New Uni High principal seeks to reconnect her school to UI

By David Porreca

Since its founding in 1921, the UI Laboratory High School
has been noted as an innovator in curriculum development and
teaching methods.

Its accomplishments have ranged from the creation of the
"New Math" to more recent developments such as the Illinois
Web Access Virtual Education project, an undertaking
designed to disseminate mathematical teaching software to
other high schools in the state.

But for all of their school's achievements, Uni High
students and faculty members over the years often have felt
isolated from their surrounding campus and community, says
new Uni High Principal Shelley Roberts.

In the view of Roberts, who has been on the job since July
1, one of the main tasks facing Uni is to overcome this
sense of being "an island unto itself." She hopes to help
reconnect the school to both the UI campus and the Urbana-
Champaign community.

"We are a public school, although not everyone realizes
that," Roberts said. "It's important for us to fit in and
meet the needs of the community."

One way the school is increasing its interaction with the
campus is through research projects that involve cooperation
between UI researchers and Uni High students and faculty
members.

 About seven or eight such projects are under way involving
campus researchers - mainly graduate students, Roberts said.

The projects include a study of what goes on in the
cognitive processes of students as they learn how to write,
as well as a study of how students handle and incorporate
new ideas that they are exposed to in science classes. Other
studies involve work in educational anthropology,
educational psychology and multicultural education.

In cooperating with such research work, Roberts said, Uni
High is not simply being altruistic. The school gains in
many ways, not only by forging more direct links with the UI
but also by exposing students directly to the nature and
logic of the research process. Indeed, how much educational
benefit students would derive from participating in a
project is a key factor in determining whether Uni agrees to
take part in a study.

After a researcher contacts Roberts about a project, she
forwards the proposal to the school's executive teachers
(department heads). "If they think it's manageable, we try
to identify teachers and students who would be appropriate
to work with the researcher," Roberts said. "They have the
right to say no. It has to be a fit."

Roberts herself came to Uni High fresh from completing her
doctoral dissertation in educational anthropology in the
College of Education's educational psychology department. In
fact, her own ties with the UI were strengthened recently
after the department granted her adjunct status on its
faculty.

"This allows me to be in a position to supervise and grade
students [in the department] and to work collaboratively
with teacher educators," Roberts said. She also is being
reviewed for an appointment to adjunct status in the
curriculum and instruction department.

Roberts, who is married to Dewey Moore, a senior scientist
at the Illinois Geological Survey, earned a bachelor's
degree in sociology and anthropology from Occidental College
in Los Angeles, and a master's degree in social relations
from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

A native of Los Alamos, N.M., Roberts worked from 1980 to
1987 at Knox College in Galesburg, serving variously as
assistant dean, associate dean and acting dean of students.
From 1988 to 1990, she was a teacher and director of
curriculum research at Sandia Preparatory School in
Albuquerque, N.M., before beginning her doctoral studies at
the UI.

"Uni High bridges the world of research and practice,"
Roberts said. "It's the perfect job for me. I feel very
fortunate."

With an enrollment of 284 students and a rigorous admissions
process, the school often has been thought of as an elite
preserve remote from the Urbana-Champaign community, even
though it is a public school with students from a fairly
broad spectrum of backgrounds. "It's important to me that
people realize that we're not a private school," Roberts
said.

But because the school has no power to tax, Uni asks parents
for donations to make up for whatever funding the state does
not provide, the ideal being $1,600 to $1,800 per family.
However, admission is not based on ability to pay, and the
Parent-Faculty Organization provides scholarship funds to
cover fees and book costs for needy students. It is this
donation that often leads people to believe that the school
is private.

Moreover, even though Uni High takes in students from as far
away as Danville, Arcola and Paxton, and even though two-
thirds of the student body are not children of UI faculty
members, the image still persists that the school is mainly
for faculty children from Urbana and Champaign.

Overcoming such an image will not happen overnight, Roberts
said. In all likelihood, the school will need three to five
years to put into place all the changes that Roberts and the
faculty have in mind, such as outreach programs that would
get students more directly involved in their communities.
Developing a greater interaction with the UI also will take
time, Roberts said.

In addition to expanding its ties to the campus and
community, Uni High will continue its own innovative work in
teaching and curriculum development. Recently, the school
received a $64,197 grant from the Scientific Literacy Board
of the Illinois State Board of Education in support of the
school's Web Access Virtual Education project, or WAVE. The
money came on top of a $5,000 grant for the WAVE project the
previous year from the Alcoa Foundation in Pittsburgh.

Led by Carol Castellon, head of Uni High's mathematics
department, the WAVE project consists of Uni and five other
central Illinois high schools working together to develop
computerized math-teaching material that can be transmitted
over the Internet. "It's a nice model for a cooperative
approach to working with technology," Roberts said.

Indicative of Uni's strengthening ties with the campus and
community, the WAVE project makes use of the math software
Mathematica, developed by Wolfram Research Inc. of
Champaign. The project will distribute its teaching material
over the Internet by using NCSA MosaicT software developed
by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at
the UI.

In the meantime, as Uni faculty and students go about their
work, Roberts will continue her efforts to bridge the
remaining gaps between the school and its surroundings.

"I want to assure the staying power of the high school," she
said. "I want this to be a fitting place for kids. It's not
a school for everyone, but I do want to try to attract
students who may never have thought they could do well in an
environment like this."