An annual cleanup day on campus, Environmental Day is a day of pitching in, when students, faculty, and this year, staff, pool their efforts to remove the ravages of winter from the areas around buildings and on the grounds of the Academy, as far as the outskirts bordering town lands and along the woodlands trails. This year, the scope of the cleanup was expanded to include sites around the town of Exeter, the American Independence Museum and Founder's Park, for example, and recreational areas, such as Gale and Gilman Parks, Swasey Parkway, and the Planet Playground off Hampton Road.

Adding public places to their roster of cleanup sites was an attempt to increase environmental awareness among the students, according to Mark Trafton, a Spanish teacher who offers a course on the environment each spring. "By working in the community, we can make a more significant contribution to Environment Day," he says.

Townley Chisholm, instructor in science, organized the effort with Trafton and Environmental Club heads Chris Simon '99, Hanover, NH, and Mike Blomquist '99, Greensboro, NC. The students first approached the dean of students office about raking and removing winter debris from off-campus public lands, then remained involved, working with facilities management personnel, George Bragg and Dennis Huber, and dean of students Kathleen Brownback to coordinate the massive effort the day required.

Collected leaves, bags of recyclable material, and litter filled more than 1,000 bags, broken tree limbs were stacked for removal by large trucks. The appreciative town of Exeter could not say enough about how well the students performed and about the PEA staff who worked along with them raking parks, cutting brush, spreading mulch and woodchips, and weeding flower gardens. "They jumped right in and helped out and also seemed to enjoy themselves. They did an outstanding job for the community," wrote Doug Dicey, director of the Exeter Parks and Recreation Department.

Appointments

David S. Hudson has been named director of athletics and chair of the department of physical education. Hudson returns to the Academy, where he was head wrestling coach and instructor in physical education from 1982–1991.

The responsibilities of the AD/PE department chair include assessing the quality of curricular offerings and overseeing curricular development initiatives, assigning teaching and coaching responsibilities, and scheduling intramural and interscholastic events. His first year back at the Academy, Hudson will also resume coaching the wrestling team.

At St. Lawrence University (1991–94), he was an instructor of health and wellness in the sport and leisure studies department, head wrestling coach, and assistant football coach. He was named Empire Wrestling Conference Coach of the Year and NCAA Regional Coach of the Year, both in 1993. Since 1994, he has been director of afternoon programs/director of athletics and an instructor in biology at Governor Dummer Academy in Byfield, Massachusetts.

At Exeter during the 1980s, Hudson lived in Cilley and Peabody Halls and was one of early recipients, in 1988, of an award from the Brown Family Faculty Fund for superior teaching.

Stephen Kushner, director of choral music since 1987 and chair of the music department since 1995, has been appointed the new director of studies. The position of director of studies was established in 1987 to oversee the curriculum and to explore processes and methods of teaching and learning at the Academy. Among other duties are planning for special faculty workshops and inviting speakers to address the faculty on relevant educational topics. The director of studies chairs the curriculum committee and serves on the technology steering committee, representing curricular and faculty interests, and is an ad hoc member of the academic advising committee.

In 1995, Kushner was appointed the first recipient of the Michael V. Forrestal '45 Chair for the Department of Music. He received a Brown Family Fund Prize in 1996.

Effective July 1, Mark Davis joined the Academy to direct the college office. Davis comes to us from the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, where he has been head of college counseling since 1989 and a college counselor and history teacher since 1982. Davis succeeds Tom Hassan, who for the past year has been on temporary assignment as dean of admissions and college counseling. Hassan is returning full time in the admissions office.

At the Taft School, Davis designed and introduced a new model for college counseling that stressed more frequent meetings between counselors and students. At Exeter, he will oversee a staff of seven and maintain liaison between the Academy and the large number of colleges and universities our graduates attend. He will also be a member of the principal's staff.

A graduate of the Loomis Chaffee School, Davis earned his undergraduate degree from Yale University, where he was a four-year letterman in baseball, and a M.A.L.S. from Wesleyan University.

Patricia Babecki, instructor of mathematics, has accepted the one-year assignment as the Academy scheduler, replacing Barton Chartoff who is on sabbatical during 1999–2000.

Before joining the faculty in 1993, Babecki was an engineering manager for Hewlett-Packard in their multimedia software division. She earned bachelor's and master's degrees at McGill University and an M.Ed. at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst).

Spring Sports Records with Most Valuable Players

Girls
Tennis: 12-7-0; Claudia Bartolini '99
Softball: 10-3-0; Nicole Stefanilo '99
Lacrosse: 7-6-1; Ashley Austin '00
Crew: 70-5-0; Courtney Brown '99
     NE Interschols: first boat, 3rd;
     second boat, 1st; third boat, 2nd
Track: 3-2-0; Jolene Hampson '99
     and Susan Cameron '99
     NE Interschols: 1st

Boys
Tennis: 9-3-0; Howard Chu '00
Baseball: 16-2-0; Samuel Fuld '00
Lacrosse: 13-4-0; Michael Saraceni '00
Crew: 60-12-0; Michael Blomquist '99
     NE Interschols: first boat, 1st;
     second boat, 3rd; third boat, 1st
Track: 3-2-0; Ross Tucker '01
Golf: 10-0-1; L. Stephen Wolfe '99
Cycling: Caine Tsui '99

Founder's Day Awards

Founder's Day Awards honoring friends of the Academy were presented at Assembly on May 14, with Willard Reynolds '66, president of the General Alumni/ae Association and chair of the Awards Committee, the 50th reunion class of 1949, and former Founder's Day honorees in attendance.

