President’s Welcome to Faculty & Staff 2026

Good afternoon, everyone! It is wonderful to see so many of you gathered here in Schneebeck Hall as we begin another academic year at Puget Sound. I also extend a warm welcome to those joining us by livestream. A transcript of today’s remarks will be available on our website following the address for colleagues who are unable to be with us in person or online.

Before we begin, I want to acknowledge that the University of Puget Sound is located on the traditional homelands of the Puyallup Tribe. The Puyallup people have lived on and stewarded these lands since the beginning of time and continue to do so today. We recognize that a land acknowledgement is only a beginning, and we remain committed to honoring and uplifting the voices, experiences, histories, and enduring presence of the Indigenous people of this land and beyond.

I hope each of you found some time this summer for rest, reflection, restoration—and, I hope, a little fun—and that you return renewed and ready to welcome our students for the 2026–27 academic year. It is especially meaningful for me to be with you today because, as many of you know, this gathering marks the beginning of my final year as president of Puget Sound. That makes this moment both joyful and, I will admit, a little bittersweet.

As I reflect on my 10 years at Puget Sound, what I feel most deeply is gratitude—gratitude for this extraordinary community and for all that we have accomplished together:

• Together, we developed and launched Leadership for a Changing World, our strategic plan and vision for a university that is academically rigorous, student-centered, and boldly responsive to the world our graduates will inherit. Today, that vision is evident in our classrooms and programs and, most importantly, in the lives of our graduates who go forth prepared to lead, serve, and open doors for others.
• Together, we created the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity, the Office of General Counsel and Risk Management, the Faculty Development Center, and the Makerspace—and we opened the Wilson Welcome Center.
• Together, we navigated the extraordinary challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, embracing new technologies, health protocols, and approaches to teaching and learning while protecting the strength and integrity of the liberal arts educational experience. And when lower-than-expected enrollment created significant economic pressures in the years that followed, we responded with A Sound Future 1.0 and 2.0 to guide our path back to financial equilibrium.
• Together, we evolved our curriculum by making experiential learning a requirement for the baccalaureate degree and implementing our more personalized and flexible Grow core curriculum. In response to changing student interests and employer needs, we launched undergraduate programs in Crime, Law, and Justice; Data Analytics; Songwriting; and established the Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences. We also expanded our graduate offerings, including the Master of Public Health and our new hybrid Master of Education in Counseling, which launches this fall.
• And together, through the remarkable work of the people in this room and those joining us online, we have supported and challenged our students to discover their passions, realize their potential, and prepare to make a meaningful difference in the world. That work has inspired others to invest in our mission as well, including the largest individual gift in Puget Sound’s history—a $10 million commitment from the Tom and Meg Names Foundation to support the health, wellness, and development of our scholar-athletes.

None of these accomplishments belongs to any one person. They are the result of our collective effort, our belief in one another, and our shared commitment to making Puget Sound one of the finest universities in the nation. That commitment began long before any of us arrived here, and I am confident it will continue for generations to come.

Before turning fully to the year ahead, I want to pause and celebrate what was a truly outstanding 2025–26 academic year:

