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Robin Wright
AARC Director and pop culture devotee
When Robin Wright finishes her dissertation she will have, as her mother put it, “talked to a lot of old women about their lives.” But Wright’s subjects chose careers unusual for women of their time, resulting from their exposure to Honor Blackman’s portrayal of avant-garde Dr. Catherine Gale in the1962-64 British TV crime drama, The Avengers. The AARC Director has spent the last two summers interviewing British women, who, as teens, took their cues from the woman scholars call “the first feminist on television.”
Before coming to SFA, the cult TV fan coordinated tutoring programs for athletes at her alma mater, the University of Tennessee, where she earned a BA and MA in English Literature. There she realized how much most students could benefit from tutoring in all core subjects. Since Wright’s 1999 arrival on campus, the twenty-three year old learning center has been the only one nationally certified at the Advanced Level by the National Association for Developmental Education, and one of two in the country certified at the Distinguished Level by the College Reading and Learning Association’s International Tutor Training Certification Program. The Star Trekkie, who helps raise her three year old grandson, supervises the directors of the AARC’s four peer tutoring programs. Under the Tennessee native’s guidance, the AARC has also doubled the number of tutoring hours logged per year, which, according to Wright, result in statistically higher GPAs for tutored students.
The avid comic book collector and bibliophile has presented at the University of Leeds in England and at the Adult Education Research Conference, where she was awarded the 47th Annual Graduate Student Research Award. The Doctoral candidate in Adult Education at Texas A&M hopes to eventually be part of a town and gown project creating a community learning center. Meanwhile Wright has a wicked Halloween party each year!