Hollywood legend Rita Moreno charmed the campus community in April when she delivered the Spring 2023 Susan Resneck Pierce Lecture and spoke to a class. Now 91, Moreno is perhaps best known for playing Anita in the 1961 film West Side Story, a role that earned her an Academy Award for best supporting actress— and made her the first Latina to win an Oscar.
Summer around here has a different rhythm than the rest of the academic year. What does it feel like to you?
It’s not quite as busy on campus as it is between September and May, but it’s far from a ghost town. We have students here taking classes and doing summer research, and we have a very vital and busy conference schedule, among other activities. Conferences, summer camps, and our Summer Academic Challenge allow us to make the campus available to the broader community, where people are able to utilize our facilities in a variety of ways.
Faithlina Abeshima ’16 majored in music and psychology, but a work-study in technology set her on a different career path. Shortly after graduating, she was hired by the university as a technology support analyst; then, in 2019, she stepped into the role of information security administrator. We asked her for advice on steering clear of the hackers, scammers, and bots.
Ronald R. Thomas is home. For 13 years, from the summers of 2003 through 2016, that beloved home was here, as president of University of Puget Sound. His irrepressible enthusiasm for all things Puget Sound so animates the campus today that it’s impossible to speak of it in the past tense. He loved it all: every student, every possibility, every building, every blade of grass. The campus looks the way it does because he was a master of master planning.
TACOMA, Wash. — University of Puget Sound will remove the name of a former professor and proponent of eugenics from the college’s museum of natural history. On May 12, Puget Sound’s Board of Trustees unanimously voted to approve President Isiaah Crawford’s recommendation to remove the name “Slater” from the Slater Museum of Natural History following a request from a student and subsequent review by a committee.
TACOMA, Wash. — Following an extensive and highly competitive national search, University of Puget Sound has named Drew Kerkhoff as the institution’s new provost effective July 10, 2023. Kerkhoff comes to Puget Sound from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he currently serves as associate provost.
Every year, University of Puget Sound students are selected to receive highly competitive grants, awards, scholarships, and fellowships which enable them to continue their educations and dive deeper into their fields of expertise. This year is no different, with nine Loggers being named semi-finalists for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, including four finalists for the award and one alternate.
Long before she had heard the term “sustainability,” Kaylynn O’Curran ’23 was obsessed with recycling. She wanted to live a lifestyle as close to zero-waste as possible, so she did her research on products to minimize her impact on the planet and try to be a conscious consumer. She felt good about her choices, but when she started studying at University of Puget Sound, she quickly learned that addressing climate change requires more than individuals making sustainable choices—it demands wide-ranging changes on a collective scale.
TACOMA, Wash. – Historian and former Tacoma mayor William H. “Bill” Baarsma ’64, P’93 will deliver the Commencement address at University of Puget Sound’s 131st Commencement Ceremony on Sunday, May 14, 2023. The Logger alumnus will also receive the honorary degree Doctor of History, the highest distinction bestowed by the university.
