One of the fondest memories that George Tomlin ’82 had in supervising the pediatric clinic in the University of Puget Sound’s School of Occupational Therapy took place after OT students started working with a 7-year-old boy who was blind.

John Weaver ’98, creative director for the Seattle Seahawks, was on a phone call one day when he learned that he’d been working with another Puget Sound alum for years without even knowing it. Weaver was searching for new stadium announcers, and reached out to a former football coach at his alma mater for suggestions. The coach asked him if he knew Nasser Kyobe ’13, executive producer at the Seahawks radio network. Turned out Weaver and Kyobe graduated 15 years apart, and both had played football for the Loggers.

When Rebecca Wellington’s sister died in 2017, Wellington began to write as a way of processing her grief. Both sisters had been adopted, and Wellington had now lost the one person who understood what that meant. The initial writings morphed into an extensively researched history of adoption in the United States, and earlier this year, the University of Oklahoma Press published Wellington’s memoir, Who is a Worthy Mother? An Intimate History of Adoption.

Tiana Wood-Sims ’24 chose the clear nail polish flecked with gold glitter. That little bit of bling might be a small pleasure for someone outside the razor-wire fences of the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor, but inside, it was momentous. With the facility’s ban against nail polish lifted for one day, the 10 women picked from an array of bottles spread out on the table of the prison classroom. Wood-Sims had chosen gold for this celebration—it matched her perfect 4.0 college GPA.

When brothers Joshua ’98 and Jeffrey Jones ’02 watch a movie or a TV show, they pay attention to wildly different things. The Jones brothers host Cinemental, a podcast that mixes humor and personal experience to analyze the way mental health is portrayed in film and television.

Lost your copy of The Iliad? Need to check out contemporary queer fiction? Want to cry happy tears as you thumb through a best-selling romance? 

Then you’ve come to the right place: Grit City Books.

A trio of Puget Sound alumni launched the independent bookstore online in 2023, followed by a brick-and-mortar store opening in May 2024 on Tacoma’s trendy Sixth Avenue.

For many people, the first years after college are awkward. It can be difficult to find footing in what seems like an ever-more-competitive and saturated landscape of not only job finding, but purpose finding.

This does not seem to be a concern for Alessandra Vidal Meza ’22. 

When Burbank, Calif., native Frank Reed ’05, MAT’08 topped out at 5'8" in high school, he begrudgingly accepted that he probably wouldn’t be headed to the NBA. But when then-Puget Sound basketball coach Joe Callero asked if he’d be interested in joining the team, Reed liked the sound of continuing to play while getting a top-tier education. With a grant from the Gates Millennium Scholars Program covering his undergraduate tuition, Reed committed to Puget Sound and the basketball team with sights set on a career in marine biology.

Elizabeth Shatswell ’24 wasn’t sure what to expect when she walked onto the campus of the University of Puget Sound after 23 years in prison. She had started her higher education in the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor through FEPPS—the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound. Arrested at age 17 and serving a 55-year sentence, she was released early in July 2023.

Professor of History Katherine Smith studies what scholars sometimes refer to as “the long 12th century,” encompassing the social and political events from around 1050 to 1200 CE. As a member of the faculty since 2005, Smith has taught a range of classes in the History department. Both of her books, War and the Making of Medieval Monastic Culture and The Bible and Crusade Narrative, were inspired by classroom discussions. She’s now working on a book that examines life in the Middle Ages through everyday objects.