The Observer, April 22, 2005
Volume XXXVII, Issue 26
Dean Robinson reflects on time at Case, looks toward future
Greg Hanneman: When did you first come to Case, and what did you do when you got here?
Margaret Robinson: I started working here part-time in 1974 – a long time ago. So part-time that the university didn't start counting me officially as an employee until 1976, when I crossed into the half-time status. Before that I was working 12 hours a week or something. I and three other people had been hired in the admissions office to interview prospective students.
That's the way I started here, and then I moved ahead within the admissions office, became an assistant director, and then they created a position in Western Reserve College – an assistant dean for recruitment and admission – which I applied for, took, and basically got to create. And that was fun because I could come up with all kinds of new ideas for on-campus programs, connecting with alumni, things that had to do with admissions. I got a group of students together as an advisory group and we came up with the Friday Freshman program….
And then, within Western Reserve College, I began to assume more responsibility. I was asked to do some advising of first-year students, and then when Dean Walker retired I became assistant dean for freshmen in Western Reserve College….
As assistant dean for first-year students, I started things like newsletters and working with first-year advisers, which my predecessor had done…. And then I kind of stayed in that position working with first-years for a long time, probably from 1983 to 1995, so that's a lot of first-year classes….
I've always been interested in international education…. Admissions, in the early '80s, got involved in international recruitment, and I was asked to do that even though I was no longer in the admissions office – I was doing that, assistant dean for admissions, and recruitment in the college…. There's a group of colleges in this country that formed the European Council of International Schools U.S. College Committee, which basically organized recruiting tours for American admissions officers to go and meet with students in Europe who were looking to come to college in the United States. And so I became very involved with that….
What happened then, in the early '90s – in the Office of Undergraduate Studies there had always been somebody working part-time to do advising for study abroad, and the last person in that position was Dr. Lang, who was in the classics department, now retired. He was also chair of the classics department, and he said, "I need to pay more attention to the department, so I can't do this study abroad advising any more." At that point, Claudia Anderson – who had been doing transfer credit evaluation and working with transfer programs and therefore was familiar with all kind of foreign credentials – and I, who had this passion for international education, said, "We'll do this!"
GH: It seems like you've had a pretty wide variety of experiences over the past 30 years.
MR: I have, and a lot of it has to do with programs and always thinking "How can we do things better? What can we do to make the undergraduate experience better?" Ever since I became dean, I started this big push on having people apply for scholarships and fellowships. I knew that our students were able to do it. I'd had a Fulbright; I had friends from college who had gotten Rhodes Scholarships and all those kinds of big awards, and I thought, you know, the students here are just as smart and accomplished as students from other places who get these awards. We just need to get people to apply and help them develop their applications, present themselves, and have it in their ideas of something they could do…. I just feel very gratified that we've had, in the last 10 years, about 110 students win these very prestigious national awards….
That's been where my passion has been – it's not in my job description. One of the things that I found here is that I've really been allowed to be creative and to suggest new programs, and they've been greeted mostly with enthusiasm. It's a wonderful kind of environment to work in. I think it's what we try to do for faculty and students: we put out a whole lot of opportunities and just say, "Take your pick and run with things." But it's also possible for someone in the administration to do that as long as people think this is something we should try.
GH: Since you came here in 1974 up until now, what would you say is one thing that's changed the most at the university?
MR: I think there has been a significant change in the student population, in that the scholarships that were introduced in 1990 and really kicked in in 1992 – the merit-based scholarships – did change the makeup of the student population. In some ways, I think the changes are really positive. We are getting students who are just very bright, very ambitious, – the faculty love to teach them…. But there's also a piece that we lost in doing that, and that is a more economically diverse undergraduate population….
Physically, the campus has been completely transformed. I can't tell you how different it is from what it was [when] my husband joined the faculty in the mid-'60s…. Where you have that oval in front of the library and all of that, that was a parking lot all the way from Euclid to Bellflower – just acres of cars. It was just really, really ugly. Under President Pytte, there was a huge physical transformation of the campus with the building of the library – I think Veale was even completed while he was here, [and] the macromolecular science building. All of that makes the place not even recognizable from what it was….
I think the attitude of the administration towards students has changed a lot. There's more consideration of student interests and more interest in really promoting undergraduate education…. I don't think now you would have something happen as happened back in the late '70s and early '80s, when with no warning students were told they had to move out of a residence hall during an exam period because we have to cut costs and the bottom line – out you go. Those of us who worked with students were just completely outraged…. There was a kind of bottom-line mentality that didn't take the human factors into account…. Attitudes have changed a lot.
GH: Anything that's stayed the same?
MR: I think the commitment to quality in terms of education and research has always been there. We're better at making everything more visible now…. It's always interesting to me when I go back into old bulletins – a former Mather student will write from a retirement community in Florida saying, "I didn't finish my degree, and I'd like to finish it now." We get the record form the archives and we look, and maybe the first four letters are a little different, but you see the same course numbers and the same courses, and often the same course descriptions.
There's always the cutting edge that you kind of add on, but the fundamentals of liberal learning just remain the same. [There was a] former student who was here in 1973; he was in computer engineering. The only course he's missing for his degree: machine-language programming.
That core, that expectation that you will be versed in quantitative reasoning and scientific thinking and the humanities and social sciences – that you've been exposed at least to those modes of thought – that's always there. And that's probably true across most American higher education in terms of four-year colleges and universities….
GH: How did you decide to take your retirement after this year?
MR: There are a couple of reasons. One is that I thought about retiring last year, and then didn't because I really wanted to see SAGES to the starting line because it's doing full implementation. That's a huge curricular change in which this office is playing an important role in terms of helping for the planning, as well as having helped in the inception of the program.
But there are things I really want to do…. While we can, given that my husband is a little older than I, we want to travel; and we have a daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren right here in town whom I never get to see.
I'm a singer. My background is in mathematics, but I'm a singer, and I've always pursued that. I'm looking forward to having time to practice. I take lessons. Every week I have a music lesson, but I always have to go to my lesson not having done much practicing, and anyone who's taken music lessons knows you're not supposed to do that. I sing with the orchestra chorus; I've been in that for, I guess, 27 years now. This is my 28th season, and so that's something that I really, really enjoy, and again look forward to being able to do that better than I do it now….
There are things I really want to do in terms of learning languages. I speak French and English and some Greek, and I really want to learn languages.
I see a role in working with the Cleveland public schools and perhaps in conjunction with the university – I really want to be able to help high school students in Cleveland with the whole idea of going to college, making college choices, and then – when they get there – being able to adapt. It's a big leap for some students, particularly from the Cleveland public schools…. With a little more coaching and preparation, they would do better….
GH: If you had $1 million to spend on Case, how would you use it?
MR: A million dollars doesn't even get you a named professorship. I once thought – I don't buy lottery tickets – but if I did and I won, what would I do with the money? And I would invest it in education. That was a no-brainer for me.
How it would be invested? There are some small things. We, for example, right now have a scholarship program that allows young women graduates of the College of Arts & Sciences to apply to study and travel overseas after they graduate. There's no such thing for young men. This was one of these designated gifts; I think that's an opportunity that lots of people should have. So I would probably do something to support internationalizing the curriculum and expanding the international experience of students…. Endowments are the way to go because it lasts.
The other is just endowing scholarships. That's something the university needs is to have a firm financial foundation under the merit-based scholarships, which doesn't exist now.