• We began by welcoming the Class of 2029. For the first time on record, we had zero no-shows on Move-In Day—every single student we expected arrived ready and excited to begin their Puget Sound journey. That was an extraordinary accomplishment, and I want to again congratulate our Enrollment colleagues for bringing that wonderful class to us and our Student Success team for supporting their transition to campus so well. 
• Puget Sound also received some well-earned external recognition. The Princeton Review recognized us with improved rankings for our athletic facilities and our beautiful campus—a wonderful testament to our Facilities colleagues, whose care and pride are visible everywhere we look. We were also designated a College of Distinction and again recognized as a Best Value School by U.S. News & World Report.
• At Homecoming and Family Weekend, we unveiled a new look for Grizz in celebration of the 20th anniversary of our beloved mascot and the 115th anniversary of ASUPS. The refreshed Grizz aligns with our broader marketing and branding efforts to raise Puget Sound’s profile. My thanks to University Relations and the Office of Marketing and Communications for bringing our favorite Logger into the present day.
• We continued our partnership with MultiCare by hosting the Mary Bridge Festival of Trees in December, welcoming the Tacoma community to campus in support of our local children’s hospital. Thank you to everyone who helped create such a magical experience, and especially to DES and Facilities for transforming the Tennis Pavilion into a winter wonderland.
• At the start of the spring semester, we celebrated our 40th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration with a keynote address by Bishop Cedrick D. Bridgeforth. Puget Sound was among the first institutions to establish a dedicated observance honoring Dr. King, and I am proud that we continue this important tradition. My thanks to the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity and University Chaplain Reverend Dave Wright for creating such a meaningful event.
• Also in January, our economics faculty, led by Dr. Andrew Monaco, presented the Pierce County Economic Index at the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber’s Horizons Economic Forecast. This was something of a homecoming: the index was first developed by Puget Sound faculty in the 1980s and has long helped guide local decision-makers. It is wonderful to see this important work return to Puget Sound and once again provide valuable insight to our regional community.
• In February, we unveiled the first exhibit of the Puget Sound Memory Project in Collins Memorial Library. Supported by a generous gift from alumna Ellen Ferguson, the project invites us to examine honestly the ways our university has been intertwined with our region’s complicated history—to acknowledge past harms, inspire thoughtful conversation, and prepare our students to lead with courage and integrity.
• In March, our community showed up in remarkable fashion for Logger Day Challenge. 1,226 Loggers from around the world came together to raise more than $343,000 to help ensure access to a Puget Sound education. Thank you to our University Relations colleagues for making the day such a success and for the important work you do every day to inspire philanthropy in support of our students and our mission.
• We also welcomed Tacoma native and Puget Sound alumna Grace Youn ’13 back to campus to deliver the Pierce Lecture this spring and teach two master classes for musicians. There are few things more gratifying than watching our graduates build consequential careers and then return to share their talent, experience, and wisdom with the next generation of Loggers.
• In April, the Adelphian Concert Choir traveled to New York City for its historic Carnegie Hall debut, featuring current students and alumni singers under the direction of Dr. Steven Zopfi [ZO-FEE]. What a tremendous moment of pride for our School of Music and for Puget Sound.
• It was also a standout year for Logger Athletics. This spring, we celebrated major improvements to our baseball and softball facilities, another important investment in the championship culture we are building for our scholar-athletes and in athletics as a driver of recruitment, retention, and community. Our teams delivered tremendous performances as well, culminating in a third-place finish in the Northwest Conference All Sports Points Race—up from eighth place just a few years ago. A big thank-you to our fantastic—and now not-so-new—Athletics Director, Dr. Chelsea Herman, and to our coaches, trainers, and athletics staff for all they do in support of our scholar-athletes.
• Also in April, we announced the appointment of Dr. John Johnson as interim vice president for institutional equity and diversity, succeeding Dr. Lorna Hernandez Jarvis, who retired at the end of the academic year after distinguished service as our inaugural vice president for OIED. We are delighted to have John as a member of our leadership team and grateful for the experience, insight, and collaborative spirit he brings to this important work.
• Our Master of Public Health program earned accreditation from the Council on Education for Public Health. The accreditation applies retroactively to the program’s first cohort and reflects three years of thoughtful, rigorous work by our MPH faculty. It is an important affirmation of the quality of the program and a powerful signal to prospective students and employers.
• We also continued to demonstrate leadership in conversations about the ethical and practical uses of artificial intelligence. This spring, an on-campus symposium on AI and Privacy brought prominent researchers and policymakers together to explore the intersection of technology, philosophy, and governance. We followed that with a University of Puget Sound Business Insights gathering on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, featuring a wide-ranging conversation between Dr. Ariela Tubert and alumnus Ryan Cunningham ’05 about the rise of agentic AI.
• At the same time, we have made excellent progress toward an institutional AI strategy, building on the thoughtful and deliberative work of our faculty and staff AI Working Group.   Our institutional strategy for the upcoming academic year will encompass both supporting the important faculty work already underway to determine how best to cultivate critical AI literacy within our core curriculum and identifying opportunities to develop tools to help our staff enhance our administrative operations, and I look forward to sharing more about these efforts with the campus community in the coming weeks.
• At Commencement, we celebrated the achievements of our undergraduate and graduate Classes of 2026 and honored two outstanding members of the Logger community with honorary degrees: alumna Ellen Ferguson ’72 and Trustee Emeritus William T. Weyerhaeuser.
• And as we celebrated the Class of 2026, we also had reason to celebrate the remarkable outcomes of the Class of 2025: 91 percent are employed, continuing their education, or engaged in volunteer or military service. That is a powerful measure of the value of a Puget Sound education. My thanks to our faculty, academic advisors, and Academic Affairs colleagues for the extraordinary care and support you provide our students from the day they arrive through graduation and beyond.

