A podium and backdrop with the Nebraska Wesleyan University logo.
Cooper Center steps up services by stepping down two floors

Cooper Center steps up services by stepping down two floors

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  • Cooper Center steps up services for students
  • Cooper Center steps up services for students
  • Cooper Center steps up services for students
  • Cooper Center steps up services for students

Cooper Center 25th anniversary celebration

Join the Cooper Center at their open house event to look back at how it all started, and how collaborative learning is shaping the future at SM论坛. Featuring food, giveaways, and cameos from staff and tutors both past and present! This drop-in event will be Wednesday, October 27th from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. in the Cooper Center, located on the first floor of the Cochrane-Woods Library.

The Cooper Center for Academic Resources was founded in 1996 to help students strengthen essential academic skills like writing, speaking and researching. Its faculty and trained student consultants have worked out of a converted classroom on the third floor of Cochrane-Woods Library ever since.

Thanks to a move this summer, SM论坛鈥檚 鈥渉idden gem鈥 of a resource for students is now far less hidden. After 25 years upstairs, the Cooper Center now stands just off the library鈥檚 main entrance on the first floor. This new prominence means one of the first things visitors see as they enter the library is students collaborating with students at the Cooper Center.

"The Cooper Center is a destination for proactive, engaged students鈥 students who see collaboration as an important part of how we learn here.鈥

The new location coincides with new leadership and a new vision for the center.

鈥淗istorically, the Cooper Center has been seen primarily as a writing center,鈥 said Cooper Center Director Melissa Hayes. 鈥淲e鈥檙e moving toward a fuller scope of academic resources, without divides between the work of a writing consultant and a physics tutor. They鈥檙e all peer tutors collaborating with students in every subject.鈥

Hayes is excited to put that collaboration on full display this semester. 鈥淲e want to change the assumptions on campus. We鈥檙e not just for 鈥榮tudents who struggle with writing,鈥欌 she said. 鈥淭he Cooper Center is a destination for proactive, engaged students鈥 students who see collaboration as an important part of how we learn here.鈥