Nancy Belanger, the "Voice of Exeter," was recognized for being Exeter's public ambassador. "For 27 years, you understood precisely how much was at stake when you answered the phone, and with each call, you took the opportunity to make a friend for PEA," read the citation. Belanger's work in building stronger alumni, alumnae, and parent connections and in increasing the Academy's credibility in the community was also cited.

The Academy recognized two former members of the faculty and their spouses. Robert Brownell is a former instructor in science, director of scholarship students, acting dean of students, director of admissions, basketball coach, and dorm head. He and his wife, Shirley, were honored "for exemplifying Exeter's most cherished ideals—achievement through hard work, service to others, and an unflagging standard of excellence in all things. . . For thirty years you led, nurtured, and enriched the Academy community, and we honor your inspirational legacy today."

Former principal Kendra Stearns O'Donnell and Patrick O'Donnell returned to Exeter to receive their Founder's Day Awards. They were honored for a decade of exemplary vision and service, and for their bold leadership, which both reaffirmed and refashioned the very essence of the Academy.

Founder's Day Award winners Nancy Belanger (left), Shirley and Robert Brownell, and Patrick and Kendra Stearns O'Donnell.

Poet Laureate

Dolores Kendrick, who has been named poet laureate of the District of Columbia, had a "day," May 14, proclaimed in her honor by D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams. Kendrick is a native of D.C. and received her honor at the 16th annual Larry Neal Writers' Awards Ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library. An instructor in English, emerita, she attended the D.C. Exeter Alumni/ae Dinner that featured Tyler Tingley's first visit to Washington as principal.

A Low-Tech Approach to Land Management

Riding behind his team, Wad Winslow is the epitome of a classic New Hampshire logger. He steers Betty, a Percheron, and Chub, a Belgian, gently along the path he has cleared in the trees, the sawed maple attached to a chain dragging behind them. The sight seems out of the past, a 19th-century tableau, and it's one of the ways the Academy is approaching preserving and protecting the area known as the Academy forest.

To see this picture of the past, descend the granite stairs of the Academy Building and hurry across Front Street. If it is close to mealtime, you'll be joined by flooding students headed toward the Elm Street Dining Hall. But ignore them, and dash across Court Street, skip round the gymnasium complex, and head toward the Exeter River. On the red clay of the river road, leave the runners to their repetitive circling and cross the Hill Bridge, a gift from a member of the class of 1865, and you'll find yourself in the Academy woodlands, tracts of land that have accrued to the Academy ownership over the last 90 years.

There, south of the playing fields, you'll find the pine forest, called the Plantation, where, since April 1, tree thinning is being done the old-fashioned way. While the land area has been managed over the years, until now there has not been an all-encompassing plan that addressed use, protection, preservation, and enhancement of the forest.

Removing some of the low-quality trees on the nine acres of the Plantation was the right place to start, according to Don Briselden, director of facilities management at the Academy. The Plantation has 40- to 60-year-old Eastern White Pines, but you couldn't guess the age of the trees by looking at them. Tree spacing is so close in the Plantation that the trees look much younger than they are. Judicious thinning will allow them to prosper, he explains.

Visiting the site, Dennis Huber, grounds supervisor for facilities management, notes that pines get their nourishment from their crowns, and when young trees crowd the older ones, as the young pine saplings and red maples do in this track, the trees don't increase in size as they should. An improvement cutting in the Plantation should give the remaining trees more room to expand their crowns, resulting in improved vigor.

The small scale of the thinning has allowed for and, in some ways, necessitated a low-profile operation. On the recommendation of a licensed forester, Stanley Knowles, who drafted a forest management and natural resources assessment of the school's woodlands, Wad Winslow, a logger from Barrington, New Hampshire, was hired to do the job. One of only two men in this area working with a hauling team, Winslow cuts the tree and, with chains, attaches the timber to his cart for dragging to a clearing. Seeing him with reins in hands, standing behind charcoal black Betty and brown Chub is a sight from another age. The approach is low impact, as will be the work in several other tracts in the Academy's forest, when their time comes.

The actions outlined in Phase I of the Academy's forest management plan addressed the natural resources on the 309 wooded acres. Phase II is now doing the same for the Stadium, Gilman, and Kensington/Colby tracts, while also providing land use recommendations. The plan envisions proactive intervention, like thinning and patch clearing, to preserve and protect the natural resources within the forest tracts. The goal is to maintain the area so that the forest and its wildlife will flourish and the area can be used for education, recreation, and quiet enjoyment. These high standards are being imposed to respond to increased interest in the Academy forests. Recreational use of the forest, primarily hiking, is at an all-time high, and science and English classes are increasingly using the forest as an outdoors classroom for student training.

—Janice Reiter