Western Reserve Academy, a private preparatory school in Hudson and the oldest such school outside the Northeastern U.S., is celebrating its bicentennial in 2026.
The school has gone through a lot of changes over its 200 year history. The 190-acre tree-lined campus, styled after Ivy League schools, was the original site of Western Reserve College. That college moved to Cleveland in the 1880s and is now known as Case Western Reserve University, but the prep school remained, said Suzanne Walker Buck, head of school at Western Reserve Academy.
"In the late 1700s, early 1800s, this land was purchased from Connecticut,” said Walker Buck. “So this was the Western Reserve of Connecticut. In 1826, these settlers in the region wanted to create a place of learning, and so they modeled the college and the school after Yale. So our motto 'Lux et Veritas' is the same as Yale's, and we were designed to be the 'Yale of the West.'"
The college and prep school is notable for accepting Black students as early as 1832, just six years after it opened, and it began accepting girls in 1872. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass also spoke during the college's Commencement Week in 1854. A descendant Kenneth B. Morris Jr. will speak at the school in January.
The prep school closed in 1903 due to financial troubles, reopening as an all-boys school in 1922. It became coeducational again in 1972.
Campus life and learning after 200 years
About two-thirds of the roughly 430 students at Western Reserve Academy live on campus, Walker Buck said. And many come from a wide variety of backgrounds: 40 different countries, 33 different states, and about half are students of color.
The school is expensive to attend, however. It costs $76,975 annually for boarding students and $49,750 for day students. Walker Buck said many students do receive need-based scholarships, and the school gives $7.7 million annually on that front. But the school does not accept Ohio's EdChoice vouchers.
"We do believe that every family should pay something because that helps them be invested and feel like they are a consumer," Walker Buck explained.
Walker Buck said the school’s model turns out bright students ready to change the world. She highlighted students working at the school’s Cancer Immunology Lab.
Taking classes in the lab is one of Junseok Lee's favorite things about the school. Lee is a senior from Seoul, South Korea, who is researching prostate cancer.
"There's some kind of racial disparities that are happening in prostate cancer...." he explained. "It's not only about socioeconomic status between African American men or European American men, but it's also some kind of genetic expression difference. So I've been comparing African American prostate tumors and European American prostate tumors and then finding out some differentially expressed genes."
Dr. Robert Aguilar, the Susan & John '63 Steen Chair for Science and Mathematics at Western Reserve Academy, said students gave a presentation on a prostate cancer vaccine developed in the lab during a conference last year. He said students learn basic lab skills like pipetting, but also participate in research that isn't commonly done at the high school level.
"We do some pretty complex experiments. The most complex could be like machine learning and trying to detect patterns and mutations between different types of cancer," he explained.
Western Reserve Academy also has the Wong Innovation Center, where students learn about design and engineering disciplines using tools at its "makerspace."
Walker Buck said the school has a strong athletics program, too. She said many students end up playing at Division 1 NCAA colleges and universities throughout the country after graduating. Students also perform community service regularly to give back.
"We talk about kindness and empathy and all these things are helping kids to flourish not just in the classroom but in life in general," Walker Buck said.
The school will host special events to celebrate 200 years throughout the year, including a bicentennial celebration in early June.
