Robin Worth

From her worldwide travels to various jobs, Robin M. Worth ’81 has never been one to shy away from new adventures.

She has backpacked through Europe and Asia and has volunteered in rural Ethiopia at a school and health clinic.

But these experiences have been marked by repeated returns to Harvard, a place that gave her opportunities this native Texan might not have had.

“I was always aware of how different my life would have been had I not come to Harvard,” she says.

Now back again as the director of international admissions for the College, Worth’s innovation and dedication has made an impression on friends and colleagues as well as the Harvard community at large.

At a time when most of Harvard’s graduate schools and universities nationwide are experiencing a decline in international enrollment, Worth has been instrumental in increasing the College’s international enrollment. In 2005 alone, Worth helped increase the College’s international-student population by 6.6 percent.

JUGGLING COMMITMENTS

In 1977, Worth graduated from the largest public high school in Texas ready to embark on her long Harvard career. She was already a pioneer—fewer than one percent of her graduating class went to college outside of Texas—and she was the first person from her school to apply to an Ivy League institution, she says.

That fall, Worth arrived as a bright-eyed freshman, “brilliant and thrilled to be at Harvard,” according to her junior- and senior-year roommate in Kirkland House, Linda S. Burrows ’81.

Alice E. Hill ’81, Worth’s other roommate, remembers Worth as successfully juggling commitments throughout her time here.

“Financial aid was not as generous as it is today, [but] she worked all the way through her four years at Harvard while maintaining a full-on load of academic subjects and extracurricular activities,” Hill says.

“She jumped fully into [all of the] opportunities studying at Harvard offers,” says Burrows of Worth, who worked at the Faculty Club as a bartender, at the Harvard Department of Athletics as a manager of two women’s sports, and on the tech crew for the Hasty Pudding Theatricals.

Friends say she jumped at the chance to take advantage of Harvard’s opportunities. Worth, an English and American literature and language concentrator, says that her favorite and most challenging classes included English 200, “Old English,” a course on the history and literature of Ireland, Applied Math 110, and Visual and Environmental Studies 40, a studio class in design.

A LIFE-LONG DEVOTION

Upon her graduation from the College, Worth went to work for the Harvard Admissions Office and became a freshman proctor.

“I knew I wouldn’t have been admitted to Harvard had it not been for the persistence of my admissions officer, and I wanted to give back to the institution that had given me so much,” she explains.

After receiving her masters and doctorate degrees from the Graduate School of Education, Worth has held a series of positions at Harvard’s different schools. She has served as an executive assistant to the dean and an assistant academic dean at the Kennedy School of Government, the dean of students at the School of Public Health, and is in her second stint as director of international admissions at the College.

According to Teresita A. Bjelland ’76, who was a pre-business resident tutor in Worth’s entryway her sophomore year, Worth has used her position to reach out to students around the world.

“She is relentless in her pursuit of making Harvard a possibility to those farther away and with no familiarity with the ‘American Dream,’” says Bjelland.

Harvard has adopted Worth’s pioneering spirit and become one of the first colleges to recruit in Africa, a crucial and largely untapped area, according to Worth.

“Robin is fulfilling a long-held dream of opening up opportunities for scholarship and development of future world leaders from throughout the world that Harvard can offer,” Burrows says.



BRINGING THE WORLD TO HARVARD

Today, Robin Worth has maintained a sense of the importance of education and an international view of the world that she had upon her graduation 25 years ago, as well as the same fire to take on new challenges.

“What amazes me is that Robin retains her enthusiasm and genuine concern for others that many of us see wane as the years passed,” says Bjelland.

“Having been an international student at Harvard, I would say that increasing international outreach is critical to ensuring Harvard’s continued greatness as an institution,” says Hill, who hails from Australia. “Bringing people with talent together is very powerful and is a source of optimism in what seems to be a polarizing world,”

Now that Harvard has stepped into Africa, Worth has set her eyes on new frontiers.

“I hope to start a program that brings together our international students who are interested in contributing to the development of their countries through a career in public service. I see tremendous promise in the international students we admit, and I’d like to find a way to foster their skills and their commitment while they are here with us,” Worth says.

Burrows says that Worth’s vision “lends the missing human touch of building trust and true connection to the institutional and academic expertise of the University.”

—Staff writer Aditi Banga can be reached at abanga@fas.harvard.edu.