UW News

October 25, 2007

Robinson Center celebrates birthday, begins campaign

How time flies and things grow.

Back in 1977 the Early Entrance Program welcomed its first two students to the UW campus. By this fall the cumulative number of students involved in the Halbert and Nancy Robinson Center for Young Scholars had climbed to more than 550 students.

The center, housed in a little tan schoolhouse behind Architecture Hall, will celebrate its 30th birthday with a party Sunday, Oct. 28, in Kane Hall and kick off a campaign to raise $2 million for scholarships for young scholars.

The birthday party will be held in room 120 and the Walker Ames room from 1 to 5 p.m. There will be remarks from Nancy Robinson, who founded the program with her late husband Halbert; Ana Mari Cauce, executive vice provost and a cofounder of the center’s Academy for Young Scholars; and Kathleen Noble, director of the center. Birthday cake and ice cream follow the formal program.

The center’s scholarship fund is being kick-started with a $50,000 gift from Nancy Robinson.

“There are a lot of children who would do extremely well at the UW, but they need the financial help to get and stay here,” said Noble. “We have launched this fundraising campaign to help these bright young students attend the University.”

The Robinson Center runs two major programs. The Early Entrance Program annually admits a selected group of 16 highly capable students younger than 15 years of age, while the Academy for Young Scholars, which was founded in 2002, admits 35 high school students each year. The center also operates summer programs for 5th through 10th grade students in such topics as math, science, literature and writing.

“Not only has the Robinson Center survived all these years, it has thrived,” said Noble. “It is the only program of its kind in the country with two early entrance options. The center is a beacon for other colleges and universities in what is possible and how to do it well.

“Our students are successful and are active in all kinds of campus activities. We are proud that a large number of the University’s Rhodes, Marshall and Goldwater scholars have come from our program.”

More information about the Robinson Center’s programs and the scholarship fund are available on the Web at http://depts.washington.edu/cscy/.