Author Viet Thanh Nguyen’s earliest memories are of being separated from his parents. The hazy recollections of his family’s escape from Vietnam in 1975 and arrival in the United States fuel his work as a writer to reconcile his dual identities as both an American and a refugee. Nguyen spoke this month at University of Puget Sound, where he gave the fall 2021 Susan Resneck Pierce Lecture in Public Affairs and the Arts.

It was nearly 2 p.m., and summer camp at the Children’s Museum of Tacoma was wrapping up for the day. Linnea, a Puget Sound psychology student, is working at the museum this summer as a “learning experiences” intern, teaching dozens of children about science, technology, and art. She found the internship through RISE (Reflective Immersive Sophomore Experience), a new Puget Sound program designed specifically for second-year students.

Books and movies often portray medieval Europe as a highly regimented, theologically conservative society marked by strict gender roles and a total absence of queer people, but according to history major Chloe Shankland ’23, that view isn’t accurate. While few sources exist, literature from the period hints at a vibrant world of nonheteronormative art and culture.

Shankland worked with her advisor, Professor of History Katherine Smith, to examine poems, legal documents, and church records from 1000 to 1250 A.D. in search of references to queer identities and fluid gender roles.

TACOMA, Wash. – Josh Cunningham of Boise, Idaho, and Gwen Lindberg of Minneapolis, Minn., have been named University of Puget Sound Lillis Scholars. The university's most prestigious and competitive award honoring incoming students for their academic excellence, the Lillis Scholarship covers tuition, fees, and room and board for up to four years.

TACOMA, Wash. – Ainsley Liberty Feeney of Memphis, Tenn., and Kaushal Raghu of Sunnyvale, Calif., are the University of Puget Sound’s two newest Matelich Scholars. The pair were awarded the prestigious scholarship in recognition of their outstanding potential to excel academically, succeed as inspirational leaders, and give back to their communities through sustained personal growth and a lifetime relationship with the university. The award covers tuition, fees, and room and board at the university for up to four years.

Projects covered a range of topics: nonconformist gender presentation in stories of courtly love and other high medieval source material, disability justice and racial equity in high school classrooms, what honeybee brain science can show about Parkinson’s disease, and more.

See a sample of student projects:

Clarissa Troutman ’22 has spent a lot of time on the Puget Sound, hanging out with friends, but last summer she made repeated visits there for a different purpose: to collect seawater for her undergraduate research project. Troutman has been working with Oscar Sosa, assistant professor of biology, to better understand the unaccounted-for biological sources of methane in the ocean.

Devin Anderson ’22 spent the summer feeding dogs for science.

Anderson worked with Erin Colbert-White, associate professor of psychology, on a project to understand how humans influence dogs—and the extent to which humans’ behavior can make a dog override its own judgment.

Addie Tinkham ’22 spent last summer taking a closer look at local beaches. She was one of the students who participated in summer research at Puget Sound in 2020. Working alongside her faculty advisor, Professor Berry Goldstein, Tinkham cataloged slope, length, and sand grain size at 10 Tacoma-area beaches. A volunteer from Citizens for a Healthy Bay worked with Tinkham to collect the data that will be used as a baseline for future scientists to apply to their research. This project was the first of its kind in the Tacoma area.