UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON TACOMA

The University of Washington Tacoma is a metropolitan campus of the University of Washington, opened in 1990 in downtown Tacoma, Washington, to extend UW teaching to the South Puget Sound. It began as an upper-division and graduate site in renovated warehouses on the Thea Foss Waterway and later admitted first-year students, becoming a four-year campus while remaining part of the UW system rather than a separate state university.

Academic work is organized through schools of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Business, Education, Engineering and Technology, Nursing and Healthcare Leadership, Social Work and Criminal Justice, and Urban Studies. Graduate study concentrates on applied fields including nursing, education, computer science and cybersecurity, business, social work, and urban studies. The Center for Urban Waters and partnerships with Tacoma hospitals and the Port of Tacoma shape research and internships.

Enrollment is about 5,000 students, with many transfers, first-generation students, and working adults from Pierce County. International enrollment is modest next to the Seattle campus. Faculty number in the low hundreds. Alumni typically work in Puget Sound health care, schools, public agencies, and technology.

The campus is known for professional master's degrees taught on the UW quarter calendar, often in evening or hybrid formats. Supervision combines coursework with internships rather than a large residential doctoral culture. Assistantships exist, but many graduate students study while employed in Tacoma or Seattle. Daily life is downtown: brick warehouse classrooms, the waterfront, and a commute-oriented student body.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON TACOMA lists 2 graduate programs in computer science and data science & business analytics, all of them master's programs.