When Maddie Hanses ’20 was visiting Germany in 2019 as part of the Connections 330 course—Finding Germany: Memory, History, and Identity in Berlin—she was intrigued by the Stolpersteine, or Stumbling Stones, that she had learned about in class from Associate Professor Kris Imbrigotta. These four-inch concrete cubes, which are inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution, commemorate the last place a person chose freely to live, work, or learn. Hanses said she looked for them wherever they travelled. 

Alisun Thompson has always aspired to be the kind of teacher she needed when she was in school. While she loved her time as an English teacher, she also saw firsthand many of the flaws in the K–12 education system. Her new book, Going the Distance: The Teaching Profession in a Post-COVID World (Harvard Education Press, 2024), presents an unflinching yet ultimately hopeful appraisal of the workplace factors that determine career risk and resilience among teachers, informed by the lessons of the pandemic.

The University of Puget Sound Business Insights event brought together students, faculty, alumni experts, entrepreneurs, and business leaders in March for an engaging conversation about leading in an AI-powered world. The Arches team asked President Isiaah Crawford to share his thoughts on the event and discuss some of the opportunities and challenges of AI. Here’s what he had to say:

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University of Puget Sound has named Chelsea Herman as its new athletics director, effective June 30, 2025. Herman brings more than 20 years of senior-level leadership experience in collegiate athletics, most recently serving as deputy athletics director and senior woman administrator at California State University, San Bernardino. She will succeed Amy Hackett, who retired in December 2024 after 21 years as the longest-serving athletics director in Logger history.

The University of Puget Sound has awarded scholarships to 10 outstanding undergraduate students for the 2025–2026 academic year. These faculty-nominated scholarships recognize academic excellence, financial need, and dedication to a specific field of study.

“Beyond recognizing their hard work and dedication, these scholarships are an investment in the transformative potential of these students to become impactful leaders and thinkers within their respective fields,” said Provost Drew Kerkhoff. “We are excited to see all that they will accomplish.”

It’s summer in Tacoma and school may be out of session, but for the middle and high school students enrolled in the University of Puget Sound’s Summer Academic Challenge, it’s the perfect time to gain new skills and stave off summer learning loss. A group of students are gathered around computers, learning how to code by building a website from scratch.

Sports have always been a core part of Kaila Bonawitz’s identity. Growing up in an athletic family first in Hawai`i and later in Washington, she played soccer and volleyball, but an ACL and meniscus injury threw her plans of pursuing college athletics in doubt. She recovered, but had to switch gears to a new sport—golf. It was a decision that would ultimately lead her to the University of Puget Sound.