Learning Resources

The Learning Commons (x. 2253) is located on the second floor of Hege Library and serves the learning needs of Guilford's diverse student population. The department offers a variety of academic support services: professional tutors who assist with writing, study skills, time management, quantitative literacy and learning differences; peer tutors who assist with course-specific needs; Learning Strategies and Alternative Learning Strategies classes each fall and spring; class and group presentations on a variety of topics, such as writing process and time management; and a campus reading series for creative writers. The Learning Commons also has a variety of resources: a computer lab; space to study, tutor and be tutored; books, handouts and other valuable resources, such as semester-at-a-glance calendars; a helpful link on the Guilford Web site as well as such support technology as a Kurzweil Reader (scans texts and reads them), JAWS (screen reading software for PCs) and a magnifier for use with printed texts.

The Learning Commons works to teach students how to learn more effectively and efficiently across the curriculum and throughout their lives. The Learning Commons is not a remedial center; rather, it provides support for all, including Early College, adult, traditional, honors, under-prepared students, students with special needs, students on academic probation and those doing advanced course work or writing senior theses.

Students with Disabilities. Guilford does not discriminate against qualified individuals with disabilities and provides reasonable accommodation(s), as required by law, to otherwise qualified applicants for admission. Such accommodations bear on education programs, activities, services and practices, including application procedures, admissions, student assignment, course assignment, the awarding of degrees, discipline and dismissal. Educational opportunities will not be denied to an otherwise qualified applicant or student because of the need to make reasonable accommodation(s) or modification(s) for the physical or mental impairments of any such individual.

If you have a documented physical, learning or psychological disability for which you would like to request appropriate accommodations, you must complete the Disabilities Disclosure found in the Course Registration Guide or in the Office of Campus Life and the Learning Commons. Please be sure to include specific information regarding your disability and how it affects your academic work, class schedule, residential living situation and co-curricular involvement. You should attach appropriate documentation. Please indicate whether or not you are requesting assistance in arranging for accommodation.

The form and documentation will be directed to the appropriate campus area (Counseling Center, Learning Commons, Student Health, Residence Life, etc.) for consideration. A staff member from the appropriate area will be in touch with you to discuss your accommodations and you will receive a copy of your confidential 504 Accommodation Plan that you may share with instructors, resident advisors, staff members and others as appropriate.

Career and Community Learning Center

The Career and Community Learning Center assists students and alumni in setting and achieving their career and life goals. Through personal advising, assessment and experiential activities, counselors and program coordinators help students identify interests and skills, relate college experience to the world of work, and plan their next steps after graduation. Special programs, career fairs and a one-credit course also assist students in their planning. An alumni network gives students access to Guilford graduates who are willing to share their expertise.

The center houses a library of rich resources that help students plan a major, investigate graduate programs, develop a polished resumé, conduct an effective job search or find an internship (the internship program is discussed in Chapter VII). Reference materials on national and international companies and agencies in the nonprofit sector are also available.

The center also coordinates and supports a strong service component, including the Bonner Scholars Program (this program offers scholarships to qualifying students interested in community service). Through this component, students can choose from a wide range of service opportunities in the Greensboro community. With staff support, students initiate and manage an array of diverse programs at sites that include, for example, a prison unit, a homeless shelter and a refugee community. Training in leadership skills, program management and cultural understanding is provided to participants.

Students who want to explore issues of faith and vocation can also find assistance and resources in the center. An experienced staff person is available to help students reflect on these important issues and connect them to their career planning.

The center serves all students and alumni and encourages early involvement.

Student Employment Service. The Student Employment Service (SES), a part of the Career and Community Learning Center, assists students seeking part-time (on- and off-campus) and summer employment. Students have access to the on-line OPTIONS conference, which lists part-time opportunities in the greater Greensboro area as well as nationwide summer positions. SES also posts available on-campus jobs for students who have been awarded work-study as part of their financial aid package.

International Student Services

Services are available to international students through the International Student Office and the international student advisor, who advises them on institutional rules, government regulations, academic resources and opportunities offered by both the college and the larger Greensboro community. Various programs and resources are available through the International Student Office to aid international students in their transition to Guilford and the Greensboro community.

Guilford is a member of the Association of International Educators-NAFSA-AIE and is authorized under federal law to enroll non-immigrant alien students. A pre-orientation program for international students is held prior to the general orientation program as well as a special re-entry program for students returning home after their studies at Guilford.

