Roger Allen has been a professor, a sailor, a celestial navigator, a physical therapist, and a professor again. The latest leg of Allen’s unconventional career path has lasted nearly three decades, a different sort of adventure than life at sea, but no less intrepid. Or, as Professor George Tomlin said in his introduction to Allen’s Regester Lecture in 2016: “Dr. Roger J. Allen, professor of physical therapy, is not the kind of person you’d think of as coming from Kansas—but he does. Or did … just like Amelia Earhart … first female to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

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 the university, or serving as the Tacoma Refugee Choir’s project scholar, Huynh is passionate about preserving music and passing it on. Here, she talks about her creative and scholarly projects, her favorite instruments, and a documentary she’s created.

In 2019, as the federal government began preparations for the 2020 U.S. Census, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science Courtney Thatcher was doing a lot of thinking about the problem of redistricting.

Professor of Computer Science David Chiu taught his first class at the age of 22, when he was still younger than some of his students, and immediately fell in love with higher education. Since coming to University of Puget Sound in 2014, Chiu has taught everything from Intro to Computer Science to Database Systems and in 2022, he received the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. We caught up with Chiu to talk about the golden age of dial-up internet, his research on data management, and creating an inclusive, student-centered classroom experience.

The Lunar New Year arrives on Jan. 22, when communities around the world begin to celebrate for 15 days. We asked Lo Sun “Lotus” Perry, who has taught Chinese language and culture at Puget Sound since 1986, to explain the centuries-old festival—a time to rest, gather with family, eat delicious food, and be filled with optimism about the year ahead.

Associate Professor of English and Director of Gender and Queer Studies Laura Krughoff has always loved to write. As a fiction writer and essayist, her work interrogates ideas of gender expression, sexuality, and family formation. Krughoff won a Pushcart Award for her short story “Halley’s Comet” in 2007 and her debut novel, My Brother’s Name, was a finalist for a 2014 Lambda Literary Foundation Award. Her latest book, Wake in the Night, is a collection of short fiction about women in rural Indiana.

When Professor Emeritus John P. Dickson P’84, P’01 initially set foot on campus in 1980 as the inaugural George Frederick Jewett Distinguished Professor of Business—the first-ever endowed chair at University of Puget Sound—he was just 37 years old. It was the beginning of a decades-long relationship with the college that today includes several members of Dickson’s family as well.

Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies and Latinx Studies Valeria Ochoa joined the faculty of University of Puget Sound this semester, bringing her expertise as a linguist and her passion for accessible pedagogy to the study of Spanish. We recently spoke with Ochoa about heritage language learners, the Pacific Northwest’s growing Latinx population, and how the study of language offers a path toward better understanding between people of different cultural backgrounds.

When a catastrophic equipment failure struck the computational chemistry lab, Max and his fellow students acted quickly. In the span of a week, the team used their collective know-how to build a complex hardware and software system from scratch to get the lab up and running again. Max, an experienced computer builder, led the assembly of three new computers and increased the system’s existing power by more than 10 times in the process.

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.