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.

The coronavirus forced the cancellation of 2020–21 study abroad programs—including the long-running Dijon program that, for many French majors, satisfies a graduation requirement. So the program leaders had to get creative.

The pandemic provides multiple teaching moments for students looking at the nation’s food supply.

Colin Glaze ’22 investigates the effects of aluminum sulfate treatments on local lakes

For people of color, what happened wasn’t new—it was merely a reminder of what they have seen and experienced all their lives. To gain perspective, we asked three people to reflect on the issues the country has been grappling with. One is a Black student who has struggled to feel comfortable at Puget Sound—and who is trying to make the path easier for others who follow her. Another is an alumnus whose lifelong activism dates to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Puget Sound's first Taiwan Culture Night brings Chinese community together

For some of Jeff Tepper’s geology students, the lakes around Puget Sound offer fertile ground for summer research.