A high school friend working at a Spokane coffee shop in 1982 guided Jennifer Al-Abboud ’86 to the world of gelato. Now, the Logger and her husband, Fareed, use the dessert to make a living while fostering community connections. 

“It’s a happy product,” says Al-Abboud. “People come into our shop happy and leave happier. If they don’t come in happy, they leave happy.” 

Greater, We Ascend is a podcast from the University of Puget Sound about Loggers reaching to the heights. Subscribe today.

When there’s an adorable kitten or puppy gamboling across your kitchen, you can be forgiven if you’re not thinking about its future demise.

“But unless you’re 80 and adopt a parrot, you’re going to outlive them,” said Mollyrose Dumm ’07, of Urban Animal, which is based in Seattle and is the country’s largest veterinary worker cooperative.

In the late 1980s, as the University of Puget Sound was approaching its 100th anniversary, a group of 48 alumnae immortalized the occasion with needle and thread. Together, they sewed the Centennial Quilts, two quilts each consisting of 25 squares.

A new research project is uncovering the overlooked role of progressive congregations in the 1970s as sanctuaries for early LGBTQ+ activism. “The Architecture of Pride,” led by Heather White, visiting professor of gender and queer studies, explores how faith communities — mostly from mainline Protestantism — provided safe spaces for organizing in the years just before and following the 1969 Stonewall riots — a moment often considered the symbolic birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

Logger Wellbeing Week returns to the University of Puget Sound Sept. 29–Oct. 3, featuring events centered on a core idea: that health is a community endeavor, not just an individual pursuit.

“What I'm really hoping is that students who participate in this week start to understand that our wellbeing is part of our environment, our community, and within a larger system that we all are part of, and that it's something that we create collectively as a community,” said Danielle Bus, Puget Sound’s wellness education and prevention specialist.

Loggers are a creative sort, always looking for new ways to express themselves. From knitting and crocheting to quilting and spinning wool, these alumni, faculty, and staff are taking traditional crafting to new heights, whether it’s making their own clothes or turning a hobby into an unexpected career. We caught up with a few Loggers harnessing their passion for crafting to address waste and unchecked consumerism, improve their mental health, teach the next generation, and make handmade sweaters cool again.

Two of the three faculty members in the theatre arts department at Puget Sound are Loggers through-and-though, having been students who majored in theatre arts who then left to earn graduate degrees, work in the industry, and return to Tacoma to teach new generations on a wonderfully familiar stage.

In 1964, freshman Louis Smith ’69 was one of two Black students living on Puget Sound’s campus, and one of just four Black students in the entire student body. He remembered those years as a time of great hope and despair. While the Civil Rights Movement was discussed regularly in his family home as he grew up, he didn’t hear students talking about it in the hallways, lunch tables, or classrooms when he arrived on campus. It felt silent.