This summer, Puget Sound announced that we’re launching the Legacies Project, an initiative to examine and reckon with the university’s long and complex past, understand how those legacies still resonate in the present, and take steps to create a more welcoming and inclusive future.

“We must understand and teach how our present is shaped by our history as a university and a community, from the expulsion of Chinese immigrants and incarceration of Japanese Americans to the Fish Wars protests and the North- west Detention Center,” says Lorna Hernandez Jarvis, vice president for institutional equity and diversity.

The Legacies Project is made possible by a $2 million gift from Ellen Ferguson ’72. Ferguson earned degrees in political science and history from the university before a career of museum work. She’s a longtime supporter of Puget Sound: She endowed a scholarship fund for student financial aid and is a founding donor for the LGBT Leadership Fund. Ferguson also credits her time at Puget Sound with creating a foundation for her lifelong commitment to social justice.

“My studies in political science at the height of the Vietnam War, getting involved in campus activism, and living in a close community with a diverse group of students changed my life,” she says. “I was captivated by the Legacies Project and its goal to create a more welcoming and inclusive campus environment for an increasingly diverse student body and university community.”

The project will include thematic programming; grants and fellowships for research, scholarship, and creative work; and a permanent campus history exhibit with rotating displays; among other efforts. Puget Sound will also invite the wider South Sound community to engage with the discussions.

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President's Annual Report 2021-22

President's Annual Report 2020–21