Cultural Opportunities

Arts Programs and Lectures. Each year Guilford presents programs in music, the performing arts and public affairs for students, faculty and staff. The college presents departmental lectures such as the Sheridan Simon Lecture (physics), the James L. Fleming Lecture (peace and conflict studies) and the Rembert W. Patrick Lecture (history).

Since 1996, the Bryan Series has been creating community conversation with an annual series of lectures in the arts, humanities and public affairs. Events are held in War Memorial Auditorium in Greensboro.  Recent visitors have included Madeleine Albright, Sidney Poitier, Mikhail Gorbachev and Desmond Tutu. For more information, visit www.guilford.edu/bryanseries.

Science Center

The Frank Family Science Center houses the four science departments at Guilford. In addition to providing modern laboratory facilities, the science center serves as a popular teaching facility for the entire academic community. It provides computerized multimedia classrooms, a computer visualization facility, a multi-function auditorium, an observatory and formal and informal meeting facilities. The new science building was named The Frank Family Science Center to honor Stanley Frank – a local community leader and a trustee of the college from 1969-2006 – and his family.

The 54,000-square-foot facility was planned “from the inside out” to support Guilford’s unique vision of science education. Laboratory design consultants worked with each member of the science faculty to design laboratories which would enable hands-on learning with intense student-teacher interaction. These facilities were then combined with student work spaces, classrooms and easily accessible faculty offices to create learning communities for each discipline – biology and life sciences; chemistry; geology and earth sciences; and physics and astronomy. The result is a building that facilitates interactions among the disciplines and so encourages the growth of interdisciplinary programs such as environmental science and health professions.

Scientific Computation and Visualization Facility. The chemistry, geology and physics departments host the Guilford Scientific Computation and Visualization Facility, which was made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation. This facility is equipped with a Silicon Graphics server and more than 20 Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations, running Unix. Students, ranging from first-year students to seniors, use these computers for class work, independent projects and senior theses. Specific uses include molecular modeling, geographical information system work, numerical modeling, development of computer graphics and computationally intensive calculations.

Biology. The biology department has six large, well-equipped laboratories on the first and lower floors of the Frank Family Science Center, a greenhouse, several instrument/prep rooms and faculty research space.  A seventh laboratory in the Frank Center is designed specifically for biology majors who are conducting individual research projects. All of the teaching laboratories in the Frank Center are fully wired and equipped with computer projection facilities, audio-visual equipment, and multiple computer terminals for student use. The student research lab and the teaching laboratories are furnished with modern molecular biology equipment that gives students practical experience in research methods. The forensic biology laboratory is furnished with a GC-MS and a wide variety of new instrumentation used both in teaching and research. In addition, modern crime scene software and a collection of BoneClone replicas are available for student use. The physiology laboratory provides equipment and computer hardware and software for studies of animal and human functions. The Bailes Greenhouse provides opportunities for student and faculty research and also serves as a depository of typical vascular plants for observation and study. An herbarium is also available for botanical reference. An ornithological collection housed in the field biology laboratory dates back over a century to the work of Guilford alumnus T. Gilbert Pearson, one of the first presidents of the National Audubon Society. The department maintains a collection of specimens of vertebrates from North Carolina. The college woods and lake serve as a “living laboratory” with over 240 acres for research and study in forest ecology, ornithology, herpetology and limnology.

Chemistry. The chemistry department occupies the third floor of the Frank Family Science Center. The laboratories and other department facilities were designed by the faculty to allow access to students in all chemistry courses, including the introductory courses, to state of the art instructional and research facilities. The general chemistry lab is equipped with downdraft hoods for each student, as well as data ports at each station. The organic chemistry lab provides individual access to research-grade fume hoods that allow modern experiments to be performed safely. Both labs are equipped with computer projection systems to facilitate demonstration of laboratory techniques and concepts. The advanced chemistry lab is a flexible space that can be used by junior and senior chemistry students to perform more advanced procedures in physical, analytical inorganic and materials chemistry. A research lab permits students to pursue thesis research under the direction of a faculty member.

Instrumentation available to students in these laboratories includes a 90 MHz NMR spectrometer, double beam UV-visible spectrophotometers, an FT-IR spectrophotometer, high-performance liquid chromatographs, a fluorimeter, calorimeters for solutions and polymer analysis, a potentiostat-galvanostat, and an ion chromatograph. Student offices give chemistry students spaces within the department to study, read journals or analyze data in a comfortable setting, near faculty offices.

