Celebrating 50 Years of Kenyon at Exeter

A unique study abroad program between the College and the distinguished British university that launched in 1975 has been transformative for generations of students.

By Ryan E. Smith
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Fifty years ago, Kenyon students were presented with a chance to join a new and exciting educational enterprise  — more than 3,500 miles away from Gambier.

In a unique study-abroad partnership with the University of Exeter, the College launched a program in southwest England that gave English majors access to the resources of a top-ranked British university while maintaining the intimacy and familiarity of their Kenyon liberal arts experience.

Since 1975, the Kenyon-Exeter Program has offered hundreds of students the once-in-a-lifetime chance to study abroad with friends from home. The special arrangement allows an annual cohort to take classes over the course of a full academic year with British students and faculty while also participating in a seminar under the guidance of an on-site member of the Kenyon English Department.

This relationship — which combines intellectual exploration, intercultural learning and cocurricular travel —  will be celebrated this week as President Julie Kornfeld and Provost Jeff Bowman visit Exeter and meet with members of the Kenyon program and the university. A new agreement with Exeter will allow Kenyon students who qualify for admission to its Master of Arts programs to do so in an expedited manner and with discounted tuition.

Students at Stonehenge

The Kenyon-Exeter Program: ‘Nothing Quite Like It’

Kenyon News

Two former resident co-directors share their reflections on 50 years of the revolutionary partnership that has allowed Kenyon English majors to study at the University of Exeter.

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"It was an intense, stimulating and exciting year of learning together, forging new friendships, and studying and creating in a new culture."

Cameron Peters ’20

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Finding Independence Across the Atlantic

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Bryn Seltzer ’21 is thankful that her first two years at Kenyon gave her the stepping stones to make her way across the Atlantic to Exeter.

By Bryn Seltzer ’21
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Ode to Thanksgiving in Exeter (with apologies to Clement Moore)

A poem by Terry Joyce ’83 that appeared in The Kenyon Collegian in 1981.

Download the Poem

Kenyon-Exeter Through the Years

Kenyon-Exeter students and resident director Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky take part in a hike in southern England in October 2025. (Photo by resident director Sarah Heidt)
Carlin Steere ’25 visited Stonehenge while in England as part of the Kenyon-Exeter program during her junior year.
Students dressed the part for a 2023 visit to the National Trust Lyme, a historic estate that was used for a television adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice." (Photo courtesy of Rosemary O'Neill)
Adele Davidson (standing, second from left) with students at the James Joyce Centre in Ireland in an undated picture. (Photo courtesy of Adele Davidson)
Inside the Globe Theatre in 2014. (Photo courtesy of Rosemary O'Neill)
Members of the 2000-2001 cohort at William Butler Yeats' grave in Ireland. Resident director Kim McMullen is eighth from left. (Photo courtesy of Adele Davidson)
Members of the 2021-22 cohort. (Photo courtesy of Rosemary O'Neill)
Kenyon-Exeter program resident director Ellen Mankoff H’20 and Eugene Dwyer H’18, both at right, in an undated photo. (Photo courtesy of Adele Davidson)
Perry Lentz, who served as resident director of the program in 1978-79, and his children in an undated photo. (Photo courtesy of Adele Davidson)
Students visiting the Jerwood Centre, home of many of William Wordsworth's manuscripts, in Grasmere, England, in 2023. (Photo courtesy of Rosemary O'Neill)
Students visiting Whitby Abbey in 2023. (Photo courtesy of Rosemary O'Neill)
Thanksgiving at the Bridge Inn has become a Kenyon-Exeter tradition. (Photo courtesy of Wendy Singer)
A Kenyon-Exeter reunion in Gambier in 2006.
Students and resident director Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky, far right, during a hike in the Lake District in 2025. (Photo by resident director Sarah Heidt)