The Robinson Community Learning Center stands as a lasting symbol of trust, partnership, and shared purpose between Notre Dame and its closest neighbors.
He’s 25 now, but when he lays his head on his pillow at night, Joshua Crudup still dreams about the Notre Dame Robinson Community Learning Center (RCLC). “Sometimes I have dreams, vivid dreams about the old center because I spent so much time there,” Crudup, a former RCLC student and, later, AmeriCorps member, said.
Now a development coordinator for athletics advancement at the University of Notre Dame, Crudup is among the thousands of men, women, and children who have passed through the RCLC over the years, and his experience illustrates something essential about the place: its capacity to “change lives one relationship at a time.”
“I’m rich because of it; I’m very wealthy because of my experience with the Robinson Center,” said Crudup, who literally grew up at the RCLC, from kindergarten through high school.
As it turns 25 (a celebration is planned for Wednesday, April 29, at Kelly Park), the RCLC stands as a lasting symbol of trust and shared purpose between Notre Dame and its closest neighbors—the many and diverse residents of the Northeast Neighborhood—as well as a source of support and encouragement for those, like Crudup, who have passed through its doors.
Starting from its original location in a former shopping center and continuing at Eddy Street Commons, the center, with support from Notre Dame and others, has served thousands of men, women, and children across generations, engaged hundreds of volunteers, and distributed tens of thousands of books, promoting service and learning throughout the community.
Spaces designed for learning and discovery
As much as anything, the Robinson Community Learning Center is a collection of spaces, each designed for a specific purpose and constituency.
Together, these spaces—from the preschool classroom and maker space to the black box theater and reception area/lounge—form a community, one designed for learning and discovery.
In 2025, the center served more than 1,800 individual learners across generations, representing 43 nations, 26 languages, and 47 area schools. Included in that count: more than 400 infants and preschoolers, 600 K–12 students, and 800 adults and seniors.
That same year, students enrolled in the center’s tutoring programs saw significant improvement in academic measures, outpacing their grade-level peers in the state by an average of 6.7 percentile points in annual math growth and 8 percentile points in English language arts, and closing critical learning gaps.
In partnership with the federal government, the center hosts as many as 50 AmeriCorps members each year. These members, ranging in age from 18 to over 60, support a range of programs, assist with community outreach and volunteer recruitment, and develop innovative curricula and programs, contributing to improved educational outcomes.
For Crudup, the center served as a window onto the wider world—quite literally in some cases.
During his 10-plus years there, he traveled to New York City, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia with the My America program, to London with the Robinson Shakespeare Co. (now the Robinson Theatre Co.) and to Germany with the Lego Robotics team (now the VEX Robotics team)—all formative experiences.
“I mean, Germany in 2012, right?” he gushed. “I’m 10, 11 years old, I’ve been on family vacations, a cruise, but nothing this culturally exposing. And then I’m telling my friends, ‘I went to Germany!‘ And they’re like, ‘What?!’”
Joshua Crudup recites Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 85 from memory
Joshua Crudup, development coordinator for athletics advancement at the University of Notre Dame, attended the Robinson Community Learning Center from kindergarten through high school, traveling to Germany with the robotics team and then London with the theater program. He later worked at the center as an AmeriCorps member.
But the center is also a physical space, and in that capacity, it has served as a hub for events, celebrations, lectures, performances, competitions, and student- and community-organized service projects such as Back the Bend and Turning Over a New Leaf—always with a deep and abiding commitment to the underserved, particularly children, families, and the elderly.
“We have a mission and a passion to serve the breadth of the community; we make efforts to reach the under-resourced and the vulnerable,” said Susan Devetski, an educational consultant and former chief academic officer for the South Bend Community School Corp. who has served as director of the RCLC since 2023.
In that sense, the center’s impact is practically immeasurable.
Reflecting on this moment in the center’s history, University President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., expressed his deep admiration for the center and its mission and predicted a bright future for the nonprofit.
“The Robinson Community Learning Center is a tremendous example of the impact for good that grows out of the mutual and collaborative partnerships between Notre Dame and the South Bend community,” Father Dowd said. “For 25 years, the center has served as an invaluable educational resource and community hub for our nearest neighbors. I am tremendously grateful to my predecessor, Father Monk Malloy, C.S.C., who partnered with community leaders to establish the center, and to all the staff and volunteers who have been part of the center over the years. It is thanks to their vision and tireless work that the RCLC is such a thriving and vibrant organization. I am confident that it will continue to serve our communities for many years to come.”
