The fading, centuries-old murals on the walls of churches around the Yucatán Peninsula reflect the influence of the Europeans who landed on its shores in the 16th century. It seems only logical to assume that the images were created by the Europeans, whose arrival transformed the entire hemisphere—but that assumption is actually incorrect.
Jeffrey J. Matthews knows leadership. As the George F. Jewett Distinguished Professor in the School of Business and Leadership, he has spent chunks of his career digging into the subject. And, as a historian, he’s also not afraid to call it as he sees it. His new book, Generals and Admirals, Criminals and Crooks: Dishonorable Leadership in the U.S. Military (Notre Dame Press, 2023), is an investigative meditation on military leadership gone wrong—a tour through hiccups, eruptions, and bad judgment that winds through Gen.
For Abby Steward ’25, “glamping” was as close as her family ever got to outdoor adventure during her childhood in Oregon. So when her summer research at Puget Sound took her not only out into the woods to camp for 10 straight days, but 60 feet up into the canopy of bigleaf maples, “it really tested my capabilities,” Steward says. “I was thrown into something completely new. Being able to witness what my body could do in climbing that many trees felt amazing.”
The Washington State Supreme Court went on the road in September, setting up shop on the Puget Sound campus for two days. It was the third visit to campus for the state’s highest court; justices made similar visits in 2013 and 2017.
“We don’t just hear cases—we also go to classes, answer questions, and learn from the questions that that are asked to us,” says Justice Susan Owens, who co-chairs the Traveling Court Committee. “Traveling court allows a wide variety of people who want to know more about the justice system to see it at no expense.”
“They get so confused sometimes when they see that it’s a woman who’s doing this,” Lily Godwin ’26 said a couple months back. She was doing a TV interview with local station KING5 about an accomplishment like no other— becoming the first woman to make an unassisted tackle in NCAA football history.
Don Scott ’91 came to Puget Sound as a student without having seen the campus before. “The fall of my senior year, an admission counselor from the university visited my high school in Great Falls, Mont.,” he recalls. “I absolutely fell in love with everything that she had to say. Puget Sound was a stretch school for me, but it all came together—and those four years were a truly transformational experience for me.”
Ariela Tubert, professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy, has long been interested in the ethics of artificial intelligence. Since 2022, Tubert and her spouse, fellow philosophy prof Justin Tiehen, have shared the James M. Dolliver National Endowment for the Humanities distinguished professorship to study the intersection of humanities and artificial intelligence.
We’ve been seeing stories in the media lately about the value of higher education—and in particular, the value of the liberal arts. Do you encounter that debate in your role as well?
The word “sustainability” gets tossed around a lot and has many different meanings. How do we define it at Puget Sound?
From my perspective, when I look at the history of this institution in addressing sustainability and environmental justice, I think we approach this from the common understanding of the term: We look to meet our present needs without compromising future generations. We focus on three central pillars: environmental conservation, social responsibility, and promoting economic development and growth.
Just south of campus, Erik Waterland DPT’05 runs Waterland Performance, a physical therapy practice he founded in 2019. Waterland has been practicing physical therapy for nearly 20 years; he also works with Puget Sound students as an adjunct professor in the School of Physical Therapy. We asked him what older adults can do to stay in shape.