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Aetna Quantitative Center

The Aetna Quantitative Center, or Q-Center, was established in 1987 as the Aetna Mathematics Center with a grant from the Aetna Life and Casualty Foundation. The Center helps to implement Trinity’s Quantitative Literacy Requirement (formerly known as Math Proficiency) by assessing the quantitative literacy of each incoming student, providing full-semester quantitative literacy introductory courses, holding peer tutoring hours, and working collaboratively with the Mathematics Department to provide support for students enrolled in math courses. The Aetna Quantitative Center is separate from the Mathematics Department, acting as a support system for quantitative education for all students at Trinity. The Center is located in room 172 of the Roy Nutt Mathematics, Engineering and Computer Science Center (MECC).

The need for a Mathematics Center arose when a faculty summer planning group proposed major changes to Trinity’s curricular structure and offerings in 1984. Since 1968, Trinity had offered an open curriculum, which only required students to complete courses in their chosen major. However, following a growing movement of liberal arts colleges across the country, the faculty planning committee assigned to reevaluate the curriculum recommended that the College reinstate general education and distribution requirements. It was in this proposal, titled “Project I,” that the establishment of a Mathematics Center was first suggested. The proposal outlined a requirement for mathematical proficiency which would involve an exam administered to all entering students. Those who were found deficient would be required to attend a non-credit remedial math course. Additionally, all degree candidates would be required to complete at least one course in logic, economics, computing, and/or mathematics. Due to these new requirements for undergraduates, a Mathematics Center was recommended to provide help to all students in their completion of the Mathematics Proficiency requirement.

Funding for the Mathematics Center was raised as part of Trinity’s Capital Campaign, also known as the Campaign for Trinity, a fundraising initiative announced in September 1986 with a goal of $42 million to be raised over a three-year period. The largest corporate gift given to the Campaign was a $550,000 contribution made by the Aetna Life and Casualty Foundation to endow program support for the new Mathematics Center. When the Center first opened, it was housed in the McCook Academic Building, but this later changed after, thanks to a huge fundraising push in the late 1980s, a new academic building was designed by notable architect César Pelli in fall 1987 to be the new home for the Mathematics Center.

In 1989, two years after the opening of the Center, construction began for this new academic building to house the Mathematics Center, along with the Math, Engineering, and Computer Science departments, and a computer center. Roy Nutt, a member of the class of 1953, pledged a sum of $2.5 million to the Campaign for Trinity in 1986 to be put towards the construction of the building, and the building was rededicated in his name in fall 2012. The Roy Nutt Mathematics, Engineering and Computer Science Center was completed in 1991, and continues to house the Aetna Quantitative Center today.