Soon after the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in the U.S., Allie Highsmith ’22 started hearing people call it the “the China virus,” the “kung flu,” and other xenophobic names. As a double major in Chinese language and culture and sociology and anthropology, Highsmith wanted to study how people cope with anti-Asian sentiment during the pandemic. Soon after she submitted her summer research proposal, a gunman killed six Asian women in Atlanta, bringing the subject of hate crimes directed at East Asian Americans into the national spotlight.

Marshall Casebeer ’22 didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the rights of North African women or anti-corruption efforts taking place in the Middle East—but he does now. As an intern with the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, Casebeer works with Reconnaissance Research, a think tank dedicated to building ties between the United States and Kuwait to tackle issues like authoritarianism and refugee crises in the Persian Gulf. Through the program, he's getting to conduct research with far-reaching implications for the region.

On the rooftop of Thompson Hall, Adam Schmidt ’23 emerges in a white jumpsuit, a wide-brimmed hat with a mesh face veil, and thick protective gloves. Carefully, he approaches the hive, a 5-foot-tall stack of wooden boxes located behind a greenhouse near the roof’s edge. Schmidt, a molecular and cellular biology major, isn’t interested in these bees for their honey—he wants to study their brains in an attempt to understand the progression of neurodegenerative diseases in humans.

Tacoma, Wash. – Today, the University of Puget Sound announced its “Remake the World” initiative which celebrates the class of 2025 by empowering admitted students to engage with local nonprofit organizations. Each incoming student will choose one of five community programs to receive a small donation made by the university in their honor, with a total of $25,000 being donated across select local organizations in Pierce County focused on issues of climate, hunger, sexual abuse, equity, social justice and more.

This year, 10 Puget Sound students were selected as semi-finalists for the highly competitive Fulbright U.S. Student program, more than in any previous year. We talked to some of the Loggers who are hoping to perform research or teach English as 2021 Fulbright grant recipients.

For students who started college in fall 2020, the first semester of their first year was nothing like they expected. Unable to live on campus or take in-person courses, incoming Loggers instead got to know their professors and classmates online. That’s how Jojo Marshall ’24 found herself sitting at her family’s kitchen table late at night, reading from a script into the voice memo app on her smartphone. 

In an art studio in Los Angeles, Catherine Croft ’21 is adjusting a silicone puppet shaped like the hippocampus region of the human brain—but with a face. After some fine-tuning, Croft steps back and double-checks that everything is in place on her miniature set. Then, she snaps a photo and starts the process all over again. In a typical day, she’ll shoot more than 700 photos to create one minute of film. She’s racing against time to complete a 15-minute stop-motion video as part of her summer research project at Puget Sound.

When Natalie Willoughby ’21 decided to publish a zine featuring her work on intersectionality in online activism, she was adding her voice to a rich legacy of self-published, underground magazines going back nearly a century. Like those zines, Willoughby’s project aims to spark a dialogue about a controversial topic. Taking inspiration from those publications, Willoughby is examining a new medium: online activism. It’s the culmination of a three-month summer research project, which Willoughby hopes will help her fellow students be better advocates for social justice.

In March, the stage lights came up in Norton Clapp Theatre on a very different kind of production. A small group of actors wearing face shields stood in front of rows of empty seats while cameras streamed the performance online. After the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of the fall main stage show, Puget Sound’s Department of Theatre Arts found creative solutions to safely mount the spring production of Machinal.