About the University of Puget Sound

The University of Puget Sound is an independent predominantly residential undergraduate liberal arts college with selected graduate programs building effectively on a liberal arts foundation. The university, as a community of learning, maintains a strong commitment to teaching excellence, scholarly engagement, and fruitful student-faculty interaction.

Mission Statement

The mission of the university is to develop in its students capacities for critical analysis, aesthetic appreciation, sound judgment and apt expression that will sustain a lifetime of intellectual curiosity, active inquiry and reasoned independence. A Puget Sound education encourages a rich knowledge of self and others; an appreciation of commonality and difference; the full, open, and civil discussion of ideas; thoughtful moral discourse; and the integration of learning, preparing the graduates to meet the highest tests of democratic citizenship. Such an education seeks to liberate each person’s fullest intellectual and human potential to assist in the unfolding of creative and useful lives.

Established in 1888 by what is now the United Methodist Church, the University of Puget Sound occupied two sites in downtown Tacoma before moving to its current location in the North End in 1923. Puget Sound has a long tradition of engagement with Tacoma and played an integral role in the founding of the Tacoma Art Museum, the Tacoma Actor’s Guild, the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra, and the Museum of Glass International Center for Contemporary Art. Alumni have positions of leadership throughout the world, with more than 13,000 deeply involved in the civic, cultural, and social fabric.