University of Puget Sound earned a top spot in Money’s newest rankings of colleges across the United States. Puget Sound received 4 out of 5 stars, placing it among the top universities in 2023 for education quality, affordability, and graduate outcomes.

“I’m pleased to see publications like Money continue to recognize the exceptional value of a Puget Sound education,” said President Isiaah Crawford. “Puget Sound is committed to preparing graduates with the knowledge and skills to meet the challenges of an ever-changing world—and excel in their chosen fields.”

University of Puget Sound is one of the nation's best colleges for students seeking a great education with excellent career preparation and at a relatively affordable price, according to The Princeton Review®. The education services company named Puget Sound as one of its Best Value Colleges for 2023.

One thing is clear as I meet and talk with you in your hometowns: Wherever you are now, when you think of home, so many of you still think of Puget Sound. Me, too.

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.

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 mourns the passing of President Emeritus Ronald R. Thomas, who died at the home he shared with his wife, Mary, on Vashon Island, Wash., on Monday, April 17, 2023. He was 74 years old.

It’s 6 a.m. in Tacoma’s North End neighborhood, and everything is quiet except for the whistling of a group of white-crowned sparrows high in a tree at the end of an alley. Down below, Amanda Dougherty ’24 is watching the sparrows through her binoculars. She has an app pulled up on her phone to help identify the birds by their song, and she notes how many birds she sees in her notebook. Once she’s made her notes, it’s off to the next street on her route.

Browns Point Lighthouse Park is remarkably silent on a Tuesday morning in late July.

The gentle waves of the Puget Sound, tamed further by the embrace of Tacoma’s Commencement Bay, are barely audible. The hum of cars on nearby WA-509 fades as you walk down from the parking lot to the shore. Even the seabirds, hanging low and lazy in the sky, don’t break the peace. Everything at Browns Point is serene, right down to the quaint little art deco lighthouse.

The quiet makes the sudden excited energy from two barefoot college students seem all the more out of place.