Still, it’s been a long journey to this point.
The center, founded in 2001 as an off-campus educational initiative of Notre Dame, was named for the late Renelda Robinson, a lifelong resident of the Northeast Neighborhood and a highly respected and extraordinarily active member of the South Bend community. Neighbors initially greeted the new center with skepticism.
To understand why, it helps to understand the history of the Northeast Neighborhood and its relationship to Notre Dame.
The area, formerly farmland situated directly south of campus between Notre Dame and downtown South Bend, was platted by University founder Rev. Edward Sorin, C.S.C., in 1870, with the idea of building homes there for University employees.
Over time, the area, originally known as Sorinsville, blossomed into a thriving working-class enclave (mostly Catholic), complete with sturdy single-family homes, stores, parks, and a bustling commercial node at the intersection of Eddy Street, Corby Boulevard, and South Bend Avenue.
But as the 1950s gave way to the 1960s, the neighborhood’s fortunes started to turn, the consequence of a changing economy combined with poor public policy and disinvestment. Those who could decamped for the suburbs, leading to population loss. Crime rose. Property values fell.
Gradually, Notre Dame, once so closely invested in the neighborhood, withdrew, inaugurating a period of relative disengagement with the area and the community more broadly—even as its global ambitions and reputation continued to expand.
By the turn of the century, the once-thriving neighborhood was in poor shape, characterized by badly deteriorating streets and sidewalks, missing streetlights, overgrown lawns, and vacant and abandoned homes. Tensions between students and residents around issues such as crime, safety, and noise escalated, contributing to distrust and resentments on both sides.
It was against this backdrop that then-University President Rev. Edward “Monk” Malloy, C.S.C., joined with campus and community leaders to plot a new path forward, paving the way for what, in time, would become the Northeast Neighborhood Revitalization Organization (NNRO), a nonprofit devoted to facilitating revitalization efforts and promoting community and belonging within the Northeast Neighborhood.
First, however, the University made the strategic and ultimately fateful decision to purchase the vacant former Aldi/Goodwill building at Howard and Eddy Streets, three blocks south of campus, with an eye toward revitalizing the property and surrounding areas with input from both residents and campus and community partners.
Not unexpectedly, residents were initially suspicious of the acquisition, viewing it as little more than a land grab—an opportunity to purchase the property on the cheap and redevelop it with little or no regard for the history and character of the neighborhood and its residents.
Lu Ella Webster, now adult programs coordinator for the RCLC, was among the doubters.
“There was no relationship, really, with Notre Dame,” said Webster, a lifelong resident of the Northeast Neighborhood and onetime president of the Northeast Neighborhood Council, the oldest continually operating neighborhood organization in the city. “Growing up in this neighborhood, residents were scared to go on campus and students were scared and told not to come into the neighborhood. So that relationship was not there.”
To be sure, such concerns were not unwarranted.
Neglect of inner-city neighborhoods everywhere during the latter half of the 20th century had eroded trust in governments and institutions to act right by residents. While urban renewal, the well-meaning but short-sighted response to urban blight across much of the US, had mercifully missed the Northeast Neighborhood, the enduring lessons of the federally funded program had not. For those in the way of “progress,” President Ronald Reagan’s quip about government incompetence and inefficiency rang true: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”
Even among members of the campus community, views of the project were mixed.
“There was a lot of opposition at the start,” said Lou Nanni, a Notre Dame alumnus who was vice president of public affairs and communications at the time. “There were people who thought it was foolhardy. ‘This isn’t the mission of the University.’ And Monk was the one—and Father John after him—to say no, this is important.”
Now vice president for University relations, Nanni, who formerly led the Center for Homeless in South Bend, recalled Father Malloy emphasizing the importance of being a good neighbor to South Bend, something his successor, Rev. John. I. Jenkins, C.S.C., would go on to stress as well.
“We said to ourselves, ‘You can’t be a great Catholic university if your next-door neighbors don’t think you care about them,’” Nanni said. “And for many years, the people of the Northeast Neighborhood felt that they were treated, at best, with benign neglect. In fact, they even felt like there were promises made to them that were not fulfilled by a lot of well-meaning Notre Dame faculty and staff. So, the feeling toward Notre Dame was jaded.”