Of course, even that lengthy list only begins to capture what we accomplished together. I am enormously proud of this community and of the way you continue to meet challenges with creativity, resilience, care, and an unwavering commitment to our students.

At the start of the spring semester, I shared my decision to retire and conclude my service as Puget Sound’s 14th president on July 1, 2027. Serving this university has been the honor of my professional life, and Kent and I are profoundly grateful for the privilege of being part of this extraordinary community. I have said it before, and I mean it: there will be no coasting to the finish line. We have important work ahead of us, and I intend to keep the pedal to the metal while also cherishing every moment of this final year—from Move-In Day to Commencement, and all of the wonderful moments in between.

As we turn our attention to 2026–27, we should be clear-eyed about the challenges before us. But we should be equally confident in who we are, what we value, and what we are capable of accomplishing together to advance this great institution.

We must begin by acknowledging that this is a difficult moment for higher education. At the state and federal levels, we face policy and funding challenges, including cuts to the Washington College Grant and College Bound Scholarship programs. The state aid cuts fall solely on students attending private, not-for-profit institutions such as Puget Sound and disproportionately affect students of color and first-generation students. Our responsibility is clear: to do everything within our power to help our students navigate these financial hurdles so they can remain focused on their education and reach graduation. I am very pleased to share that Puget Sound is bridging the funding gap for all 214 of our students who experienced reductions to their state financial aid.

We are also working closely with our partners—including Independent Colleges of Washington, the American Council on Education, and the National Association of Independent Colleges & Universities—to advocate for our students and for the value of independent higher education at the federal level. And we continue to work productively with our elected representatives to pursue resources for important academic priorities, including our request to U.S. Representative Emily Randall’s office for funding for a new confocal microscope. Such an investment would advance the research of our students and faculty while also providing a valuable resource to institutions across Western Washington.

Even amid these headwinds, Puget Sound continues to benefit from significant financial strengths. S&P’s reaffirmation of our A+ rating with a stable outlook is meaningful external validation of our financial position and institutional resilience. We are well positioned to navigate the convergence of policy, economic, and demographic change and to emerge better prepared for the future.

At the same time, we should not minimize the work still before us. We continue to operate with a structural deficit, and our multi-year financial plan calls for restoring fiscal equilibrium by 2030. Achieving that goal will require discipline and continued fidelity to the strategies set forth in Leadership for a Changing World and A Sound Future 2.0. By remaining focused on student success, recruitment and retention, thoughtful stewardship of our resources, and the growth of non-tuition revenue, I am confident we can achieve a balanced budget in Fiscal Year 2030 and strengthen Puget Sound for the long term.

Another encouraging sign is the continued strength of philanthropy. This was a banner year, with $22.1 million raised, including $2.4 million for the Puget Sound Fund. Those flexible resources help us bridge financial aid gaps, enrich the student experience, and respond to the university’s most pressing needs. Our University Relations team also secured gifts and commitments for new endowed professorships, expanded experiential learning opportunities, and other investments that strengthen Puget Sound for generations to come.

And, of course, we cannot talk about our financial future without talking about enrollment. As a tuition-dependent institution, enrollment is fundamental to our operating model. Vice President for Enrollment Tim Whittum and our entire enrollment team have led a deliberate, student-centered rethinking of our approach—one focused on sustainable growth, competitive and transparent financial aid, and proactive marketing that raises Puget Sound’s visibility in both longstanding and emerging markets.

While we will not have final numbers until the 10th day of term in mid-September, we welcomed 650 new students to campus last week, our largest entering class since 2019. This includes 475 new first-time-in-college students, which is an increase of nearly 100 students compared to last fall's first-year class, as well as 50 undergraduate transfer students and 125 graduate students. Our residence halls are occupied (no “Ghost Dorms”), and the energy on campus is palpable. I want to congratulate Tim and our Admissions and Student Financial Services teams for this tremendous result and recognize the Student Success team and enrollment team for the persistence, creativity, and sheer hard work it took throughout the spring and summer to yield this class.

The Class of 2030 includes students from 36 states and countries around the world, including Canada, China, Malaysia, Kenya, Japan, UAE, India, and Brazil. Twenty-seven percent of our entering first-time-in-college students are from Washington, and, overall 35 percent identify as minoritized students. Together, they bring an average GPA of 3.62 and strong interests in psychology, business, biology, pre-medicine, and exercise science.