Geology. Geology facilities support a complete field and laboratory program and complement Guilford’s student research program in geology. The Frank Family Science Center has eight state-of-the-art geology classrooms and laboratories, including ample and comfortable student research and study space, with excellent access to faculty.

The department owns an extensive map, rock, mineral and fossil collection. The department is equipped with rock and mineral analysis capabilities, including polarizing petrographic microscopes, photomicrographic facilities, dissecting microscopes, sample preparation facilities, gem analysis equipment and basic sedimentation equipment. Field studies are enhanced by a portable magnetometer, gravimeter and a 12-channel seismograph. The department has outstanding facilities for hydrologic studies, including eight monitoring wells that have been installed on campus, dataloggers, pumps, water level tapes and other standard equipment. A small lake on campus is also available for study, and a permanent weir has been installed on the college creek for surface water studies. The department also maintains a geochemistry lab and has field equipment for environmental investigations, including a portable spectrophotometer for contaminant analysis. These are complemented by Geographic Positioning System hardware and software, and excellent computer facilities (UNIX and PC), image-processing capabilities (computer, software and images), and computer graphics and mapping capabilities, digitizing pad and color plotter.

Physics.  The physics curriculum helps students to learn the science of physics and become physicists. To accomplish these goals, the physics department emphasizes undergraduate research – especially projects initiated and designed by students – as a critical element in the physics learning process. Beginning in the first year, students are asked to initiate and design their own investigations. More than 3,000 square feet of laboratory space within the departmentsupports undergraduate research. Many of the experiments that students conduct here are independent projects that are not associated with any particular course. Equipment for these experiments is constructed and modified in the modern shop facilities in the basement of the Frank Family Science Center. The department offers two endowed physics awards, the Jeglinski Physics Award, in memory of Boleslaw Jeglinksi and Michael Jeglinski, and the Helen and Winslow Womack Physics Research Award. These awards are given annually to students to support their research and fund their travel to professional scientific meetings such as the National Conference on Undergraduate Research.

The department’s introductory laboratories rely on a microcomputer-based data gathering and analysis system connected to the campus network. The advanced laboratories, created with support from the National Science Foundation, focus on experimental modern physics and include cryogenics, optics, atomic and nuclear physics, electronics centers and modern astronomical observing tools in the visible, Infra-red and 14 MHz radio frequencies. Students learn to control the sophisticated equipment in these centers using LabVIEW ™ programs running on the department’s many personal computers. For more complicated computational studies, students use Sun and Silicon Graphics Unix workstations from Guilford’s Scientific, Computation and Visualization Facility.

In addition to the laboratory space, the physics department houses two rooms of student office space. Each physics major is given a desk and may use this space as a place to study or to store books. These rooms, provided by gifts from the physics alumni, are wired to the campus network and contain a personal computer and a Sun work station for student use.

Observatory

The Frank Family Science Center houses the J. Donald Cline Observatory and an astronomy lab, a photographic darkroom and an observatory support room. The principal instruments are a 16-inch Ritchey-Chretien optical telescope on a robotic mount and a seven-foot-diameter radio telescope on a fully motorized altazimuth mount. Instrumentation for the optical telescope includes CCD cameras, photometers and a spectrometer. This facility is used in the introductory astronomy and physics classes, for public viewing and for undergraduate student research. The college also shares a research-grade 32-inch telescope at the Three-College Observatory that is located about 33 miles from campus.

Language Laboratory

An important gift from the Price Family of Greensboro established the Price Language Laboratory in 1965. In 1995, AT&T generously contributed the Computer Laboratory Classroom through its University Equipment Donation Program. The lab space, on the third floor of Duke Memorial Hall, allows individual and group work with multimedia language learning programs, Internet access and large-screen projection capabilities.

Classroom Buildings

The three main classroom buildings are Duke Memorial Hall, Frank Family Science Center and King Hall. In addition to classrooms and faculty offices, Duke Memorial Hall also houses the foreign languages laboratory. Film viewing and demonstration lectures for groups up to 75 can be accommodated in Duke Memorial Hall’s C. Elmer Leak Audiovisual Center, with equipment for video projection of both computer graphics and videotape on a large screen.

The Frank Family Science Center houses a 135-seat domed auditorium that is a video, audio and computer multimedia facility used for lectures, films, concerts and student theater productions. In addition to classrooms and faculty offices the Frank Family Science Center also houses the Science Library and laboratories in biology, chemistry, geology and physics including a weather station and both optical and radio telescopes on the roof.

In addition to classrooms and faculty offices, King Hall also houses the Office of Multi-Cultural Education and the Center for Principled Problem Solving.

