Here at the University of Puget Sound, students take their fresh insights and ideas far beyond the classroom, turning passion projects into reality through the Office of Experiential Learning’s Summer Research program. Working closely with a faculty advisor, they spend the summer exploring questions in their field and developing their own research projects. Along the way, they get the time and resources to deepen their expertise, whether that’s studio art, chemistry, or whatever they’re most passionate about.

In the early morning hours of a warm summer day, the tide in Puget Sound recedes, revealing glistening tide pools filled with an array of sea creatures. There, University of Puget Sound students Vincent Wills ’27 and Bea Moldow ’28 find themselves knee-deep in mud, placing PVC quadrats through the eelgrass beds and counting stalks by hand. They measure each stalk, record its length, and note the density of the plants around them, working methodically before the tide returns to reclaim the shore. It feels a world away from the lecture halls of Tacoma.

Rebecca Johnson DPT’27 and her classmates spend their Wednesday mornings at the YMCA, showing local teenagers the difference between a proper squat and one that invites injury later. No prescriptions. No diagnoses. Just conversation, demonstration, and the occasional laugh between sets.

Inside a red brick building on Tacoma’s Hilltop, the Neighborhood Clinic opens its doors twice a week, offering free medical care to those in need. It’s here that Cecilia Turetzky ’26 turned a community need into action — launching a mobile blood pressure clinic and earning recognition from Washington’s governor.

When a catastrophic equipment failure struck the computational chemistry lab, Max and his fellow students acted quickly. In the span of a week, the team used their collective know-how to build a complex hardware and software system from scratch to get the lab up and running again. Max, an experienced computer builder, led the assembly of three new computers and increased the system’s existing power by more than 10 times in the process.

After returning from a summer studying abroad in East Asia, where she was studying cultural taboos around tattoos, Morgan MacFarlane ’21 had a polished paper ready to publish, but couldn’t find an outlet that would take her research as an undergraduate. She knew other Puget Sound students were conducting interesting research, too, but didn’t have the qualifications to submit to an academic journal to share it with the wider community. So, she decided to start her own.

For Zia Kloetzel ’25, who goes by the stage name Zia Blue, the journey to American Idol began on Instagram. In June 2021, just a couple of months before arriving on campus for her first semester, Kloetzel posted a clip of herself singing “Sixty Years” by Sophia James to her Instagram account. A few hours later, she received a direct message from one of the show’s senior producers inviting her to audition for Idol’s 20th anniversary season. It was the start of a whirlwind experience that would take her all the way to the historic Orpheum Theatre in Hollywood.

Alanna Volk ’22 is on a mission to end sexual assaults and promote healthy relationships through the power of sex education. Growing up in Oregon, she was taught a science-backed sex education and was surprised to learn that not everyone in the country benefits from the same curriculum.