Saturday morning marked the opening of the Wasch Center for Retired Faculty, located at 51 Lawn Ave. The Wasch Center offers retired professors a space to continue their scholarly work and maintain a relationship with students by advising theses and holding meetings.

Five professors have already signed up for offices in the Center and are currently in the process of moving in.

“Many retired faculty have the desire to continue to advise, participate in the intellectual life of the place, and to teach or mentor,” said Professor of Philosophy and Wasch Center board member Brian Fay. “Before the arrival of the Wasch Center there was no central place, no organized group, and no administrative structure to encourage [these things] to happen.”

The Butterfield Room, one of the larger reading rooms, was filled to capacity as Professor of Psychology Emeritus and Director of the Wasch Center Karl Scheibe led the dedication ceremony held last Saturday. He suggested that the Center will be a resource for the entire community.

“In your person, you symbolize what this center stands for,” said President Doug Bennet to Kay Butterfield, for whom the room is named. “Your presence suggests even presidents will be welcome here.”

Butterfield remained active in the community long after her husband, the late President Victor Butterfield, had died.

Scheibe spearheaded the building project.

“We have been having meetings of the retired and about-to-retire faculty over the past two years,” Scheibe said. “The interest of this group in establishing a Center has been a prime reason for proceeding with the project.”

Among the students most likely to benefit from the Center will be those majoring in overburdened departments, whose faculty do not always have the time for outside instruction or thesis advising.

“I think I definitely would [consider a retired professor for my thesis advisor],” said psychology major Shelby Thurston ’07. “I have a hard enough time getting to talk to my advisor as it is. The fact that they chose to stay on campus would mean that they would be invested in helping me.”

Thurston said that in popular majors such as psychology, extra faculty members will be more than welcome.

“The major complaint about the major is that it’s hard to find time with professors,” she said. “This sounds like a really great idea to address that problem.”

Many of the professors involved in the project are not yet retired, and some, like Fay, do not plan on retiring for a couple of years. Those involved with the Center hope that having an option for further involvement in the community should ease the transition into retirement of many faculty members.

Fay said that the existence of tangible office space is of secondary significance. The real importance of the opening of the Wasch Center is that it represents a move toward greater intellectual cohesion and community. In fact, many of the faculty who are involved in the project will share offices or will not have one at all.

“Having an office is not the most important aspect of this,” Fay said. “Rather, it is having a space in which I can connect to others and continue my involvement, albeit in a different mode, even after I am retired.”

Resources such as the Wasch Center are common at large research universities, such as Yale, which sports a similar, albeit larger, facility. The Wasch Center building committee visited Yale’s facility during the planning stages and used it for inspiration and ideas. Wesleyan is one of the few schools of its size to offer retired faculty a centralized office and meeting space.

Although the Center’s namesakes, Susan and Bill Wasch ’52 P’84, were never faculty, their experience with the Univesrity spans half a century. After Mr. Wasch graduated as an Olin scholar and member of Alpha Delt, the couple moved to Middletown, where he ran the alumni fund. The Waschs raised their children in the house that now functions as the cornerstone of the Center for Film Studies and even sent two of them to Wesleyan. They were the main benefactors for the Center.

“Are we not blessed by what Wesleyan has given us?” Susan Wasch said.