The RCLC mural
Anyone who's set foot in the Northeast Neighborhood over the past 25 years likely recognizes the colorful mural that adorns the outside of the Robinson Community Learning Center.
Designed by RCLC students in collaboration with Chicago-based artist Bernard Williams, the mural consists of a series of panels promoting learning and peacebuilding and depicting daily life in the neighborhood. It also features various heroes and role models.
The mural was originally created in the early 2000s. When the RCLC moved to its current location in 2020, it was replicated on the outside of the new building.
Committed to doing better by its neighbors, the University took the then-unusual step of engaging directly with residents around the issue of what do with the property, in the process establishing an inclusive, common-sense model of engagement that persists between the University and the surrounding community to this day.
Led by the late Rev. Donald McNeill, C.S.C., founding director of the Center for Social Concerns (now the Institute for Social Concerns), the University organized focus groups to gather input from residents, quickly landing on the idea of transforming a portion of the former shopping center into a community center. It then conducted a door-to-door survey of residents and met with local congregations, area school administrators, and vested community members to program the center, with four areas of focus emerging: youth tutoring, gathering and event space, computer classes for adults, and senior programming.
Marguerite Taylor, Renelda Robinson’s daughter and a lifelong resident of the Northeast Neighborhood, was involved from the start, working alongside Father McNeill and the late Jay Caponigro, then director of urban programs for the Center for Social Concerns, in a relationship-building capacity.
Now 82, Taylor recalls being surprised and impressed by the level of outreach—particularly given the history of estrangement between the University and community at the time.
“I was not real convinced in the beginning, but the University reached out to the neighborhood and had meetings all over the neighborhood,” Taylor said. “They asked, what do you want? What would you like the University to do?”
The center opened in January 2001, with Caponigro, a Notre Dame alumnus and former community organizer, serving as the inaugural director. Taylor, his trusted No. 2, immediately got to work “peopling” the center’s programs, which at the time included tutoring, youth development, computer and English language classes for adults, and events and activities for seniors.
At a ribbon cutting and open house the following month, Nanni, alongside other campus and community leaders and residents, addressed the challenge ahead, saying, in part, “We’re going to have a lot of bumps. It’s not going to be easy; it never is. But I do believe we can do something great here.”
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.
Since 2001, amid triumphs and setbacks, including a worldwide financial crisis and a global pandemic, the center has served as a vital source of social and educational support for residents of the Northeast Neighborhood and beyond, engaging thousands of children, teens, and adults from three distinct locations, including its primary home along Eddy Street and two remote sites: at Sunnyside Presbyterian Church and Notre Dame West, both in South Bend.
The Eddy Street location, featuring a licensed preschool classroom, black box theater, makerspace, and outdoor greenspace, opened in 2020, replacing the original building across the street with its beloved yet cramped and timeworn interior and less than ideal location and layout. For years, the center was unable to license its preschool program because of peculiarities related to the shape and condition of the building. It also lacked space and common amenities.
Clockwise from top left: Students participate in the VEX Robotics Program at the RCLC; a logo adorns the RCLC building on Eddy Street in South Bend; students enjoy a visit from Academy Award-nominated actor Adam Driver, who grew up in nearby Mishawaka; children play with modeling clay inside the preschool classroom at the RCLC.
The result of years of planning, the new facility features 12,600 square feet of classroom, office, and common space. It represents the collective vision of those most closely aligned with the center, down to the paneled mural on the outside of the building, which is a replica of the one that used to adorn the old building.
Long recognized as an unofficial landmark within the Northeast Neighborhood, the mural was among a number of items on the wish list for the new facility based on feedback from students and staff.
“One of the things we asked everybody that had anything to do with the Robinson Center was, ‘What do you want to keep from the old building?’ And the top two choices were a gathering space in the front and the murals. So, they’re still there,” said Jennifer Knapp Beudert, who led the RCLC from 2010 to 2023, during both the planning and construction phases of the facility.
Thankfully missing from the new space: the cramped quarters that for so long characterized the old building.
“We were bursting at the seams,” Knapp Beudert recalled of the original space. “We had offices in closets.”
