2 minute read
Stuart Robinson ’76
By David Kersey h’98, Alumni Liaison
In 2020, after 28 years of working at SUNY New Paltz, including coaching soccer, teaching English, working as an assistant to the President of the College and serving as Athletic Director for the last 19 years, Stuart Robinson ’76 was appointed Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs and Director of Athletics at New York University.
Like his work at New Paltz, Stuart's work in Student Affairs ranges broadly—from co-directing a scholarship fund for first-generation students to programs for student athletes and mental health. This role is not new to Stuart because, in all of his previous experiences, he has prioritized the learning and well-being of his students.
As NYU’s new athletic director, Stuart’s goal is “to chart a new course for athletics at the university” by which he means creating meaningful athletic experiences for as many of the 25,000 undergraduates and 25,000 graduate students as possible. At present, there are 600 varsity women and men on eleven teams competing in the University Athletic Association, a Division III league made up of eight urban universities committed to academic and athletic excellence. There are also 900 students on club teams and 11,000 in intramural and recreational programs. A further challenge comes from the fact that NYU owns no outdoor athletic facilities, and student-athletes practice and compete all over lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. “Like A-S boys busing to Randall’s Island,” Stuart remembered. Stuart is also preparing to move the
athletic department into a part of NYU’s new 735,000-square-foot multi-use complex at 181 Mercer
Street in Greenwich Village. In addition, to help realize all of this, Stuart directs a staff of 77 full-time and 70 part-time employees. Stuart Robinson is a busy man, and he seems to love it.
And he loves sport, all of it—watching, as he does now with his NYU athletes, coaching, as he did for 15 years with the New Paltz soccer team, organizing, as he did as a student at Williams College where he started a club baseball team, and competing as he did at A-S (soccer, basketball and baseball) and on through his time at Hotchkiss School and Williams.
Stuart admits to being competitive (“Just ask my brother Glenn, A-S ’78”) He remembers, as a new sixth grader in 1972, his very first day of soccer practice at Randall’s Island, when after having beaten the other boys in Coach Pariseau’s length-of-the-field wind sprints, he was pitted against the putative fastest boy in the school, Jason Selch ‘75, and beat him. An auspicious start for a new boy—the (new) fastest boy in the school!
