Tacoma had fewer than 1,000 residents in 1876, when Tak Nam and Lum May opened their mercantile shop, Sam Hing Co., on what is now Commerce Street at 9th Avenue.

The business thrived selling medicines, teas, rice, and other goods, and the shopkeepers had a good relationship with Tacoma’s city leaders.

I am a scholar of international security. For most of my life, I’ve been focused on threats like nuclear annihilation and “Great Power war”—conflict with China or Russia. But today, for the first time in my life, the most significant threat to our country comes from within. Since 9/11, there have been 107 deaths in the U.S. from jihadi violence—and 114 deaths from violence by right-wing domestic extremists, many of them white supremacists. But the numbers don’t represent the true nature of the threat.

Perched on a log above the Mashel River a few miles from the Puget Sound campus, Daniel Sherman explains the complex and often harrowing plight of perhaps the most iconic creature in the Pacific Northwest: the salmon.

WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS

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.

Assistant Professor Tina Huynh wants to share the joy of music with everyone. Whether she’s collecting Vietnamese children’s music, teaching undergraduate- and graduate-level courses in music and music education at University of Puget Sound, or serving as the Tacoma Refugee Choir’s project scholar, Huynh is passionate about preserving music and passing it on to her students and to the community. We recently sat down with the music scholar to talk about her creative and scholarly projects, her favorite instruments, and her new documentary.

After a decade as a high school English teacher, Molly Pugh MAT’03 joined University of Puget Sound’s School of Education, where she helps aspiring teachers find their footing through real-life classroom teaching experience.

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.

When Tanya Erzen is not in a university classroom, she can be found in prison.