Dr. William Robiner is the 2019 recipient of the Cynthia D. Belar Award for Excellence in Health Psychology Education and Training. He is Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
Dr. Robiner is among a small but significant group of senior psychologists in US medical schools today who have pushed the margins of psychology’s role and function in US medical schools and in particular at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine. His achievements stand out as solid examples of how psychologists can be exemplary citizens in these academic settings and serve as a strong role model for younger clinical health psychologists to emulate. He is a “triple threat” medical school faculty member serving as an active clinician, researcher and educator. Of these three activities, Dr. Robiner has made his most sustained and significant contributions as an educator. Dr. Robiner himself considers education and training as one of his most significant areas of contribution to his university, medical school psychology and to professional psychology in general.
Dr. Robiner’s educational activities and accomplishments are well known within the University of Minnesota Academic Health Science Center, where he trained as a clinical psychology intern. He went on to become the Associate Director and then Director of the Psychology Internship Training Program at Minnesota in the same program in which he received his training. He has served as the Internship Director for twenty-five years and in that capacity has directed the training of more than 130 psychology interns, leading the program through five cycles of successful accreditation. Five cycles of accreditation is a herculean effort of its own for anyone familiar with the APA Commission on Accreditation standards. For more than seven years, he directed the post-doctoral health psychology training program at the Minnesota University Medical Center.
Dr. Robiner has received numerous awards for his service and contributions as an educator within the University. In 1997, he was awarded the University of Minnesota Academic Professional Award. In 2011, Dr. Robiner was inducted into the Academy of Excellence in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at the University of Minnesota Academic Health Center. In the history of this Academy, Dr. Robiner was only the second member of the Medical School to be honored in this way, the most prestigious teaching award at this academic health center. He was recently the Co-PI of a grant from the Office of Faculty Affairs of the University of Minnesota Medical School to develop a mentoring program for the Division of General Internal Medicine to promote the career development of early career faculty. His role as Co-PI was to develop the program, help train faculty mentors, evaluate the program, as well as to serve as a mentor. In 2016, Dr. Robiner was awarded the University of Minnesota President’s Award for Outstanding Service to the University, honoring his contributions at and beyond the Medical School. He is only the second Medical School faculty member to be honored with this recognition.
Within the State of Minnesota, Dr. Robiner has been a tireless advocate for education, training, and licensure. He wrote the white paper which argued for the doctoral degree as the basis for psychology licensing in the state. It was distributed to the Minnesota legislature and played a pivotal role in changing the statutes governing licensing of psychologists in Minnesota to conform with the national standards promulgated by APA and ASPPB. It was later modified for publication in the Clinical Psychology Review, and remains one of the few academic articles in the literature addressing the doctoral standard for psychology licensure with special relevance today.
Dr. Robiner is a founding member of the Minnesota APA-Accredited Psychology Internship Centers (MAAPIC). MAAPIC hosts two annual trainings for psychology interns in local programs and mentors new directors of psychology internship training.
Dr. Robiner together with Bruce Bobbitt and Michael Fuhrman constructed one of the most widely used objective measures of supervised training in clinical psychology known as the Minnesota Supervisory Inventory (MSI, 1994). The MSI and other quality assessment and improvement tools he developed for the U of M Psychology Internship (e.g., evaluation of supervisors, program evaluation) have been incorporated in more than 70 psychology internships and doctoral programs as part of their evaluative self-study processes. The MSI was showcased in the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (1998) Report of the ASPPB Task Force on Supervision Guidelines as a model evaluative tool in supervision. These materials have been updated in response to regulatory, professional, and the educational developments, such as the new Standards of Accreditation for Health Service Psychology.
In 2012, his wider national achievements were recognized by the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology with the awarding of the Alfred M. Wellner Distinguished Career Psychologist Award. He is among the most consistent and strongest voices for board certification for professional psychologists especially clinical health psychologists. He was the first board certified Clinical Health Psychologist in Minnesota, currently serves as an examiner for ABPP-Clinical Health, and has arranged for board exams to be conducted annually at the University of Minnesota.
Finally, Dr. Robiner represents psychology to the wider medical, educational and clinical practice communities. Since 2018 he has served as one of two representatives from the Association of Psychologists in Academic Health Centers (APAHC) to the Council of Faculty and Academics Societies (CFAS) of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). The CFAS is comprised of leaders in American medicine with deans, department chairs, specialty training directors, medical society presidents and professional society members. The importance and influence of the AAMC cannot be undervalued. It is the organization that has the single most influence on American medicine and the healthcare system. In this forum, Dr. Robiner and Dr. Laura Schaffer as psychology representatives are able to address and interact with some of the most significant leaders in academic and clinical medicine. The APAHC presence in this group has been one of the most important network connections for medical and health psychology, increasing the visibility of all psychologists in these settings. In a very real way Dr. Robiner is a true inter-professional educator and champion for psychology in medical settings.
Dr. Robiner’s many accomplishments in health education and training make him a most deserving recipient of the Cynthia Belar Award for Excellence in Health Psychology and Education. He is an exemplary member of the Society for Health Psychology and a role model for younger health psychologists to emulate.
