The Community Housing Initiative
Goal: $28.5 Million

A housing shortage and the uneven quality of existing faculty apartments and homes presents a significant obstacle to faculty recruitment and to student advising at Exeter. This initiative will enable the Academy to make a simultaneous commitment to improving both dormitory and post-dormitory housing. The result will be a sustainable advantage in an increasingly competitive hiring market for faculty (referenced earlier under Faculty and Staff Endowment Initiative), as well as enhancements to faculty-student advising.

Dormitory Renovations & Enhancements
Goal: $16.5 Million

Exeter expects faculty to make a commitment to 10 years of dormitory service. These teachers need dormitory apartments that are not only conducive to supervising and mentoring students in the dorm, but that also provide high quality, private space for their families. Many of Exeter’s dormitory apartments do not fit this standard. Conditions often cause dormitory faculty to move from year to year in order to obtain more appropriate living quarters for their families. This situation undermines the strong personal connections that are important between Exeter dorm faculty and their advisees. By contrast, dormitories such as Main Street or Wentworth (equipped with quality faculty apartments) have had stable dorm teams for 10 years or more, providing continuity in advising for students and in communication with parents. Building on the success of recent renovations in Cilley Hall and other dorms, this Initiative will bring dormitory housing up to a higher and more equitable standard across campus. In the process it will continue to reduce the dormitory adviser-advisee ratios, again following the model of Cilley Hall and other dorms. Both outcomes will greatly enhance Exeter’s ability to support strong mentoring relationships between dormitory advisers and their advisees.

Post-dormitory Housing
Goal: $12.0 Million

Post-dormitory housing is also in need of considerable improvement so that it will no longer present a recruiting deterrent for faculty. When Exeter began this Initiative three years ago, it housed only 76 percent of its faculty, the lowest percentage of its peer group. Schools such as Andover, Groton, Lawrenceville and St. Paul’s house 90 to 100 percent of their faculty. The Academy, however, has significantly fewer houses to offer faculty who have completed their 10 years of dormitory service.

The lack of post-dormitory housing (and the prohibitive cost of real estate near campus) has forced many faculty to purchase homes at considerable distance from campus when they leave the dormitories. At driving distances from 15 to 50 minutes away, these faculty are limited in their ability to continue as student advisers and affiliates with dormitories, and also in their ability to participate in the general life of the PEA community.

The Academy would prefer to keep these experienced teachers within a five-minute walk of campus, so that students have convenient access to their advisers and teachers. To achieve this goal, the Community Housing Initiative aims to raise $12 million to build or purchase 16 new post-dormitory homes near campus. Thanks to early philanthropic leadership to this Initiative, $4.5 million has already been contributed to this Initiative.

Community Housing Initiative Naming Opportunities

Four post-dormitory homes constructed on O’Neil Court
$1 million each

Four post-dormitory homes purchased near campus
$1 million each

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Profile: The Class of 1968 on Connecting with Teachers

Rob Shapiro ’68, Peter Blum ’68 and Grif Johnson ’68 with David and Jackie Thomas ’62, ’69 (Hon.); P’78, ’79, ’81.

When it came time to select a fund-raising project for their 35th reunion, volunteers for the class of 1968 ultimately decided that doing something in the area of faculty housing would elicit the best response and create the greatest momentum among classmates. The stars seemed to align when, just as ’68 geared up for its celebration, David and Jackie Thomas decided to move out of the home at 16 Elm Street that they had occupied for 29 years. “There were a number of classics scholars in the class,” says current class president Grif Johnson, “many of whom had had Dave Thomas as a teacher, and others of us had come to know Jackie through her work with the Academy Library, so funding the purchase of their former residence seemed like a perfect project for us.”

The response from classmates? “Outstanding,” says Johnson. “The project really held a powerful appeal for us because it resonated to our own experiences as students. Many of us remember the non-structured interactions we had with teachers in our dorms and houses and the difference those moments made in our Exeter experiences. Our class wanted to be sure that future generations of teachers and students would not be deprived of such connections.”

Thomas House was officially dedicated on November 8, 2003, and will house faculty families who have completed ten or more years of dormitory service.

Other members of 1968 closely involved with this project include Allen Carney, Jim Cornell, David Farren P’01, Paul Goldenheim, Bill Robinson, Gordy Whitman and Paul Zevnik.

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