Megan Mooney ’23 stepped onto campus in 2019 a declared biology major—unusual, since students usually take the first year to decide—and high expectations for her college career. The valedictorian of her high school in Arvada, Colo., Mooney was determined to do just as well, if not better, at Puget Sound. “I just hit the ground running,” says Mooney on a bright April afternoon, sitting in the courtyard outside Oppenheimer Café.

Tell me about your effort to seed stand-up in Big Sky Country.
I was doing open mics here in Bozeman [as a grad student at Montana State University]. While in Tacoma and Seattle, I had gotten to see cool, unbelievably funny people. I was like, “It sucks that that’s not here in Montana.” My motivation was to bring those experiences here.

Laura Krughoff, associate professor of English and director of gender and queer studies, is a fiction writer and essayist. She won a Pushcart Award for her short story “Halley’s Comet” in 2007 and her debut novel, My Brother’s Name, was a finalist for a 2014 Lambda Literary Foundation Award. A more recent book, Wake in the Night, is a collection of short fiction about women in rural Indiana. We asked her about her work.

Growing up in Portland, Ore., Bella Rodriguez ’24 was struck by the absence of Latino stories in the narrative of the city’s history. It wasn’t until she started studying history, environmental policy and decision making, and Latina/o studies at University of Puget Sound that she started to ask questions about the history of Latinos in her hometown. That curiosity led her to dig deep into the city’s complicated racial history and uncover the story of the Cuban refugee community that sprang up almost overnight in the 1960s.

Czarina Ramsay and her triplet siblings were 5 when their father moved the family to Anchorage, Alaska, for an assignment as a sergeant in the U.S. Army. As Panamanian immigrants with West Indian roots, their language and culture contrasted dramatically with the predominantly white community they settled into.

As a lifelong learner, W. Houston Dougharty ’83 considers himself lucky to have figured out how to “never have to leave college,” a feat he’s achieved by spending 40 years working in higher education.

Dougharty, now finishing his career as vice president for student affairs at Hofstra University on Long Island, N.Y., is this year’s recipient of the Puget Sound Professional Achievement Award. He and the other award winners (see opposite page) are slated to be honored during Summer Reunion Weekend, June 9–11.

Brett Kolb’s breakout freshman swim season came with an odd aftermath: He couldn’t keep hydrated.

Kolb ’23 would go to the Diner on campus and drink a 64-ounce cup of water. Then another. And another. He didn’t think much of it, or of the numerous nightly bathroom trips, figuring he was recovering from a hard season. Weeks later, he mentioned it to his roommate’s mother—a nurse—who urged him to get checked for diabetes.

Hollywood legend Rita Moreno charmed the campus community in April when she delivered the Spring 2023 Susan Resneck Pierce Lecture and spoke to a class. Now 91, Moreno is perhaps best known for playing Anita in the 1961 film West Side Story, a role that earned her an Academy Award for best supporting actress— and made her the first Latina to win an Oscar.

Summer around here has a different rhythm than the rest of the academic year. What does it feel like to you?

It’s not quite as busy on campus as it is between September and May, but it’s far from a ghost town. We have students here taking classes and doing summer research, and we have a very vital and busy conference schedule, among other activities. Conferences, summer camps, and our Summer Academic Challenge allow us to make the campus available to the broader community, where people are able to utilize our facilities in a variety of ways.

Faithlina Abeshima ’16 majored in music and psychology, but a work-study in technology set her on a different career path. Shortly after graduating, she was hired by the university as a technology support analyst; then, in 2019, she stepped into the role of information security administrator. We asked her for advice on steering clear of the hackers, scammers, and bots.