Robinson Center will bring brightest young minds to UW campus
By Joel Schwarz
News & Information
For the first time since it was launched a quarter of a century ago there won’t be a Robinson running the University’s early entrance program and other services for gifted students. But the Robinson name still will be strongly affixed to the program in the form of a new name, the Halbert and Nancy Robinson Center for Young Scholars.
That’s not the only new thing going on because the little brown clapboard schoolhouse, behind Guthrie and Architecture halls, where the center is based, is bubbling with change. In addition to the new name, the center has a new director and has started to move in a new direction to expand the program it offers talented adolescents to the entire state.
Kate Noble, left, has taken Nancy Robinson’s place as director of the Halbert and Nancy Robinson Center for Young Scholars. Photo by Kathy Sauber
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Kathleen Noble became the center director on Sept. 1, upon the retirement of Nancy Robinson. With the directorship Noble also became the first recipient of the newly endowed Halbert and Nancy Robinson professorship. The professorship was created with the generous help of Seattle jeweler Sidney Thal and the Robinson children.
Both Noble and Nancy Robinson will be honored Saturday afternoon in Kane Hall Room 120 at a 25th anniversary celebration of the center, which began its life as the Child Development Research Group. The event will run from 1 to 5 p.m.
Noble, who had been the center’s assistant director since 1989, originally took that position with the intention of only staying for one year. She later turned down a tenure track job out of state to continue working with 13- and 14-year olds in the center’s nationally known Early Entrance Program.
“The kids are infectious. I haven’t been able to drag myself away and I’m always surprised at how much of my heart is here.” Noble said. “They have all that wonderful energy that kids have and they have the ability to mind trip all over the University.”
In the near future she hopes to be working with considerably more of these energetic minds with the creation of a new UW Academy for Young Scholars that would serve very bright 16- and 17-year olds from all backgrounds and areas of the state.
The proposed academy grew out of the center’s desire to expand the scope of its services to academically advanced high school students with a residential program and President Richard McCormick’s interest in bringing a program like Running Start to the UW’s Seattle campus. Two years ago, the center received a Tools for Transformation grant to explore the concept.
The key finding of that study, according to Noble, was that there is a growing need for challenging educational opportunities for academically advanced high school students throughout Washington. While many Running Start students surveyed received appropriate academic challenges in their local community college, a sizeable minority desired a more challenging experience.
Noble will submit a UIF proposal to launch the Academy for Young Scholars in the fall of 2001. The academy will be for students who have completed at least two years of high school when they are admitted to the UW and will begin with 50 students in the first year. Eventually, the program will expand and stabilize at between 100 and 200 students and will include a residential component for students who are unable to live at home or don’t want to commute to the University.
A key element of the academy will be an intensive two-week bridge program prior to the start of the fall quarter. It will provide the new students with a preparatory curriculum to smooth their way into college life, covering such areas as study skills, time management skills, how to balance social and intellectual needs, note-taking, and critical and analytical reading and writing skills.
“The academy responds to a clear need in K-12 education,” said Noble. “It will serve a small but valuable student population that currently is not well served in Washington and provide a way of attracting more gifted students to the UW who might otherwise go to out-of-state institutions.”
In addition to starting the academy, Noble also is interested in establishing a capital development fund, since the Robinson Center operates on a self-supporting basis, and developing a faculty mentor program.
“Every student should have a faculty mentor, but I know that’s impossible on a campus this size,” she said. “But we want to create this kind of program for the students at the center. These kids really need a faculty member who takes an interest in them.
“But most of all what we want for the students who enter the Early Entrance Program or the academy is that they keep their minds open and not seek a job credential degree. That would be the kiss of death for them. We want them to take their time and explore what this university has to offer.”
Even in retirement Robinson has ‘something to do’
She may have retired, but Nancy Robinson certainly hasn’t slowed down.
After 31 years at the University, the last 19 at the helm of the renowned program for gifted young students that she and her late husband Halbert created, Robinson has an emeritus after her name and is still going strong.
She’s still involved with the center that now has her name attached to it, the Halbert and Nancy Robinson Center for Young Scholars, working with the parents of gifted children and doing diagnostic work. She also intends to resume working for the University’s human subjects review committee. Off campus her involvement with educational issues is expansive. She’s involved with the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University and the Advanced Academy at the State University of West Georgia. In addition, she is a consultant for the State Department’s Office of Overseas Education, which operates schools for the children of Americans citizens working for the government around the world.
Then, of course, there is a mound of data left over from research that still needs to be analyzed. And when she isn’t occupied with all of that, she has eight grandchildren to fuss over and plans to travel to places such as Scotland, Greece and Ireland.
“ I always have something to get up and do the next morning. If you do something there is the potential that something wonderful will happen,” she said.
One of those wonderful things was the Early Entrance Program that she and Halbert, who died in a scuba-diving accident in 1981, began in 1977, one of the first such programs in the country. Another was the unique self-contained Transition School the Robinsons created three years later to smooth the path for bright young students into the University.
About 350 talented students have gone through the program in the past 23 years, including the Robinsons’ own daughter, Beth, who was in the first class of young scholars admitted to the University.
“She was 12 at the time and it was the perfect experience for Hal and I to understand what parents have to deal with in raising a gifted child,” she said.
Robinson’s greatest career satisfaction comes from the parents and children who went through the UW program.
We have opened doors for hundreds of students and their parents ready to take this step and made it a positive one. I’m just proud of the human beings these kids have become. Our program led to their feelings of inner strength and becoming caring, socially responsible people,” she said.
She would, however, like to see a greater investment in gifted education, pointing to a recent article that said only 2 cents of every $100 spent by federal, state and local governments on education, was directed at gifted education. This compared to $12.72 for students with developmental or other special needs.
“I don’t begrudge the money to special education,” she said. “It just shows how the needs of gifted students are not being attended to. It does not take huge amounts of money and an investment in education for bright students is an excellent investment. These programs seldom are costly and the developed students are priceless.
“The danger of turnoff for very bright students in secondary school is extremely high. They just dampen down and underachieve, which is costly to society. There is nothing wrong with having high expectations for high achievers. We have a responsibility to develop their abilities.”
Joel Schwarz