Nancy Bristow
Distinguished Professor of History
36 Years
For three decades, Nancy Bristow has been dedicated to excellence in teaching and lifting up student voices in her classroom. During her time at Puget Sound, she was deeply involved with the Department of History, African American Studies, and the Race & Pedagogy Institute, where she serves on the leadership team and helped organize the quadrennial Race & Pedagogy National Conference.
Professor Douglas Sackman describes Bristow as “the Platonic form of selfless servant, she has touched nearly every facet of our university life, improving things small and large across campus.” In addition to teaching and leadership across campus, she is the author of multiple books about race and social change in 20th century America, including American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic and Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College. In response to both the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd in 2020, she was frequently quoted in the media, where she shared her expertise on past pandemics and the history of systemic violence in the U.S. with a wide audience.
Her retirement is already off to an eventful start as she recently co-led a trip through the American South with Dr. LaToya Brackett to explore the region’s culture and history for students enrolled in African American Studies 360: The American South - Race, Place, Identity and Memory. “I think students are increasingly aware that the world is more complicated than what they were taught as children,” she told Arches in 2020. “They’re recognizing that simple answers aren’t going to work with the pressing questions their generation is facing.”
Lisa Nunn
Associate Professor of Economics and International Political Economy
36 Years
Lisa Nunn’s place has always been in the classroom, working directly with students to understand how our choices impact society. “With each new cohort of students, the material we are learning comes alive through their fresh understanding. At Puget Sound I feel like I’m learning alongside my students, living out the university’s mission to create life-long learners,” she says.
Nunn had a unique career, leaving academia behind in 1997 when her husband’s career took the family away from Tacoma, then returning as an instructor in 2004. In the early 1990s, Nunn served on the Political Economy working group, which brought scholars from around the world to Puget Sound and created some of the first interdisciplinary, team-taught courses on campus. In 2015, she served on the Experiential Learning Task Force, which led to the Experiential Learning graduation requirement.
While she loves the culture of learning at Puget Sound, she’s looking forward to a retirement full of travel, theater, volunteering, and time spent with her grandchildren.
Steven Neshyba
Professor of Chemistry
32 Years
For Steven Neshyba, being a professor is an identity as much as it is a career. In his time at Puget Sound, he’s had the chance to teach a wide variety of courses and has appreciated how the university’s emphasis on curricular innovation has given him the chance to create and reimagine courses, including recent classes on modeling the Earth’s climate and chemical thermodynamics.
Beyond the classroom, Neshyba has served on the Sustainability Advisory Committee, where he says “we did crazy things, like built a worm composting facility just outside of the SUB.” He’s also been a Posse Scholars mentor and worked closely with students interested in scientific research. That research has led to several co-authored papers with students.
While he’s stepping away from the university environment, he still plans to teach. “I tell people that I'm retiring from getting paid to teach,” Neshyba says. “I've been working on teaching a version of my climate modeling course to middle schoolers and high schoolers, for example. It's a challenge, of course, not just because they have different mathematical backgrounds than college students, but also (and I think more importantly) because they ask different kinds of questions.”
Matt Warning
Professor of Economics
29 Years
Matt Warning is always looking for opportunities to learn — it’s what drew him to the liberal arts in the first place and what continues to keep him busy in retirement. While at Puget Sound, Warning enjoyed seeing students grow from their introductory classes to the most demanding and technical courses, watching them develop mastery of material they initially considered out of their reach.
Warning’s research on contract farming's impact on poverty and inequality is widely cited. He also received attention for his research on fair trade coffee production, served as consulting producer and content specialist for the PBS documentary Buyer Be Fair: The Promise of Product Certification, which explored the economics of fair-trade coffee and certified wood products.
Warning has big plans for retirement, starting by circumnavigating Vancouver Island by sailboat this summer, diving into new subjects (Tolstoy, Iranian cinema, art history, and quantum theory to name a few), and helping his Buddhist community build a monastery outside of North Bend, Washington. “I will be very involved in that project, starting with removing invasive plant species, carpentry, and various handyman tasks as well as managerial roles and a good deal of retreating,” he says.
