Greater, We Ascend is a podcast from the University of Puget Sound about Loggers reaching to the heights. Subscribe today.

New research into the inter-personal relations connecting China and Central America will provide a critical perspective on shifting global alliances. This work, led by Monica DeHart, University of Puget Sound professor of sociology and anthropology, has been awarded a prestigious 2025 Project Development Grant from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

While working at Mural Arts Philadelphia, an organization based inside the former home and studio of acclaimed painter Thomas Eakins, interdisciplinary artist Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter unearthed a disturbing piece of the past online. Researching in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts' digital archive, she discovered photographs from 1882 of a young Black girl, nude and vulnerable, taken by Eakins in the very room where she stood.

Greater, We Ascend is a podcast from the University of Puget Sound about Loggers reaching to the heights. Subscribe today.

A new research project is uncovering the overlooked role of progressive congregations in the 1970s as sanctuaries for early LGBTQ+ activism. “The Architecture of Pride,” led by Heather White, visiting professor of gender and queer studies, explores how faith communities — mostly from mainline Protestantism — provided safe spaces for organizing in the years just before and following the 1969 Stonewall riots — a moment often considered the symbolic birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

Loggers are a creative sort, always looking for new ways to express themselves. From knitting and crocheting to quilting and spinning wool, these alumni, faculty, and staff are taking traditional crafting to new heights, whether it’s making their own clothes or turning a hobby into an unexpected career. We caught up with a few Loggers harnessing their passion for crafting to address waste and unchecked consumerism, improve their mental health, teach the next generation, and make handmade sweaters cool again.

Two of the three faculty members in the theatre arts department at Puget Sound are Loggers through-and-though, having been students who majored in theatre arts who then left to earn graduate degrees, work in the industry, and return to Tacoma to teach new generations on a wonderfully familiar stage.

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What does it mean to be a grandmother today? For many, it’s no longer just weekend visits or holiday baking. As Jennifer Utrata, professor of sociology at Puget Sound explains, grandmothers across the country, often assisted by involved grandfathers, are stepping into daily, essential caregiving roles like never before. Her in-progress book manuscript, Keeping the Kids Afloat: Intensive Grandmothering and Family Inequality, uncovers how this quiet shift is transforming family life, and placing new, often invisible demands on an older demographic.

With a career spent examining how economic and cultural forces shape gender relations and family life, first in Russia and more recently in the United States, Professor of Sociology Jennifer Utrata brings clarity and compassion to the hidden dynamics inside the modern home. Her in-progress book manuscript, Keeping the Kids Afloat: Intensive Grandmothering and Family Inequality, shines a light on what happens when grandma becomes a regular caregiver for her grandkids, exposing a quiet shift in family life with far-reaching implications. We sat down with Dr.