By Lainy S. Cronk on December 18, 2007
When a campus building makes students say, “This is so nice—can we just study in here for awhile?" you know you’ve done something right. And when just months ago that building was an old, ugly metal shed, you can’t help but think there’s been some sort of magic at work! It began with the vision of Pacific Union College’s Student Persistence Program leaders, who wanted to see the centralization of academic support services on campus. The dream was brought to possibility by the gift of Rosemary and John Collins, assistant professor of communication and vice president for financial administration, respectively. And transformation came through the magic (also known as hard work) of several months spent resurfacing walls and floors and doing extensive interior decorating. Now the building, called the Teaching and Learning Center (or TLC), has a modern, industrial chic motif that makes “Awesome!” the most common word for students to utter when they first walk in. The mission of the TLC, which provides such services as academic advising, mentoring, tutoring, freshman success seminars, and learning disabilities testing and accommodation, is “to see each PUC student able to persist toward his or her academic goal with confidence, and not to...
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