Charge from President Emeritus Ronald R. Thomas

The University of Puget Sound's campus is our most valuable and distinctive asset. It is our link to the past and our key to the future. Our responsibility is to invest in it wisely and care for it responsibly.

As we become an increasingly residential college, we must think in a visionary way about our campus as an integrated living and learning environment for a greater number of students and plan for the first-rate academic and athletic facilities we will require to remain an outstanding institution. The master planning process provides an occasion for the community to think through how we should be planning for our future academic needs, our residential needs, our athletic fields and facilities, our work, and our play. We will ask what the ideal residential liberal arts college will look like for the next generations. What should this one look like? How should the elements of our campus environment work together? How can the campus itself, in its design and experience, reflect and advance our values in a way that integrates with and manifests our urban and natural context, curriculum, and pedagogy? How can we create social spaces, inside and out, to make the campus a magnet for students and a memorable place for alumni? How can our campus's physical circumstances complement our Tacoma community and make the most of our distinctive location?

We will charge ourselves and our master planning consultants not just with thinking about our campus footprint, and about where we might expand, what facilities we might need, where they should be sited, how the campus should look and function as a community itself — we will do all these things — but we will also address the key question of how the campus strategically fits into this community, and how we can take full advantage of our unique natural and urban location. The key issue for us is determining how our campus can be made into a greater asset for our community and us.