Senior Projects
By: Maya Cohen, Ashley Jiang, Elina Yang
Seven seniors presented their winter term Senior Projects via Zoom from March 9 to 15. According to the 2021-2022 Courses of Instruction, seniors may conduct “individual or joint projects of comparable value and scope to those of an academic course” under the guidance of a faculty adviser for one term during their final year at the Academy. Seniors who would like to do a project must petition to the Exeter faculty, who give approval if they feel it “promises desirable educational results that traditional instruction might not provide.” Seniors then present their projects at the end of the term.
Dean of Academic Affairs Laura Marshall explained the presentation method for this virtual term. “All students chose [to present over] Zoom. Zoom has given the opportunity for more members of the community to participate in the presentations. And it has given family members of the students the chance to attend,” she said.
Luke Breen
Senior Luke Breen studied the literature of surfing. Breen’s project was inspired by a time he spent in Rincon, Puerto Rico last December where he interacted with the local community.
“The local surf culture in Rincon is fabled to be a kind of melting pot of various cultures and I was very excited to learn about the richness and complexity of the region’s legendary microcosm,” Breen said. “I decided to create a video representing what I think are some of the most important and unique things to the town and I am thrilled to share what I experienced.”
Although the Zoom presentation met some initial technological issues, Breen noted that “Zoom is a pretty good way of getting people from far away to watch, so that's cool.”
Breen also said that “COVID protocols made it so I couldn't be as interactive with the people themselves as much as I had wanted to. This made it harder to hear stories and experiences first hand.”
Despite the challenges posed by COVID restrictions, Breen was thankful for those who supported him. “My family, friends, and project advisor, Mr. [Matt] Miller, helped guide me through my project and made my adjustment to Rincon easier earlier this winter,” he said.
Phil Horrigan and Senai Robinson
Seniors Phil Horrigan and Senai Robinson explored the relationship between John Phillips, founder of the Academy, and slavery. The project idea was first introduced to the seniors by Principal William Rawson in a Student Council Executive Board meeting. Horrigan and Robinson served as a co-Secretary and a co-President of the 2020-2021 Student Council Executive Board respectively.
Rawson sent an all-community email on February 24 with a letter outlining Diversity, Equity and Inclusion updates. In this letter, Rawson wrote: “In January of last year, I announced an initiative and appointed a steering committee to undertake a thorough examination of our school history for any connections between the Academy and the institution of slavery.”
“As a first step, two seniors are pursuing an independent study project this year to understand and document John Phillips’ ownership of enslaved persons during a significant part of his life, including the year when the Academy was founded,” Rawson wrote.
Horrigan and Robinson volunteered to investigate the Academy and John Phillips’ relationship with slavery. “I volunteered because I have always been interested in Academy history and I want to contribute to the school's anti-racist work,” Horrigan said.
“Most of the materials from [John Phillips’] life have been in various fires over the past three centuries, so the pair have used secondary sources and first-person accounts from the time period to paint a picture of the lives of Phillips' enslaved people,” Marshall wrote in a school-wide email about senior project presentations.
“Both Senai and Phil learned a lot and impressed me throughout the process by struggling to maintain their research on uncovering the personal experiences of the enslaved persons,” History Instructor and project adviser Dionna Richardson said.
Horrigan emphasized the necessity for the Academy to inform the community about the Academy’s history. “If we decide that our history has value, then we need to take collective action to make information more accessible,” he said.
Despite COVID limitations, Horrigan and Robinson’s investigative project provided a foundation for the community to build upon. “I learned a lot about the history of the school and the institution of slavery. I think that learning has turned into a presentation that will hopefully get the ball moving on future research,” Horrigan said.
Dillon Mims
Senior Dillon Mims created a podcast titled Precedented Times to “disprove the assertion that America today is in ‘unprecedented times’ by connecting a current crisis — the handling of the pandemic, political division, or the contentious election— and connecting it with a similar event in America’s past,” according to Mims’ project description.
Mims’ inspiration for the project stemmed from his interest in exploring the present state of the world through a historical perspective. “I love history not just because I enjoy telling stories or writing research papers, but because I value being able to look at the contemporary through a historical lens. I don't think we do that enough as a society,” he said. “When I decided to do my project, I knew from the beginning that I wanted it to center around history, and what's more, to view the present state of the world through a historical context.”
Mims noted that an unforeseen obstacle he faced was time. “I only finished four episodes of Precedented Times when there are actually six episodes in the first season,” Mims said.
“The senior project is on top of an already full workload and busy schedule,” History Instructor William Jordan, Mims’ faculty advisor, explained further, “so it’s important to have self starters, like Dillon, who didn’t need any prodding.”
