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.
At a moment when viewpoint diversity has emerged as a contentious and defining issue in higher education, University of Puget Sound Professor of History Ben Tromly has turned his attention to the origins and implications of this growing movement. For Tromly, examining this concept has become a critical endeavor to understand how political pressures are impacting the landscape of intellectual discourse on campuses nationwide.
The Princeton Review has included the University of Puget Sound in its Best Value Colleges for 2027 list, recognizing it as one of the best colleges in the nation for students looking for a quality education along with excellent career services at an affordable price.
Puget Sound faculty members are mentors, researchers, and impact-makers, shuttling smoothly between the world of their classrooms and the wider study halls of the globe. They are constantly learning and adapting so they can best serve the students they teach as well as make meaningful contributions to their fields. And despite their institution being a relatively small one — with just 175 full-time faculty members — their work has long fingers
and a very wide reach.
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.
Sophia Haynes ’27 spent three weeks this summer researching one of these species: the striped plateau lizard. Living and working out of the Southwestern Research Station, located about 5,400 feet above sea level, Haynes studied how the cold-blooded lizard thermally regulates in the heat of the Arizona mountains, and more specifically, whether the lizards take refuge in trees when it’s hotter in order to regulate their temperature.
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.
Mallory Fitzpatrick’s work examines a spooky crossroads: supernatural horror and ancient literature. She was drawn to Greek myths as a child, later studying them in their original languages. “It blew the door wide open to ancient literature, history, and storytelling,” she says.
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.
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.