Archive: Around Town

Wells College has received a gift in excess of $34,000 from the Hagedorn Fund in support of its Learning Commons. The Learning Commons is a center providing academic support, encouraging student learning, and centralizing academic resources. It also promotes the Wells College library, where it is located, as a study space and point of access. The gift comes in addition the Hagedorn Fund’s continued and generous support of Wells College’s annual fund.

The Commons currently houses the Dean of Academic Advising, the Director of Experiential Learning and Career Services, the Coordinator of Learning Support Services, and the Writing Center—a student-tutor writing support center overseen by a professor. Through the Learning Commons, students can hone their skills in inquiry and analysis, critical and creative thinking, written and oral communications, career preparedness, information literacy, teamwork and problem solving, and personal and social responsibility.

The Hagedorn Fund gift will allow spatial upgrades to better accommodate peer tutoring, with movable furniture, better lighting, and sound barriers. It will also help provide more computer terminals with “text to speech” software, which aids students with a wide array of disabilities.

Wells created its Learning Commons in 2007 from another Hagedorn Fund gift. Its stated vision is to facilitate learning and scholarship, and to foster collaboration, inventiveness, ingenuity, and intellectual responsibility, in order to better prepare students for 21st century challenges.

“We’re proud of the longstanding partnership with the Hagedorn Fund and family, and their very generous support of Wells," says Michael McGreevey, vice president for advancement at the College.

The Hagedorn Fund was established by William Hagedorn in memory of his late wife, Tillie. William Hagedorn’s daughter Ruth graduated from Wells College in 1930. When William Hagedorn appointed his daughter to assume philanthropic oversight of the Hagedorn Fund, Ruth began a history of annual gifts to Wells. Since her death, the trustees of the Hagedorn Fund have continued to recognize Ruth’s commitment to Wells.

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