TACOMA, WASH. — The University of Puget Sound has officially launched its comprehensive fundraising campaign, Greater, We Ascend, marking a significant milestone in its nearly 140-year history. The announcement was made during a dynamic evening event during Homecoming & Family Weekend, with a goal of raising $150 million.
KUPS, Puget Sound’s nationally recognized campus radio station, has always had a countercultural streak, playing music well outside the Top 40 and giving airtime to voices you don’t typically hear on commercial radio. So, it may come as no surprise that the station itself arose from a prank. In the spring of 1966, first-year Rockwell Smith ’69 and a few co-conspirators hijacked the carillon system — normally used to broadcast the sound of bells — to play seven-and-a-half minutes of sound effects, including a cacophony of train whistles and car horns.
Dear Loggers,
Welcome to this special issue of Arches. As you flip through these pages, you’ll find a vibrant celebration of the traditions, people, and places that make the University of Puget Sound so deeply special to all of us. Whether it’s the crisp autumn air under the giant sequoia, the hum of collaboration in Collins Memorial Library, or the lifelong bonds formed in our residence halls, we all have our own unique list of what we love about this remarkable place.
When I walk across campus, I am often reminded of the generations of Loggers who have shaped this remarkable university from its earliest days to the present. Some of their stories are preserved in the names of our buildings and gathering spaces, others in the pages of Tamanawas and The Trail, while countless others live on through the relationships they forged, the lives they touched, and the example they set.
The University of Puget Sound celebrated another year of inspiring philanthropy, with nearly 3,600 donors giving $22.1 million in fiscal year 2025–26. The Puget Sound community came together to support the university and advance its mission of providing a transformative liberal arts education that offers students experiential learning opportunities, expands access to education, and inspires a lifelong love of learning.
The University of Puget Sound will host a year-long series of entrepreneurship events during the 2026–27 academic year. The programming is designed to appeal to students across disciplines, not just business majors, and includes both for-profit and nonprofit ventures.
The University of Puget Sound announced an $8.5 million gift from the Trimble family and The Trimble Foundation to support faculty and academic programming in Asian and China Studies. By deepening its historic ties to the Pacific Rim and investing in faculty excellence, the university is positioning itself as a national leader in Asian Studies and global engagement. This gift represents the largest single commitment in the university’s history focused on Asian Studies.
When most people look out at the ocean, they see a vast, nearly empty expanse of water. Associate Professor of Biology Oscar Sosa sees something more dynamic and mysterious. To him, the ocean is “a soup of microbes and organic molecules doing all kinds of things together and independently.” This year, Sosa and five former University of Puget Sound students co-authored a paper in Nature Microbiology alongside collaborators at the University of Washington and Whitman College outlining a newly discovered metabolic pathway used by marine organisms.