And this progress represents far more than a number on a spreadsheet or a line in our budget. It reflects students choosing Puget Sound, and importantly, choosing to stay. Strong new-student enrollment, combined with excellent retention, is expected to produce our second consecutive year of enrollment growth. We currently project total fall enrollment to exceed the benchmark in our financial equilibrium glidepath by nearly 5 percent. In fact, our enrollment has reached a level we did not anticipate achieving until fall 2027 – a meaningful sign that the strategies we have put in place are working.

Maintaining this momentum will require us to remain nimble, creative, forward-looking, and responsive to what students need and what the world is asking of them. I am therefore especially excited about the launch of two new offerings this year: our emphasis in Artificial Intelligence and Human Values and our hybrid MEd in Counseling.

The interdisciplinary emphasis in AI and Human Values gives students a structured way to understand artificial intelligence not simply as a technology, but as a powerful force reshaping democracy, creativity, health care, law, work, and human relationships. Similar programs can be found at large research universities, but ours is among the first in the Pacific Northwest and among the first of its kind at a liberal arts college anywhere in the nation.

Our hybrid Master of Education in Counseling extends the reach of our highly regarded graduate counseling program by combining the flexibility of online learning with the deep personal connections created through on-campus residency experiences. It launches at a time when our region faces a significant shortage of qualified mental health professionals, and it will create new opportunities for students—including working adults and those balancing family responsibilities—to advance their careers and serve their communities. We look forward to sharing all of these accomplishments with the United Methodist Church University Senate when we complete our re-affirmation process as a Methodist-affiliated institution this fall.

At a moment when our world seems to be changing by the day, I believe the value of a liberal arts education has never been more apparent—and its importance has never been more urgent. New technologies such as AI only reinforce the need for people who can think critically, communicate clearly, cross disciplinary boundaries, exercise sound ethical judgment, and understand the human consequences of technological change. These are not peripheral skills. They are essential skills, and they are at the heart of what we do.

That is why I remain so hopeful about our future. Society still needs scientists, teachers, health professionals, entrepreneurs, artists, public servants, and thoughtful citizens. It still needs places where ideas can be questioned, tested, debated, and refined rather than simply asserted. And it needs graduates who are prepared not only to pursue successful careers, but also to live lives of purpose and contribute meaningfully to their communities and to the greater good. Every day at Puget Sound, students are discovering their passions, faculty are creating and advancing knowledge, and lives are being transformed. That is consequential work, and it is work worthy of our very best.

We are also building a legacy together. It is a legacy that rests not simply on what we have accomplished during the past decade, but on generations of commitment and investment stretching back to 1888. I am reminded of what one of our distinguished School of Education alumni, Ramona Bennett Bill, wrote in her recent memoir: we must think generationally. To think generationally is to remain fully engaged with the work immediately before us while keeping our eyes on the horizon. It means understanding that the choices we make today create possibilities for the students, faculty, and staff who will follow us.

One of the most important ways we are investing in that future is through the Greater, We Ascend campaign. Its three pillars—learning by doing, access to education, and a lifetime of learning—speak directly to who we are and to the kind of university we aspire to be. To date, we have raised more than $97 million, nearly 65 percent of our $150 million goal. And I am delighted that at Homecoming and Family Weekend in late October we will launch the campaign’s public phase. So much thoughtful work has taken place behind the scenes to bring us to this moment, and I am excited to invite the wider Logger community to join us in building Puget Sound’s future.

As I begin this final year, I am also deeply committed to doing everything I can to support a smooth and successful leadership transition. Puget Sound will always hold a very special place in my heart—and in Kent’s as well. Wherever the next chapter takes us, with our adorable new rescue puppy Crosby in tow, we will be cheering for this university, for our students, and for all of you.

I remain convinced that Puget Sound’s brightest days are ahead of us, so long as we remain true to our values, confident in our mission, and steadfast in our commitment to providing a truly transformative education. In a moment, we will head outside to Karlen Quad for food, drinks, music, and the chance simply to enjoy being together. But before we do, I want to thank you—sincerely and personally—for all that you do for our students, for one another, and for this university. You are the people who make it possible for our students, and for Puget Sound, to reach the heights. I am deeply grateful to be on this journey with you for one more year. Let’s make it a joyful, purposeful, and truly memorable one. Together, TO THE HEIGHTS!