TACOMA, Wash. – University of Puget Sound has once again been named among the colleges and universities that produce the most Fulbright U.S. Students. Each year, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) announces the top producing institutions for the Fulbright Program, the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program.

Professor of Computer Science David Chiu taught his first class at the age of 22, when he was still younger than some of his students, and immediately fell in love with higher education. Since coming to University of Puget Sound in 2014, Chiu has taught everything from Intro to Computer Science to Database Systems and in 2022, he received the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. We caught up with Chiu to talk about the golden age of dial-up internet, his research on data management, and creating an inclusive, student-centered classroom experience.

The Lunar New Year arrives on Jan. 22, when communities around the world begin to celebrate for 15 days. We asked Lo Sun “Lotus” Perry, who has taught Chinese language and culture at Puget Sound since 1986, to explain the centuries-old festival—a time to rest, gather with family, eat delicious food, and be filled with optimism about the year ahead.

Associate Professor of English and Director of Gender and Queer Studies Laura Krughoff has always loved to write. As a fiction writer and essayist, her work interrogates ideas of gender expression, sexuality, and family formation. Krughoff won a Pushcart Award for her short story “Halley’s Comet” in 2007 and her debut novel, My Brother’s Name, was a finalist for a 2014 Lambda Literary Foundation Award. Her latest book, Wake in the Night, is a collection of short fiction about women in rural Indiana.

When members of the Leavitt family gathered recently to consider the next steps in their philanthropy, they united around the University of Puget Sound and its ability, according to one family member, to develop students with “well-honed analytical skills to help solve the complex problems facing the people of the world.” After giving to the Puget Sound Fund for many decades, the Leavitt family first established a scholarship fund in 2014.

When Professor Emeritus John P. Dickson P’84, P’01 initially set foot on campus in 1980 as the inaugural George Frederick Jewett Distinguished Professor of Business—the first-ever endowed chair at University of Puget Sound—he was just 37 years old. It was the beginning of a decades-long relationship with the college that today includes several members of Dickson’s family as well.

Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies and Latinx Studies Valeria Ochoa joined the faculty of University of Puget Sound this semester, bringing her expertise as a linguist and her passion for accessible pedagogy to the study of Spanish. We recently spoke with Ochoa about heritage language learners, the Pacific Northwest’s growing Latinx population, and how the study of language offers a path toward better understanding between people of different cultural backgrounds.

It’s a cold, clear night in the pitch-black dome of the observatory at University of Puget Sound. In the dark, Austin Glock ’23 makes minute adjustments to the telescope by the light of a headlamp. He’s focusing on Arcturus, a bright orange star located 37 lightyears away. He’s using Arcturus to calibrate the telescope in order to observe something which few people have ever seen—a planet orbiting another star in our galaxy.