Stevens Literacy Center Honors 'Dick and Jane' Author

Photos provided by Julie Francis, Ph.D.

Michaela Fath

The Stevens Literacy Center has been dedicated to serving local schools, businesses and other community agencies since 1997. As a parent organization for the Helen M. Robinson Center for Reading, the Stevens Literacy Center is involved in community tutoring and promoting literacy within Athens. Julie Francis, Ph.D., director of the center, was involved in the establishment of the Helen M. Robinson Center for Reading when the Patton College of Education reopened in 2017.

How does the Stevens Literacy Center help the community?

We call it a community tutoring center, and it’s part of our emphasis on providing services to our community for children — PreK to 12 — to come to the center and receive any kind of literacy support provided by what we call our literacy ambassadors. Those literacy ambassadors are typically undergraduate teacher candidates or graduate students working on their masters of reading program. Sometimes we also have other undergraduate students from other various colleges that are just interested in connecting with children. They really want to be a positive role model for children that might need some enrichment or extra support with developing literacy and language skills.

Helen M. Robinson

Who was Helen M. Robinson? What connection does she have to the university?

Helen Mansfield Robinson Jobe grew up in the Athens area. Her family was one of the first families to have this big plat of land on the Hocking River even before [OU] was founded. The Mansfields have a long history of living in Athens County and being a part of [OU]. Helen was a graduate of [OU], and she went on to be one of the pioneer experts of reading education. She wrote for over 60 years about reading education. For a woman in the ’40s and ’50s, she was really paving the way — really thinking about great research and asking, “What is it that we can do for students to help them to be better readers and writers?”

We’re also looking at a field that was dominated by men and she was definitely leading the way. She also wrote the Dick and Jane books in the mid-1960s. That’s sort of her claim to fame, but she was really a scholar in every way.

When was the Helen M. Robinson Center for Reading in the Stevens Literacy Center Constructed?

When The Patton College of Education reopened in January of 2017 after major renovations, I became the new director of the center. We were really trying to envision what the center’s mission would be. We had a very blank space in there. There was nothing on the wall. There wasn’t any furniture. It looked like a traditional college classroom. It had long tables and chairs. So we began working with the Ohio University interior designers. Just by talking with them about how we wanted to create this space for children, teacher candidates and families to come to, they began to conceptualize that we needed to have colored furniture, walls and appealing features that could accommodate and be safe [for] kindergarten through third graders.

What is inside of the Stevens Literacy Center?

There’s a rocking chair, there’s bean bag chairs. There’s this book boat called the S.S. Ohio. It’s where we invite children to go inside and enjoy reading and writing by fantasizing that they’re on this book boat. You know, it’ll take them to great places when they read and write in the book boat. We also have this huge mural that takes up a big wall space in Aunt Helen’s Treehouse. We wanted it to have that feeling of being outdoors and represent our beautiful Athens area. It’s how we’re honoring where we live, but we’re also talking about how fun it is to be a reader. It’s such a welcoming space for children.

What is the goal of the Stevens Literacy Center?

Every year we hire at a minimum 15 literacy ambassadors to provide support to community families and students that are coming in. When we do summer camps, we’ve worked with a minimum of 100 families. We’ve had a wonderful response. It will keep growing as the years goes on.

How do you expect the Stevens Literacy Center to grow in the future?

With our grant from the Ohio Department of Higher Education’s Aspire program, in five years, we would like to see two-generation programming going on, where we’re not only providing academic support for children, but we complement that with support for parents that want to improve their academic basic skills. But also, a program that gives them an opportunity to enhance workplace and soft skills so that they have increased employability skills. Additionally, we’re developing an OHIO PREP program to support campus literacy skills, or bridge programs, to help incoming freshman be more successful as they transition from high school into postsecondary education. All these programs fulfill the mission of the Stevens Literacy Center—to research, promote and develop literacy across the lifespan.