by Michael Khoury, Director of Community and Global Programs

Standing in the elegant dining room of the China Club in Hong Kong that afternoon, I felt something I had not expected. A group of University School students, colleagues, and I had just walked into this prestigious space high above the city, and we were greeted by Trustee Ron Lee '86 and several University School alumni who now live and work across the Asia Pacific region. They welcomed us not as visitors, but as family.

 

They shared stories of their time at US, memories of teachers, friendships that endured, and lessons that followed them far beyond the Shaker and Hunting Valley Campuses. And then, almost spontaneously, they began to sing Hail, University! In that moment, thousands of miles from Cleveland, it became impossible to miss the power of what we were witnessing. University School is not just a place. It is a community that carries its members wherever they go.

 

I often think about how the two ideas of community and global learning, intersect. The sense of belonging our students experience each day on both of our campuses forms the foundation for everything that follows. Our mission calls us to be a school where every student is known and loved, and that commitment to community is what makes these global moments possible. Global experiences are not simply about seeing new places. They are about helping students understand who they are in relationship with others and how they belong in the world. That afternoon in Hong Kong reminded me that our students are never alone in those journeys. They are supported by a web of relationships that spans continents and generations.

 

A few months earlier, on a Global Programs trip to South Africa, another student group visited the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. A heavy feeling surrounded us as we moved through the exhibits and processed what we were seeing together. On the day we were preparing to return to Cleveland, I stopped in the museum’s gift shop and picked up The Book of Joy, a conversation between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It felt like the right book to carry home after a trip filled with reflection, history, and difficult truths.

 

In that book, joy is described not as fleeting happiness, but as something deeper and more durable, something forged through struggle, purpose, and connection. Joy, they explain, is not the absence of hardship. It is what emerges when people commit themselves to meaning, compassion, and relationships, even in the face of difficulty.

This distinction feels especially relevant for our students. The work they do at University School is demanding. It requires effort, discipline, and persistence. But the joy that comes from belonging to a community, of knowing you are loved, supported, and challenged, lasts far longer than any temporary success or celebration. It is the joy of being part of something larger than oneself.

 

University School is a place where boys become men within a network of relationships that extends well beyond graduation. It is a community built each day in classrooms and commons, on fields and courts, and through shared traditions on both the Shaker and Hunting Valley Campuses. And it is strengthened through the many field trips, service projects, athletic games, science fairs, and other extracurricular competitions that extend our boys' experiences locally and nationally. The pride they carry in their school is evident wherever they go. 

 

Around the world, and back home in Cleveland, I see the same truth repeated. The US community does not end at the edge of campus. It travels with our students and carries them through challenge, through growth, and toward a joy that is earned, shared, and lasting.  


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