Robin Jones
Title: Professor
Contact Information:
USF College of Arts and Sciences
BEH 201
Phone: 813-974-8452
E-mail this USF Collaborative Partner
Details:
Robin Jones is the Coordinator of the College of Arts and Sciences Community Initiative (CAS CI) at the University of South Florida. In the eight years she has been in this position she has designed and implemented several strategies for connecting the college to the communities beyond the university. Many of the programs are designed to enable students to explore the world around them. She developed the curriculum for an undergraduate, interdisciplinary Urban Studies Certificate Program and teaches the required Introduction to Urban Studies. She developed the Community Experiential Learning Program (CEL) through which students can either do an internship with a community organization/agency or explore a community issue through an independent research project. She created the USF Legislative Internship Program through which she places 12 students each semester with local, state or federal legislators and teaches the integrative seminar. She serves as USF’s liaison to The Washington Center and recruits and advises the students who leave Tampa to spend a semester in Washington, DC. And was names Liaison of the Year in 2004.
Robin has also pursued strategies that encourage other faculty to connect their students with the community. Most recently she has been providing assistance to faculty members who wish to implement the service-learning pedagogy. CAS CI obtained a Campus Impact grant from the Florida Campus Compact to promote the pedagogy of service-learning to the faculty and students of USF. CAS CI created a service-learning website:(www.cas.usf.edu/servicelearning/index.html)
Robin has also worked at the university-wide level to enhance its engagement with the community. She served on the Provost’s Strategic Planning Task Force on Community and Urban Initiatives, authoring its final report. Based on the Task Force’s work, community engagement has become one of USF’s major strategic efforts. Robin also served on the planning committee for the University as Citizen Conference held in February 2001. She serves on the Board of Directors of the USF Collaborative for Children, Families and Communities and as a member of the Faculty Senate’s Ad Hoc Committee on University-Community Engagement.
Before coming to USF, Robin Jones was the Coordinator of the Urban Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh, She designed the program in 1977 and taught and advised in the program for twenty years. She also conducted research on community development and the politics of public education reform. She co-authored a book entitled City Schools and City Politics: Institutions and Leadership in Pittsburgh, Boston and St. Louis (University Press of Kansas, 1999). Robin received her BA from the University of Maryland and a MA (Political Science) and MBA from the University of Pittsburgh.
