By Browning Brooks
FSU Communications Group
An expert on community colleges, with varied experience in other professions, has become director of community college and interinstitutional relations at FSU.
Alice E. Robinson, former assistant vice president for administrative affairs
at Florida Atlantic University, will direct relations between FSU and Florida's
28 community colleges. She will work with deans and department heads to help
counselors and students across the state understand how to enter FSU's academic
programs.
"We are very pleased to have as our liaison someone with such wide-ranging experience in dealing with community colleges," said Beverly Spencer, FSU vice president for university relations. Robinson will report to Spencer.
Robinson's appointment was effective June 30. Her office is at the Visitor Information Center on Woodward Avenue.
She already has toured Tallahassee Community College, the source of 438 students out of 1,750 Florida community college graduates who transferred to FSU in fall 1994.
Robinson has held administrative posts at FAU the past 14 years -- as assistant to the provost and director of academic support services at the Davie campus, then as assistant vice president for administrative affairs at the Broward campus from 1991 to 1995.
She worked closely with Broward Community College, negotiating contracts, coordinating programs with students, faculties and presidents, and working on every aspect of the relationship between FAU and Broward.
A native of Ocala, Robinson earned a bachelor's degree from Bethune-Cookman College in 1974. In 1977, she earned a master's degree in counselor education and a specialist degree in student personnel services from the University of Florida, and in 1993, she received a doctorate in community-college teaching from Florida International University. She also attended the Wellesley Management Institute in Wellesley, Mass., in 1994-95.
She was a newspaper reporter at the Ocala Star Banner in 1974-75, a social worker at the Alachua County Crisis Center in Gainesville in 1977-78 and a psychology teacher in the Broward County School System in 1982-85. In 1993-1994, Robinson was a panelist and then co-host of a cable television show in Fort Lauderdale that covered community issues, such as race relations and economic development.
"All of these experiences involved human relations, and that is what I enjoy," she said. "Now, I am very glad to be at Florida State, a large and varied institution with a lot of history."