Jeffrey Matthews P’16
George F. Jewett Distinguished Professor of Business and Leadership
26 Years
In his time at Puget Sound, Jeffrey Mathews taught many courses in the School of Business and Leadership, including his favorite, Paradigms of Leadership. “Without a doubt working with students brought me the most joy at Puget Sound,” he says. “At the same time, working with many dedicated colleagues was always inspiring.”
Matthews is the author of five books, spent eight years as director of the Business Leadership Program, served on the Faculty Advancement Committee, and was frequently recognized for his excellence in the classroom, earning the President’s Teaching Excellence Award, the Thomas A. Davis Teaching Excellence Award, and the ASUPS Outstanding Faculty Member Award. His book, The Art of Command, was just recently added to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s recommended reading list.
Now that he’s retired, Matthews is traveling extensively to spend more time with family, has established a charitable fund with his partner, Liz Collins ’81, P’02, to support causes dear to their hearts, and is hard at work writing a dual biography of George Harrison and Cat Stevens currently titled The Seekers.
Mark Martin
Associate Professor of Biology
21 Years
Mark Martin’s love for microbiology and for his students is contagious. From introductory courses to lab work, Martin enjoys seeing his “micronauts” and “Doc Martians” explore the strange and wonderful world of microbes. Thirty of Martin’s students have gone on to pursue doctoral studies and six are now faculty members at other universities.
Along the way, he has been recognized with the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Carski Foundation Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award and served as an ASM distinguished lecturer. He’s also the host of the #MattersMicrobial podcast, which has published 140 episodes and counting.
This fall, Martin will be an Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Following that, he’ll continue to be a fixture of campus at Puget Sound, carrying on his research, recording new episodes of his podcast, and mentoring students. “Most of all, I want to be a microbial evangelist, promoting microbial literacy and enthusiasm for science however and wherever I can,” he says.
Gerard Morris
Professor of Music
17 Years
Gerard Morris’ most rewarding experiences on campus all center around helping students grow as musicians. Throughout his time at Puget Sound, he’s conducted the Concert Band and Wind Ensemble, where he’s crafted programs alongside his students that cover a wide range of themes, from a celebration of marriage equality to a holiday outreach project called Holidays for Humanity. He’s also enjoyed hosting the College Band Directors National Association Division Conference and traveling with the Wind Ensemble to perform in Washington, Oregon, California, and Colorado.
Beyond campus, Morris is the conductor and artistic director of the Tacoma Concert Band, where he premiered a piano concerto by Kevin Oldham, a composer who lost his life in 1993 to the HIV/AIDS crisis, and co-produced a documentary about the process. “It was the last piece he wrote before his death, and it was a true honor to bring Kevin's voice back to life,” Morris says.
Morris has a busy retirement ahead, continuing in his role as conductor of the Tacoma Concert Band. He’ll also be traveling to teach and conduct across the country and around the world, including two artist residencies in 2027 that will take him to Hong Kong and Taipei, followed by a performance tour of Greece with the Tacoma Concert Band.
Lorna Hernandez Jarvis
Vice President for Institutional Equity and Diversity
5 Years
For the past five years, Lorna Hernandez Jarvis has served as Puget Sound’s inaugural vice president for institutional equity and diversity. During her tenure, she established the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity and built partnerships across campus to create and implement the university’s Belonging: Choosing Equity and Engaging Inclusive Excellence strategic plan.
Hernandez Jarvis spearheaded many initiatives to support students and promote belonging, including the creation of the Sound Scholars program and the Puget Sound Memory Project, supporting the Posse Scholars program, and improving the university’s DEI training efforts.
As she hands over the baton of leadership, she reminds the campus community that “the work of equity is never truly finished. It is a continuous practice of unlearning, listening, and evolving. There will always be new hurdles and societal shifts that test our resolve.” She plans to spend the first summer of her retirement in reflection and discernment before deciding what to pursue next, but she hopes to complete some scholarly writing projects, travel, and continue to be deeply engaged in the community.
