Pingry Summer started something new in 2025, namely the first dedicated focus on summer academics featuring Pingry teachers.
“We significantly expanded summer offerings of courses taught by Pingry teachers so that Pingry students can advance their coursework [for the upcoming school year] and make fuller use of all of Pingry’s curricular offerings,” says Dean of Summer Academics, Upper School History Teacher, and Enrollment Counselor Matt Horesta. With these new offerings—co-curriculars outside of the traditional academic day—students have more opportunities to pursue their passions.
The new courses fit into two categories: preparation and advancement. In the “preparation” bucket are two-week preview courses for rising and incoming ninth-grade students. Pingry faculty, who teach the ninth-grade curriculum, designed and taught classes in Reading and Writing, and Chemistry and Biology. These courses are meant to expose students to the skills and rigor of the coursework they will encounter in the Upper School, setting them up for a smooth transition into high school.
The “advancement” bucket includes Health 10 (a required Upper School course, so students can take it over the summer to free up space for a different class in their schedule), Art Fundamentals, and Physics for Advancement.
Some context: for the traditional Upper School art sequence, students take the required Art Fundamentals as freshmen before advancing to study one art field, such as photography, for a maximum of three years—Levels 1 and 2, then Portfolio Development. However, Art Fundamentals was offered for the first time as a four-week summer course, so qualified students would be able to fulfill the requirement and begin a specialized discipline as freshmen.
“Qualified” because one of the course’s teachers, Visual Arts Department Chair Andrew Sullivan, examines the interested students’ art background—their achievements in a discipline inside or outside the classroom, coming into Grade 9. “The class is targeted more to students who are certain of which art they want to pursue,” Mr. Sullivan says. Those students are then allowed to take the summer class with the assumption that they will continue in that discipline as freshmen. The class itself, which gains teaching time through the fact that students can leave their material set up in the classroom (time needed for setup and breakdown adds up), is not so much condensing the full-year course as it is giving individualized attention to each student, and teaching general art topics that apply to many disciplines.
Also, for the first time, Pingry offered Physics for Advancement, which resembles the Honors Physics class that must be taken prior to AP Physics C – Mechanics.
“Every year, students are self-studying or paying private tutors so they can take the placement test [for AP Physics C – Mechanics] in the summer. The idea is to offer Physics for Advancement to prepare students to jump to AP Physics C – Mechanics,” Mr. Horesta explains.
It is important to note that Physics for Advancement “doesn’t replace a full-year course—it is by invitation only, and we take only those students who would be under-challenged in Physics or Honors Physics,” says Science Department Chair Bailey Farrell. “Also, the course does not place students [into AP Physics C]—it supports students in learning the content so they can pass the placement exam.”
Physics Teacher Dr. Chester Chu, who teaches Physics for Advancement, says it would be a “daunting process to self-study this material,” so he makes sure that students get the foundation and skill sets necessary, with hard work required. “Learning physics is like sports. You have to do the work to learn the material. I will show you how to solve physics questions. You have to practice.”
Looking to future summers, Mr. Horesta believes that Summer Academics will grow in relation to what Pingry offers from September to June, “almost like a third semester, with room to expand the disciplines.”
Contact: Greg Waxberg ’96, Assistant Director of Communications, Writer/Editor