By Jonathan Mitchell
December 7 marks the 73rd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. “A day that will live in infamy,” as President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said. It ushered the United States into the Second World War and holds a special significance for Peninsula College President Luke Robins: it was the day his parents got married.
Following their nuptials, the couple, on a Depression-era budget, went to a movie to celebrate their honeymoon. But before the feature presentation began, a man interrupted the newsreel and informed the crowd of the attack, urging them to go home and listen to the President’s speech on their radios.
Robins’ father, who stopped school after the eighth grade to help tend to his family farm, enlisted and was gone for three years serving his country while Robins’ mother, a high school graduate, was left home to tend to their new family. Due to the dual call of family and country, the pair were unable to further their education. “Life happened,” Robins said.
As a result they instilled in Robins the importance of higher education and insisted he go to college.
After attending school himself, Robins began his collegiate career as a writing instructor. He found that what really hooked him was seeing that “cartoon light bulb” of understanding appear over a student’s head. After getting his doctorate from the University of Texas, Robins took a handful of college leadership roles before arriving at PC.
“I see the community college as being the great democratic, educational experiment,” Robins said. He sees his position as an opportunity to foster success in his students, however that success may choose to manifest itself. He hopes that PC will serve as a springboard for future success and will make people realize, “I wanna be better than I thought I could be,” Robins said. He hopes that PC will not only help students achieve their current goals but also open them up to new ones, saying, “where you want to be changes with where you are.”