Classes are also held in Bauman Telecommunications Center, Dana Auditorium, Founders Hall, Hege-Cox Hall and the Ragan Brown Field House.

Physical Education Center 

All students are encouraged to participate in intercollegiate and intramural sports.

Guilford College’s Physical Education Center, dedicated in 1980, affords students the opportunity for physical development, recreation and athletic competition.

The center consists of:

• Alumni Gym, built in 1940, which has one basketball court as well as offices for coaches and some faculty members.
• Ragan Brown Field House, which has a 2,500 seating capacity and three full-size basketball courts. Classrooms for physical education studies are also housed here.
• Swimming pool and dive tank. 
• Weight room, featuring Hammer Strength equipment.

Adjacent outdoor athletic areas to the PE Center include:

• Fields for baseball, football and a running track, lacrosse, rugby, soccer, softball and ultimate Frisbee.
• Eight tennis courts. 

Founders Hall

Rebuilt on the site of the original building of New Garden Boarding School, Founders Hall provides office space for many student service departments and traditional-age student organizations. Its facilities include the college cafeteria, meeting rooms, lounges, an art gallery, a recreation room, traditional-age mailroom, a snack shop, the college bookstore and a student-operated radio station.

Housed in the basement is the Department of Theatre Studies, including faculty offices, box office, costume shop, dressing rooms and a rehearsal hall.

Practicing, Performing & Meeting Space

Charles A. Dana Auditorium, completed in 1961, is a proscenium theatre that seats 1,000 and is used for major musical events as well as for lectures and conferences. The south wing houses teaching classrooms, music practice rooms and a large choir room for rehearsals and small informal concerts. The Mary Pemberton Moon Room is suitable in size and arrangement for worship, informal lectures and monthly faculty meetings. Dana Auditorium hosts classes from a variety of disciplines and houses offices for the music and the religious studies departments. In the summer, Dana is home to the Eastern Music Festival and the Eastern Philharmonic Orchestra.

Sternberger Auditorium, adjacent to Founders Hall, is a flexible performance space that seats up to 250 and is equipped for stage productions, concerts, lectures and dances.

Studios & Galleries

Hege-Cox Hall, contains the art department offices, outdoor kilns for firing ceramics, darkroom and studios for wood and mixed-media sculpture, welding, ceramics, printmaking, painting and drawing. There is a hallway gallery for the exhibition of student work. Gallery spaces in Founders Hall also exhibit work by students. In the Hege Library, the Guilford College Art Gallery houses a permanent teaching art collection and features exhibitions emphasizing modern and contemporary art reflecting social and cultural issues congruent with the college's Quaker tradition. Art history classes are taught in the Bauman, Frank and Duke classrooms. Senior thesis students have private studio spaces in Hildebrandt House.

The Guilford College Art Gallery. Housed in Hege Library, the Guilford College Art Gallery opened in 1990 with more than 3,500 square feet devoted to exhibiting the college’s permanent art collection and occasional temporary exhibitions. In addition to an enclosed main gallery, there are eight atrium galleries, vitrines and an art storage area utilized by the college’s art curator.

As the “scholarly crossroads” of the Guilford campus, Hege Library offers an ideal location for the gallery. The addition of visual arts to the library enriches the environment for students who may view fine works of art while pursuing their studies. The original works of art on display function as a primary source of knowledge for faculty, students and the community at large. Students analyze and study these objects in a variety of contexts; creative artists draw inspiration from them; and faculty use them to reinforce their interdisciplinary approach to teaching. The Gallery’s exhibitions emphasize modern and contemporary art reflecting social and cultural issues congruent with the college’s Quaker tradition.

The college seeks to collect works of art representing a broad range of periods, styles and cultures.  Formed in 1973, the permanent collection was significantly expanded in 1986 with generous contributions by Rachel and Allen Weller and by Ruth and Ira Julian, dedicated art collectors. The collection was further enhanced with a gift of important 19th and 20th century traditional African sculptures from Dr. A. Kelly Maness Jr.

Spanning more than 40 centuries and four continents, the collection now includes more than 1,100 objects by more than 450 artists, with an emphasis on 19th - and 20th-century American and European paintings, prints and drawings. The collection includes original works by Rembrandt, Picasso and Dali as well as an impressive selection of 20th-century American artists, featuring works by Grant Wood, Leon Golub, Sue Coe, Miriam Schapiro, Robert Bechtle, Josef Albers, Roger Brown, Joseph Stella and Abraham Rattner.