UALR Professor Ann E. Robinson, director of the Center for Gifted Education, has been elected president of the National Association for Gifted Children.

Headquartered in Washington DC, NAGC is the largest professional association in the world devoted to research, practice and advocacy for gifted and talented children. Robinson will begin her term as president on Sept. 1.

“From the time I was a graduate student at Purdue, I grew up in NAGC and am honored to serve as its president. It is a challenging time to lead, but I am thrilled,”  Robinson said.

The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) is an organization of parents, teachers, educators, other professionals, and community leaders dedicated to supporting the unique needs of children and youth with demonstrated gifts and talents. The mission also includes supporting the needs of children who may be able to develop their talent potential with appropriate educational experiences.

“Dr. Robinson has been in the forefront of the development of national standards for NAGC and has been a dedicated advocated for both Advanced Placement and meeting the needs of the gifted in our state and the nation,” said Dr. Angela Sewall, dean of UALR’s College of Education.  “This honor reflects the high esteem in which she is held by colleagues around the country.  It is well deserved.”

Robinson is the founding director of one of only 20 Centers for Gifted Education in the United States. UALR has been a leader in gifted education nationally and internationally since the 1970’s. The UALR Center provides professional development to hundreds of teachers annually through its summer institutes. The center serves as a hub for faculty whose research focuses on gifted programs and services.

UALR offers  one of the few doctoral programs in the nation specializing in school leadership in gifted education.

“Our recent graduates and our current graduate students serve on national committees in the field, review research and service proposals for the U. S. Department of Education and other institutions, and are published authors and researchers in their own right,” Robinson said.

Recently, the center received one of only seven demonstration projects funded through the Jacob K. Javits Gifted Students Program, U. S. Department of Education. The project, STEM Starters, focuses on providing low-income gifted children in grades 2 through 5 with rigorous experiences in science and studying the effectiveness of the curriculum and teacher preparation in STEM disciplines. Principal Investigators, Robinson and Dr. Alicia Cotabish, reported on the project at the 18^th World Conference on the Gifted last week in Vancouver, British Columbia. STEM Starter Curriculum Coordinator, Debbie Dailey, joined the center in July to oversee the development of materials in biology, chemistry, and physics.

“The five-year, multi-million dollar STEM Starters project fits very well with our UALR mission,” Robinson said.

UALR provides one of the largest AP Summer Institutes in the nation. Each summer, approximately 900 middle and high school teachers receive rigorous, week-long residential training in calculus, statistics, chemistry, biology, literature, language, history, geography, art history, studio art, and music theory. Robinson and the center staff headed up the grant writing team that created the $13.9 million UALR-based Arkansas Advanced Initiative for Math and Science (AAIMS) in 2007.

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