Ronald Thomas was President of the University of Puget Sound from 2003-2016. Mary Thomas was First Lady of the University of Puget Sound from 2003-2016.

Looking back over the thirteen years of his presidency, Ron Thomas focuses on the decisions made in the context of town/gown relationships and their relation to the university’s arc of development as a national institution. The university’s strategic rise to classification by the Carnegie Foundation as a “national liberal arts college” from a “regional university” brought with it great benefits and at least one cost: the local community perceived that it had largely been abandoned by what had historically been known as “Tacoma’s college.”

One challenge that Ron took on, then, was to continue to advance the national profile and reputation of the university and, at the same time, to restore trust with the community and to make sure that the town benefitted from, participated in, and took pride in the work done on a campus that was receiving increasing national recognition. Thomas’s premise was that national ambition and local engagement were not alternate paths but parts of the same journey. Academic excellence and good citizenship were two sides of the same coin.

That meant, in many ways, the need to enhance the university’s academic work together with demonstrating its value to the community. It meant, for example, establishing the Civic Scholarship Initiative to coordinate relevant faculty projects and to match them with relevant community needs and interests. It involved investing resources into projects like the Race and Pedagogy Initiative (and the development of a quadrennial Race and Pedagogy National Conference) that included local community members as equal partners. It included the development of the Sound Policy Institute to support and coordinate the work regional organizations committed to the environment. It even informed Ron’s recommendation to the Board of Trustees early at the conclusion of his first year that the OT/PT programs, which had been under fire because of low student admissions but were much valued by local professionals, should not be disbanded but integrated into the liberal arts mission of the college and made a mark of distinction rather than a cause of concern. Accordingly, the first project of a new campus master plan was the design and construction of a “Center for Health Sciences” (Weyerhaeuser Hall) in which the graduate clinical programs in OT and PT would be combined with the undergraduate programs in Psychology, Exercise Science, and a new program in Neuroscience (as a disciplinary umbrella embracing all these disciplines).

A distinctive new building with on-site clinics, advanced laboratories, and leading edge equipment not only strengthened the graduate and undergraduate curricula, it also turned around enrollment in the graduate program and provided facilities benefitting thousands of needy local patients who receive free physical or occupational therapy.

Other new facilities in the master plan all included spaces (indoor and out) where town and gown gather to engage each other: the Tahoma Room in the new residence hall (Thomas Hall) is now booked solidly for conferences and civic events, especially in summer, as well as for campus events throughout the year; the new Science Center (Harned Hall) incorported a “crystal café” (Oppenheimer Café) where the campus and community mingle over coffee or lunch; and the new Athletics and Aquatics Center includes a popular juice bar where the public interact with members of the campus as well.

Local leaders in the community are now frequent visitors to campus and classrooms, and, each year, at least one of the recipients of an honorary degree from the university is a worthy leader from the local community who has established a distinguished record of community service.

To advance the university’s support among its own constituents, strengthen the connections to Puget Sound for students after graduation, and enhance national profile, the university’s alumni organization also received significant investment and a new look. The approach to alumni engagement was reconceived to be relation-based rather than transaction-based, and a plan to implement a broad, volunteer-driven national organization was put in place. The twenty-member National Alumni Board was transformed into the Alumni Council, which, under the guidance of an Alumni Council Executive Committee, now engages over 1200 active members across the country doing rewarding work that benefits the university (student recruitment, mentoring, alumni networking, event planning, fundraising) and organizes a vibrant Reunion and Homecoming each summer which brings more than 500 alumni to campus to celebrate their Puget Sound experience. A Parent Council modeled after the Alumni Council was also established that includes an additional 200 volunteers engaging in similar activities that instills pride and contributes substantially to the university’s annual fund.

To meet its mission of enrolling a more diverse and inclusive campus and to further strengthen ties with the community as well, the university revised its admission and financial aid criteria to more successfully attract and support talented students from underrepresented groups. In addition, the university now offers to meet full financial need of qualified local students from Tacoma High Schools – a move to which the town has responded enthusiastically, and which in the first year more than doubled the enrollment of local students. On the national front, Puget Sound became the first college in the Pacific Northwest to partner with the Posse Foundation, which brings a cohort of ten students in the Bay Area (San Francisco and Oakland) from underrepresented backgrounds into the freshman class and provides support for them as well.

Meanwhile Ron and Mary have also sought to have a personal presence in the community by serving on a number of local boards and organizations in town—from the Tacoma-Pierce County Economic Development Board, to the Museum of Glass, to the YWCA, to the Independent Colleges of Washington, to the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, and more. Ron also assumed leadership roles on the executive committees of national organizations like ACE (American Council on Education), NAICU (National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities) and the Annapolis Group (a consortium of top national liberal arts colleges).

Ron and Mary are delighted that over the years their beginning-of-the-year reception for civic leaders at the President’s Residence (“Celebrate a New Year in Tacoma”) draws more than 200 elected, corporate, nonprofit, volunteer, and education leaders annually. They now see the university as a very present community leader. Puget Sound’s growing national reputation (like being named one of only 30 “Colleges that Change Lives” in the nation by the respected college guide of that name) demonstrates that local leadership and national recognition can go hand-in-hand.