Although online learning did not affect Mims’ project, he said that being off campus posed challenges for access to resources. “COVID didn't really affect my project very much, because almost all of it took place over the computer anyways. Being away from campus, however, did mean that I didn't have access to the plethora of books typically available to students at the library, so I had to buy a lot of books myself if I wanted access to them,” Mims said. “I don't have any qualms about presenting over zoom, personally, because I was still able to show my work and creative process through my zoom PowerPoint.”
Jordan praised the professional quality of Mims’ production. “I was blown away by the quality of the recording he shared with me,” he said. “It sounded like something you would hear on NPR. He approached the topic with enthusiasm and diligence from the beginning to end, from the conception to the final presentation.”
“I had a lot of takeaways from my project— many to do with specific historical events or concepts, others to do with the nitty-gritty details of podcast production— but the biggest takeaway I found was that, in trying to relate America's past and America's present, it truly does seem to be repeating itself,” Mims said. “Everything we're seeing now— all the crises that we've faced— has happened in America before (maybe not at all once, though). But like I've said: if we've gotten through it once, we can get through it again. Together.”
Sophie Cavalcanti
Senior Sophie Cavalcanti’s project focused on providing students with the tools to combat discrimination in French and German classes through “making students aware of racism and providing them with the tools to combat discrimination” by collecting media resources between the years 2010 to 2020 and creating a classroom itinerary that discusses racism.
“I wanted to research something that is not only interesting and relevant to our current political climax, but that would also create a meaningful final product that would leave a mark on the Exeter community,” Cavalcanti said. “Because systemic racism and discrimination are ingrained in the structure of society, including governments, workplaces, courts, police and education institutions, it is fundamental that schools join the fight to address and eliminate racism.”
Although COVID didn’t impact Cavalcanti’s project, she noted that accessing foreign databases was difficult. “It was not very simple to obtain access to and navigate comprehensive databases in French and German,” she said.
Cavalcanti was thankful for the help of her project advisor and former French teacher. “My main supporter throughout this process was Mr. Schieber, who worked as my adviser and provided amazing guidance and insight. Ms. Dion, a former French teacher at Exeter, gave me a wonderful view into college-level research in Humanities, since she recently finished a thesis on a similar topic,” she said.
“We thought that her work would complete Exeter’s goal to become an Anti Racist School from our perspective and language learners,” German and French instructor Richard Schieber said.
Cavalcanti’s work inspired the expansion of works in several French and German courses for the next academic year. “It is informative to see how these countries are addressing (or not) similar issues we face in the US. I am personally adding several new (as of 2019/2020) movies and materials into a FRE 590 and GER 504 class offered this spring. We are planning to purchase and add materials to the Academy library and the language department,” Schieber said.
“I hope that teachers and students may benefit from this inventory of recent books and movies about racism in their language of instruction, which can provide insights on how Francophone and Germanophone societies address this issue,” Cavalcanti said.
Eli Brotman
Senior Eli Brotman programmed and designed the lighting for the Theater Department’s spring musical, What Comes Next?
“I have been doing technical theater [and] backstage work for the past eight years and it has become my biggest and most passionate extracurricular,” Brotman said. “Lighting design is a very complex process, but I was able to learn a lot about it through readings. The biggest challenge was learning how to use a 2D / 3D modeling software called Vectorworks.”
Brotman said that his main supporters were his academic adviser Student Activities Director Joanne Lembo and college counselor Courtney Skerritt, but that he also worked closely with his project advisors Theater and Dance Instructor Jacob Josef and Lighting Designer Anthony Reed, who both have experience in technical theater and lighting.
Reed commented on his time working with Brotman. “My role was to be a knowledge resource for Eli related to common approaches to theatrical lighting design and standard practices in communicating his design to the rest of the production team,” He said. Reed also “took care of all the installation and maintenance of the equipment used in Eli's design so that he could focus on the artistic side of the process,” Reed said.
Brotman’s previous experience with technical lighting includes working with lighting on various Exeter productions in the past. “This term I was able to see and do the full process from creating a lighting plot to programming and designing the lights completely,” Brotman said.
Brotman noted the effect that COVID had on his procedure. “COVID did make it harder because I wasn't able to come into the theater until we came back to campus of course which was hard because so much of this project needs to be done in the theater in person,” he said. “However, I was able to hit the ground running when I returned because I was extra prepared from all the time working virtually with my project advisers.”
“One of my greatest take-aways is learning how big and hard the process of lighting design it. It has given me a greater appreciation for people who do it every day… we have so many different characteristics of light that we can change to capture the mood or tone that the script and actors are trying to portray as well,” Brotman said.