interest in involving students, as students are the very subjects of strategic planning. Opinions expressed at the assemblies will be carefully considered in crafting the ten year plan.
Through what President of the Trustees Eunice Panetta referred to as “a great Harkness conversation,” together, slowly, Exonians will ruminate over the difficult issues at hand, share their aspirations for the Academy and bring together those different ideas to paint a mosaic that reflects the entire community’s ideal Academy ten years from now.
“Strategic planning is part linear direction and part spiraling through a lot of different questions and concerns. But there is a central thread to it all that is beginning to emerge, and I think that it will get clearer during the coming year,” Brownback said.
According to Luther-Hillman, an exciting process lies ahead that has the potential to inspire great changes both at Exeter and around the world. “Through whatever direction we decide to go with whether that be keeping things the same or making changes, we have the potential to influence a lot more than just our own school and our own student body because I think that if Exeter does something, the rest of the world of secondary education will be watching.”
Contributions from Hillary Davis