For some of Jeff Tepper’s geology students, the lakes around Puget Sound offer fertile ground for summer research.

With his legs pumping and lungs screaming, Doug Sackman was inspired. He was 19 years old and biking home to Sacramento, Calif., from Reed College in Portland, Ore., where he had just completed his sophomore year as a political science major. He followed the rainy and hilly Pacific Coast for more than 600 miles that trip and wrote a poem about the experience. Now, decades later, his research and teaching interests can be traced back to the main themes of that poem—how people live on the land and with each other in the West.

After a decade behind the scenes in the music industry, Eric Mercer Jr. ’10 steps into the spotlight.

What’s it like to start college in the middle of a pandemic? We reached out to our fellow members of the Class of 2024 to see how things are going.

Sarah Carlson ’02 shares how an internship led to a career in intelligence and counterterrorism.

Gareth Barkin has dedicated his life to travel. But he doesn’t celebrate just checking the countries he’s visited off on a map. His joy comes from finding new ways to make travel more meaningful, especially to college students. For the past decade, Barkin has torn apart and rebuilt some of Puget Sound’s study abroad programs to focus on cultural exchange—ensuring students connect with those from different backgrounds than their own.

English and IPE double major Kevin Nguyen ’09 accidentally writes a novel

Chlöe Brew ’21 explores ancient gender roles and power structures with the help of two very different Greek goddesses.

Johnson ’96, MAT’97 teaches at the Grant Center for the Expressive Arts, part of Tacoma Public Schools, and emphasizes “geo-literacy” in his classroom; he uses Google Earth, for example, to help students understand concepts like the Earth’s movement around the sun. “Students can see a satellite image of the Eiffel Tower and tell me when it was taken based on the length and direction of the shadow,” says Johnson. In 2017, he was named a National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellow—along with Kacy Lebby ’11 in Seattle—and made a 10-day expedition to the Galapagos.

Five questions with Sara Freeman ’95, professor of theatre arts