Speaking at the dedication and blessing of the building, Father Jenkins evoked Robinson, the center’s namesake, saying, in part, “Renelda Robinson often prayed: ‘Thank you, God, for one more day in this life, and let me do some good in it.’ We gather this day to give you thanks for the great gift the Robinson Community Learning Center has been to this community, and for the gift that this new building will be in helping us ‘do some good.’”
Remembering the late Renelda Robinson
The RCLC is named for the late Renelda Robinson, who helped to unify the city’s northeast side into a true neighborhood over many decades.
A lifelong resident of the Northeast Neighborhood, Robinson served as director of the Northeast Neighborhood Center from 1977 to 1996. She was a social worker for the South Bend Housing Authority and the city’s Redevelopment Department from 1970 to 1977. Early in her career, she worked for St. Joseph Hospital (now St. Joseph Health System) part time.
Robinson’s daughter, Marguerite Taylor, was among the first employees of the RCLC.
Opening during the pandemic, the center could offer only limited programming at first, but students and staff adjusted.
“It wasn’t how we envisioned it, but that was one of the trademarks of the Robinson Center,” Andy Kostielney, who served as associate director of the center for 19 years, said. Borrowing a phrase from former longtime staffer Luther Tyson, “We ‘lifted and shifted.’ We had this brand-new space that we couldn’t use as intended, so we had to figure out how to make it work.”
Along with Caponigro, Knapp Beudert developed a 40-page plan for safely re-opening the center to a limited number of students. Webster kept tabs on the center’s senior members.
“Lu Ella was a rock star,” Knapp Beudert said. “She got on the phone and called those seniors every week to see how they were doing and to make sure they were OK, because a lot of them were just homebound.”
That spirit continues to characterize the center to this day.
“My mantra is: What does the community need? What are people looking for?” Devetski, the current director, said. “And then let’s pivot.”
Take youth and early childhood programming.
As part of a renewed commitment to early childhood education, the center has grown its state-licensed preschool program from 15 to 55 students, ages 2–5, while helping to boost the number of certified early childhood educators in the area.
At the same time, it has expanded its Talk With Your Baby program with support from Early Learning Indiana and Lilly Endowment Inc. and in partnership with the City of South Bend. Since 2023, the program has grown from one part-time staff member to six full-time members, with outreach expanding to more than 1,000 parents and infants across five counties annually.
More recently, the center initiated a five-sport summer program and became a designated National Junior Tennis and Learning site by the USTA Foundation in an effort to build resilience and mitigate negative mental health effects post-COVID. Last summer, students spent one day each week practicing a self-selected sport, choosing among tennis, golf, skating, baseball, and basketball. They had opportunities to learn about teamwork and persistence and build a sense of belonging and self-confidence in the process. Enrollment in the summer academic program jumped by 50 percent compared with the previous year. Tennis continues throughout the academic year at both the RCLC and area schools.
Senior programming has also expanded, with new cooking and yoga classes, mah-jongg, and a “senior prom”—part of an effort to engage older members of the community struggling to reemerge socially from the pandemic.
Naturally, given its origins, the center engages closely with the campus community as well.
Last year alone, more than 400 Notre Dame students volunteered with the center, mostly as tutors to students in grades 1 through 12.
“That really speaks to the University,” Devetski said. “It speaks to who our students are and what they value. These are busy kids that are doing lots and lots of different things, and at a very rigorous university, and yet they are donating hundreds of hours to the South Bend community kids.”
Consisting of tutoring, enrichment activities, and so-called “Fun Fridays,” the tutoring program runs Monday through Friday from 3:30 to 7:00 p.m. Tutors are paired with a student to work one-on-one for an entire semester, a minimum of two days per week. Many tutors return to work with the same student year after year, forming lasting relationships that span the campus-community divide.
Cheyenne Stewart, a neuroscience and behavior major from Terre Haute, Indiana, started volunteering with the RCLC as a sophomore, initially working with elementary students before graduating to middle and high school students—always with a sense of enthusiasm.
Now a senior, she describes “building a genuine connection with a student over many weeks or semesters” as one of the most rewarding parts of the experience.
“Some students may not receive much academic encouragement outside of these sessions, so I make it my mission to express how proud I am of them and how much potential I see in each one of them,” she said.
