Inside this room, you\u2019ll hear questions, ideas and the din of students puzzling over an assignment.
\nWhat won\u2019t you hear?<\/p>\n
The sheepish \u201cexcuse me, excuse me, excuse me\u201d of a latecomer bumping the chairs of their classmates as they make their way to a center seat of a lecture hall. A gift from Jennifer McHan Good \u201992 and Edward L. Good Jr. \u201989 transformed what had been a windowless computer science amphitheater into a six-windowed, technology-enabled learning space that lets students present their projects and work in groups on four different monitors. It\u2019s called the Jennifer McHan Good Collaboratorium. Students call it the Co-Lab.<\/p>\n
When Good and Kevin Treu, chair of the computer science department, spoke at Homecoming, the trouble with the original space came to light: The room needed windows and open space to allow students and instructors to move around the room and work on group projects during class.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy next question was, \u2018How can I help?\u2019\u201d Good recalls. She suggested an open, flexible, tech-friendly model similar to what various companies were starting to build. The reimagined space in Riley Hall was fully completed in April.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s that sort of mentality, that no longer do people come in and sit down at a cubicle and work for eight hours,\u201d she says. \u201cIn technology, you have to brainstorm, you have to collaborate, you have to talk to people to understand what they need,\u201d says Good.<\/p>\n
This past April, Furman launched Clearly Furman, the Campaign for Our Third Century, to raise $426 million by 2026, the university\u2019s bicentennial. The Goods\u2019 collaboratorium gift is part of the couple\u2019s $2 million campaign commitment to Furman, which also supports FurmanWIN (Women\u2019s Impact Network) and scholarships through the Partners Program for women majoring in computer science. The Goods\u2019 gift \u2013 and the ones below \u2013 are among several made recently that are helping students to excel in the classroom and prepare for their lives and careers after Furman:<\/p>\n
SUPPORTING THE UNIVERSITY\u2019S CAMPAIGN<\/strong> \u2013 and sustainable human flourishing on a rapidly warming planet \u2013 former Furman president, David Shi \u201973, the namesake of The Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities, committed $1 million to the institute this year. (Read more about climate action.)<\/p>\n A FURMAN EDUCATION WILL BE WITHIN REACH OF MORE STUDENT-ATHLETES<\/strong> because of a $1 million gift from The Jean T. and Heyward G. Pelham Foundation, creating the Jean Timmons Pelham Endowed Scholarship for Furman Athletics. It honors Jean Timmons Pelham \u201942, who died in 2004, for her commitment to Furman as a student, a patron of its arts, a sports fan and a supporter of its mission and values. The foundation also made a $500,000 gift for the Timmons Arena Renovation Project, also honoring the legacy of Jean Timmons Pelham, one of the original benefactors of Timmons Arena.<\/p>\n THE NEXT BIG IDEAS<\/strong> \u2013 and the thinkers behind them \u2013 are getting some pivotal help. More than three-dozen people contributed to the Johnny Flynn \u201969 Paladin Pitch Award Fund, which several of Flynn\u2019s fraternity brothers created after his death last year. It gives an annual $10,000 award to the student who wins the Paladin Pitch competition, hosted by The Hill Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The group\u2019s goal was $50,000, but the generosity of the Furman community brought the amount to $150,000 in gifts and pledges. The endowed fund will honor Johnny Flynn \u201969 in perpetuity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By creating the space for our students to compete, to learn and to innovate, giving through Furman helps students shape a better future for us all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":27850,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2666,2299,1963],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-around-the-lake-fall-2023","category-fall-2023","category-furman-magazine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}