Since 1888, the University of Puget Sound and the City of Tacoma have been as inextricable as the ivy that adorns the walls of Jones Hall.
When Puget Sound’s early leaders proposed building a college to “rival the finest institutions in the East” in the late-19th century, they could not have envisioned how this scrappy port town with grand aspirations would grow, evolve, and continually reinvent itself while staying true to its roots. Sound familiar?
There were moments when it appeared they would go their separate ways. Port Townsend tried to lure Puget Sound away. Financial trouble nearly forced a merger with another small college in Portland. The university purchased land in what is now University Place for a campus. Each time, the magnetic pull of Tacoma brought the university back home, finally landing in the North End in 1923.
Along the way, many of the university’s early locations were purchased by Tacoma’s fledgling public school system, including the current sites of Hilltop Heritage Middle School and Edna Travis Elementary School. That longstanding relationship continues through Summer Academic Challenge, which offers a free enrichment program to local secondary students and the Sound Scholars program, which meets the full demonstrated financial need for up to 20 Tacoma high school graduates each year who are committed to giving back to the community.
Things have changed in the City of Destiny since the late-19th century. Tacoma is now home to several institutions of higher education — but Puget Sound will always be the first. The university may draw students from around the world, but it remains dedicated to its hometown, offering a pipeline for students from two-year institutions like Tacoma Community College to continue their educational journeys and benefit from Puget Sound’s liberal arts curriculum — because an educated city is a city that is prepared for whatever the future may bring.
These days, Tacoma is no longer a hidden jewel, and neither is the University of Puget Sound. The city is where the old and the new coexist, where community matters, where a copper smelter can be transformed into a public park, where artists and longshoremen and professionals stand side-by-side in the Frisko Freeze parking lot enjoying a burger and fries. It is a city with a chip on its shoulder, its feet planted on the ground, and its eyes on tomorrow.
Puget Sound and Tacoma share a common destiny — and like local singer- songwriter Neko Case, we’ll always defend our city’s honor.
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