University of Puget Sound Named to Best National Liberal Arts College List by U.S. News & World Report

Fall leaves hang in the foreground of campus buildings.

TACOMA, Wash. - The University of Puget Sound has been honored once again for its academic excellence, securing a spot among the Best National Liberal Arts Colleges by U.S. News & World Report. The university claimed the #95 spot in a highly competitive category among universities nationwide. Puget Sound was also recognized as a “Best Value School” moving up three spots to #81.

Outdoor Learning

Participants on the PacTrail program's second expedition

Grayson Shearer ’25 grew up backpacking near his hometown of Denver, and by the time he arrived for his first year at Puget Sound, there wasn’t much he hadn’t experienced on a trail. So when Shearer heard from a friend last spring about the university’s Pacific Trail Program, it wasn’t so much the challenge that appealed to him as it was the company.

The First and Finest

OT students in a hands-on learning experience.

One of the fondest memories that George Tomlin ’82 had in supervising the pediatric clinic in the University of Puget Sound’s School of Occupational Therapy took place after OT students started working with a 7-year-old boy who was blind.

The Professionals

The Professionals opener image for Arches.

John Weaver ’98, creative director for the Seattle Seahawks, was on a phone call one day when he learned that he’d been working with another Puget Sound alum for years without even knowing it. Weaver was searching for new stadium announcers, and reached out to a former football coach at his alma mater for suggestions. The coach asked him if he knew Nasser Kyobe ’13, executive producer at the Seahawks radio network. Turned out Weaver and Kyobe graduated 15 years apart, and both had played football for the Loggers.

Adoption in America

Illustration by Ane Arzelus

When Rebecca Wellington’s sister died in 2017, Wellington began to write as a way of processing her grief. Both sisters had been adopted, and Wellington had now lost the one person who understood what that meant. The initial writings morphed into an extensively researched history of adoption in the United States, and earlier this year, the University of Oklahoma Press published Wellington’s memoir, Who is a Worthy Mother? An Intimate History of Adoption.