Download the PDF below or scroll down for more information about our strategic plan.
A Quick Look
Isiaah Crawford, Ph.D.
President's Message
“There are many challenges ahead, but I believe we are uniquely positioned to respond to them and believe even more strongly in the importance of liberal arts education and the unique type of education we offer at the University of Puget Sound. Through our continued collaboration to realize the goals laid out in our Leadership for a Changing World strategic plan and our A Sound Future strategies, I remain steadfast in my belief that we can meet this moment and take advantage of the opportunities before us to advance our mission and position the university for continued success. Puget Sound is an institution that has successfully navigated its way through difficult moments in its past and we will do so again.”
Our Vision
We challenge and support our students as they become broadly and deeply educated lifelong learners, prepared to create and serve the future and to become the world’s next generation of visionary leaders.
Overview
Over many decades, University of Puget Sound has benefited from disciplined and visionary leadership that has shaped the institution’s future and built upon the strengths of its past, while responding with creativity to the challenges of the present day.
The opportunity
In a rapidly changing environment for higher education, Puget Sound is well-positioned to adapt and be increasingly innovative in offering a challenging and enriching liberal arts education that produces graduates with skills, experiences, and attributes that are highly impactful, relevant and marketable.
The challenge
We compete for students in a dynamic and crowded higher educational market where shifts in demographics, affordability, government regulation, technology, the political environment, and other areas require us to be increasingly strategic and adaptive in not only responding to but anticipating change.
Our response
For Puget Sound to successfully meet the challenges and expectations of higher education, we must be bold and forward-looking in the delivery of our education and in meeting the needs of this and future generations of students. Each of the initiatives in which we will engage in the coming decade must demonstrate the potential to deliver a distinctive university experience, leverage our strategic advantages, support two or more strategic goals, and position the university and our students for long-term success.
Leadership for a Changing World is based on five key strategic goals that affirm and enrich our mission as a national liberal arts college while simultaneously fostering innovative opportunities to advance institutional excellence, academic distinction, and student success.
What will we achieve?
We will become ever more the institution of choice for students seeking a dynamic and engaging liberal arts education, preparing all of our students for postgraduate success in a highly dynamic economy marked by an accelerating pace of change and providing opportunities for advanced study in alignment with our mission. We will fully live our responsibility as an intellectual asset in the broader world, contributing our leadership and vision to advancing civic discourse and addressing the issues of the times in which we live. We will strengthen not only access to but graduation from Puget Sound, and diversify our sources of revenue to ensure our ability to reach our goals.
Realization of these goals will be supported by a series of operational initiatives designed to re-imagine faculty and staff engagement; align efforts to support equity, diversity, and inclusion; create institutional and curricular structures to respond with agility to social, environmental, and technological changes; and develop comprehensive, interconnected long-term approaches in enrollment management, financial and physical resource management, constituent engagement and fundraising, and institutional marketing and communications.
The mission of the university is to develop in its students capacities for critical analysis, aesthetic appreciation, sound judgment, and apt expression that will sustain a lifetime of intellectual curiosity, active inquiry, and reasoned independence.
Throughout 2017-18, the university—its students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents and trustees—worked together to develop Leadership for a Changing World, a student-centered strategic plan guided by our vision and values, built on our mission and educational goals, and supported by a commitment to do all that we can to make a Puget Sound education ever more meaningful, relevant, accessible, and distinctive.
For over a century, University of Puget Sound has empowered generations of Loggers to pursue their passions through a rigorous education rooted in the tradition of the liberal arts. Today, we’re equipping the next generation of leaders, artists, scholars, scientists, and entrepreneurs to make a difference in their communities.
About the Plan
Over many decades, University of Puget Sound has benefited from disciplined and visionary leadership that has shaped the institution’s future and built upon the strengths of its past, while responding with creativity to the challenges of the present day.
University of Puget Sound enters the coming decade in a strong position. We are a stable and well-managed institution, ideally located in the Pacific Northwest, where the ethos of innovation, possibility, and individual determination is very much a part of our campus culture. As we look to the challenges and opportunities of the future, we will build on our strengths to guide our national liberal arts college to its next level of distinction and success.
Throughout 2017-18, the university—its students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents and trustees—worked together to develop Leadership for a Changing World, a student-centered strategic plan guided by our vision and values, built on our mission and educational goals, and supported by a commitment to do all that we can to make a Puget Sound education ever more meaningful, relevant, accessible, and distinctive. Endorsed by the board of trustees in October 2018, the plan guides our work over the coming decade, inspiring us to be bold and forward-looking in the delivery of our residential liberal arts education to meet the needs of this and future generations of students.
Download the 2018-28 Strategic Plan
Featured Stories
Featured Stories
Read more about University of Puget Sound Featured in The Princeton Review Guide to Green Colleges: 2026 Edition
Campus
Community
University of Puget Sound Featured in The Princeton Review Guide to Green Colleges: 2026 Edition
University of Puget Sound has been recognized for its strong commitment to environmental responsibility and sustainability in The Princeton Review’s Guide to Green Colleges: 2026 Edition.
“It is a great honor to be recognized…
Read more about Taiko Drumming Club Draws Students to Puget Sound
Community
Students
Taiko Drumming Club Draws Students to Puget Sound
The University of Puget Sound’s Taiko drumming club was not just an extracurricular activity for Lev Jersan '26 — it was a primary reason he chose to apply.
His journey from Missouri to Washington is a great example of the…
Read more about University of Puget Sound Launches a Hybrid MEd Counseling Program to Meet Growing Demand
Campus
Community
Faculty
Students
University of Puget Sound Launches a Hybrid MEd Counseling Program to Meet Growing Demand
The University of Puget Sound is proud to announce the launch of its new Hybrid Master of Education (MEd) Counseling Program, strategically designed to fill a widening gap in regional clinical mental health and school…