Excerpts from a Division Chair Recommendation for Promotion written by Paul Spickard for Dale Robertson written October of 1993
I. Teaching
Dale is widely acknowledged as one of the finest teachers on campus. He won the Division’s and the University’s Teacher of the Year awards in 1987, but he could have won them in any year before or since, I have watched him lecture and seen him work one-on-one with students on many occasions. He is a pyrotechnical maniac in the classroom, running around, waving his arms, pointing at students, shouting out questions, challenging responses, conceiving and assigning on the spur of the moment in-class group exercises that will get at just the point hat the class needs to understand this minute. He has strong beliefs and no prejudices. He cares desperately that students learn and that they avoid taking the easy way out. No one is quicker than Dale. No one sees better than he the particular challenge that a class needs right now that will force them to confront the subtle intellectual issues they have not seen or have been avoiding. No one is funnier (although his humor misfires on occasion--that is in the nature of humor, and he is almost inevitably forgiven). Dale Robertson is as fine a classroom teacher as lives on this planet...
II. Contributions to Academic Discipline
We have some good scholars at our University--people like Lynn Hansen-Strain and Jeff Burroughs. But over the last ten years, no one at BYU-Hawaii has done more than Dale Robertson to build a field of study. In editing Pacific Studies, he has done much more than simply collect articles and print them. He has shaped and advanced a field of scholarly inquiry, and in the process brought BYU-Hawaii a measure of respect in the academic community greater than any other single faculty member. There are scores of academics around the Pacific who may have had prejudices that Mormons were anti-intellectual pietists, but who now, through meeting Dale or reading his journal, have found respect for the fairness, broad-mindedness, and intellectual seriousness they encountered. Pacific Studies is BYU-Hawaii’s most distinguished intellectual product, it fits exactly the distinctives of our University, and Dale Robertson is the force, the intelligence behind the creation of that product.
III. Division Responsibilities and University Service
Dale Robertson has served in all manner of leadership posts in the Division and the University. He has been chair of the political science department and acting division chair. He has advised the Campus Republicans (they chose him even though his not of their party), Alpha Chi, and the Pre-Law society. He established and directed the honors program. He chaired the General Education Committee at the time of the establishment of the current general education program. He served on the Promotion Review Committee, and on the Faculty Advisory Committee twice (once as chair).
Dale has also served the University in a way for which I suspect he will never get credit. Quietly he has found extra ways to help talented students and colleagues achieve their potential--arranging an unusual independent study or internship; nominating someone for an award and then hounding the granting agency until that person received the award; directing the fund of IPS or the department scholarship allotment so as o support a particularly worthy candidate or project. This has especially been true of some talented women colleagues and students, some of whom don’t know the ways he has quietly pushed their achievement and recognition...