Launch into the Stratosphere from the Nicest Place on Earth: 200-Year-Old Ohio Boarding School Announces Full-Ride Scholarship Contest

“Written in the Stars” Open to Students Across the Country Ages 13+

HUDSON, Ohio, Oct. 5, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — This spring, the small town of Hudson, Ohio will experience a big moment (just over three minutes, actually) as it sits in the path of totality for the solar eclipse. Western Reserve Academy, a nearly 200-year-old high school located in Hudson, today announced the “Written in the Stars” scholarship contest to celebrate the celestial event and provide full boarding tuition to an incoming student. All high school-aged students across the country are invited to apply. The winner will be announced on Eclipse Day, April 8, 2024.

Inspired by the U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s partnership with NASA and her penning of “A Poem for Europa” that will launch into space inscribed on the Europa Clipper in October 2024, an anonymous donor approached the school in the summer of 2023 with a challenge: find a student curious about the beautiful collision between art and science. Applicants are asked to prepare a project that creatively expresses the theme “light and truth” using any medium of their choice – fine arts, music, dance, graphic design, poetry, coding and beyond.

Suzanne Walker Buck, Head of School at Western Reserve Academy, says, “Science and art, and the blurred line between, often perform a captivating dance that provides inspiration and possibility. The Written in the Stars contest was inspired by this magic, creating an opportunity to celebrate light, truth, art, science and education.”

The contest is open to all boarding applicants nationwide new to Western Reserve Academy beginning in the 2024-25 school year. Full contest details are available at WRA.net/STARS.

Western Reserve Academy was founded in 1826 and is home to the second oldest observatory in the country. It is ranked top in the state for STEM and college preparation and was named the Most Beautiful Private School in Ohio by Architectural Digest. The student body includes 439 students from 33 countries and 30 states. The spirited school believes in joy in education and has been known to sing about it.

In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa

Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we

pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.

Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.

We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.

And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,

each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.

We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.

SOURCE Western Reserve Academy