Who Was Karl Robinson?
Robinson Hall - Rare CSU Naming of a Campus Building to Honor a Professor
Karl Robinson was a well-known professor of Speech and Drama at Cal State Hayward during the period 1965-1967. He was at the height of a productive career when he came to CSUH. Robinson was very active in the Speech Association of America, and also as an editor of the journal “Speech Teacher”, which later became “Communication Education”, and which - even today - the Library receives electronically. His death at 63 from a heart attack, obviously stunned the campus, and came just days before funding was finally approved to build a new Speech and Theatre complex. Thanks to lobbying efforts by friends and colleagues, the building in which Drama and Dance are now studied and performed is named in his honor.
CSUH professor Karl Robinson, only on campus a few short years, nevertheless left a lasting impact on the University - not the least by his name: Robinson Hall being one of only a handful of buildings in the entire CSU system named for an instructor.