A Sound Past chronicles through historic photographs the people, buildings, events, athletics, and campus environment that make the University of Puget Sound such a unique place.

Tacoma, Wash. – University of Puget Sound will be featured in Amazon Prime’s popular series The College Tour beginning Feb. 8 and is now available to watch at pugetsound.edu/thecollegetour. The 30-minute episode takes a broad look at all aspects of the Puget Sound experience, designed to challenge and support students who seek to make a difference in the world.

On a rainy, winter evening, the stage lights went up in Tacoma’s historic Blue Mouse Theatre, where Grammy Award-winning trombonist, composer, and music educator Delfeayo Marsalis was on hand to lead the University of Puget Sound Jazz Orchestra for a night of holiday standards and reinterpretations of classic songs. Before the concert, Marsalis spent time on campus teaching a master class and rehearsing with student performers, which included vocalist Eli Kitchens ’22.

Police brutality incidents, such as the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020, have made the issues surrounding policing and racism more visible than ever before. The social movements sparked by these incidents, and dozens like them in the last decade, have caused many, including Puget Sound students and professors, to ask tough questions about the current American justice system.

Author Viet Thanh Nguyen’s earliest memories are of being separated from his parents. The hazy recollections of his family’s escape from Vietnam in 1975 and arrival in the United States fuel his work as a writer to reconcile his dual identities as both an American and a refugee. Nguyen spoke this month at University of Puget Sound, where he gave the fall 2021 Susan Resneck Pierce Lecture in Public Affairs and the Arts.

Tacoma, Wash. – In recognition of her leadership and philanthropy to University of Puget Sound, the college will dedicate the Susie L. Wilson Welcome Center in honor of trustee Susie L. Wilson ’87.  A private dedication ceremony for family and friends will be held on campus.

There’s an intriguing collection of books on display now at Collins Memorial Library. It’s called Science Stories, and the exhibition is appropriately named—they are, after all, stories about science. But these aren’t typical books; instead, artists from the Pacific Northwest have taken scientific research by faculty members at Puget Sound and other nearby schools, and interpreted that work into an array of imaginative “artist books.”

You seemed pretty jazzed to see students and parents back on campus at the end of August.