Our Story
Founded in 1888 in a vibrant port city in the Pacific Northwest, the University of Puget Sound is an independent, residential, and predominantly undergraduate liberal arts college, with graduate programs in education and health sciences. Our beautiful 97-acre campus supports connection with the world it serves, from the tide flats of Tacoma to the Pacific Rim and beyond.
A Puget Sound education is rooted in an inspiring confluence of histories and cultures and ideas, and centered on our 2,600 students who are open-minded, outward-reaching, and passionate about putting their educations to work. Guided by our motto To the Heights, we seek to educate the whole person, and to give each student space to discover and room to rise to meet new challenges both locally and globally.
Our faculty challenge and support each student individually as they grow into broadly and deeply educated lifelong learners, prepared to become the world’s next generation of exceptional leaders. Perhaps that’s why the Princeton Review called out our faculty-student interaction as one of the best in the nation, and we are designated as one of only 40 Colleges That Change Lives.
Puget Sound offers a small community of independent thinkers, a launch pad for adventurers, and an incubator for entrepreneurs. We are makers, shakers, and doers—and we never stop learning.