That includes her current student, who is in eighth grade.
“I still remember the first time I told (him) I was proud of him,” she said. “He looked genuinely taken aback and then smiled for what felt like the next 10 minutes,” she said. “Moments like that remind me why encouraging strong academic habits in the next generations matters so much.”
The experience has led to personal discovery and self-improvement as well.
“I’ve developed patience, creative problem solving, and a deeper understanding of how people learn differently. I’ve come to learn that tutoring is not always about reaching the correct answer; it’s about watching a student develop, process information, and find an approach that genuinely makes sense to them. Every session I leave feeling fulfilled, and my time (at the RCLC) has only deepened my commitment to supporting education throughout my life, whether through volunteering, mentorship, or my future career.”
The center also takes advantage of its proximity to campus to organize field trips for students to the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art and DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, among other venues, exposing them to world-class arts and culture. And it invites faculty, staff, and student-athletes to the center to engage with kids around a variety of subjects.
The center’s English as a New Language (ENL) program, a partnership with the South Bend Community School Corp., continues to have an outsized impact as well, offering on-site language classes to men and women of all ages and literacy levels. In many cases, ENL students enroll their children in RCLC programs, contributing to a more diverse student population.
Magda Arguello, originally from Paraguay, did just that, enrolling her then only son in the preschool program.
Through her connections at the RCLC, she was later hired to teach kindergarten at Holy Cross School, a Catholic grade school in South Bend, as part of the school’s Spanish-English two-way immersion program—established in partnership with Notre Dame through the Institute for Latino Studies and Alliance for Catholic Education.
In 2023, the now mother of two was recognized with an ESPN/College Football Playoff Foundation Extra Yard for Teachers award. Former Notre Dame wide receiver and Heisman Trophy winner Tim Brown presented her with the award live on-air.
Now in the final stages of a transition to teaching program at Holy Cross College, Arguello, who just recently became a US citizen, credits the RCLC with helping her to plant roots in the community and inspiring her to give back to it.
“I really was impressed” with the RCLC, Arguello said. “When you want to learn another language in another country, it’s very expensive, and it was very incredible for me that (the RCLC) gives that kind of opportunity for someone to learn another language” free of charge.
Magda Arguello, originally from Paraguay, took English classes at the RCLC. Her oldest son attended preschool there. Today, the mother of two teaches kindergarten as part of an English-Spanish two-way immersion program at Holy Cross School in South Bend.
But the center’s impact extends beyond the individual to the physical landscape as well—and not just in the form of its own presence.
As an enduring model of inclusive community engagement, the center has helped to catalyze growth in the Northeast Neighborhood, demonstrating what’s possible when campus and community leaders join with residents to overcome decades of mutual suspicion and distrust and work toward a common goal: better quality of life and place for everyone.
This is perhaps most evident in the physical appearance of the neighborhood, which has transformed dramatically over the past 25 years.
Gone are the vacant and abandoned lots, replaced by new homes and businesses. Shops, restaurants, apartments, and condos now line Eddy Street, part of a mixed-used project spearheaded by Notre Dame in partnership with Kite Realty and the City of South Bend—and with valuable input and support from key members of the community. A new multipurpose pathway, The Link, opened in 2025, improving walkability between campus and downtown while beautifying strategic sections of Notre Dame Avenue.
Owing to such improvements and investments, the Northeast Neighborhood added more than 600 residents between 2010 and 2020, accounting for a quarter of all growth in South Bend during that time.
“When people look at everything that’s happened with Eddy Street Commons and the homes along Notre Dame Avenue, none of that occurs without the precursor being the RCLC,” Nanni said, describing the center as instrumental in the revitalization of the neighborhood along with the NNRO.
But more than that, he said, the center is, in the immortal words of Father Sorin, a “powerful means for good in the world”—and at a key moment for higher education in the US, as Notre Dame and institutions like it seek to demonstrate their value to society amid an ongoing crisis of confidence and lagging public support for the sector as a whole.
“Think of this: Fewer than 10 percent of the world’s population has a college degree,” Nanni said. “So, the question becomes, how is Notre Dame making itself relevant to the other 90 percent? How are these highly selective universities making an impact on society beyond the elevation of their own students? And that begins right next door at the Robinson Community Learning Center.”