ORONO – After 30 years, Robert Cobb is ready for a change in routine.

Cobb, 65, the longest-serving dean in the University of Maine’s history, is slated to retire from his College of Education position at the end of the month.

Cobb said Friday he thought retirement may take some adjustment.

On a typical morning, Cobb heads to Pat’s Pizza for coffee with the other regular customers, making it to the office by about 7:30 a.m.

“I can see myself continuing to go to Pat’s for coffee, [but] I won’t be making the trip across the bridge and up here to the office,” Cobb said Friday while sitting in his office. “It’s going to be different.”

Looking around the office lined with paintings representing Maine – a place Cobb loves – one can easily determine his priorities.

“Family comes first,” he said, a point made obvious by the neatly arranged framed photos of children and grandchildren that occupied a large portion of his desk.

On a stand near the window, a replica of a typical old-fashioned little red school house sits in a special place.

“This has been such a treadmill in many ways,” Cobb said. “You just keep going and going and going, and there seems to be no end to the workload.”

But it’s a workload Cobb has enjoyed and takes pride in.

“In universities, we tend to involve ourselves in long-range endeavors, and that tends to keep us engaged,” he said.

One of the reasons Cobb said he stayed so long is that he always wanted to see those endeavors through to the end.

“It’s in some ways the nature of the institution that keeps us going,” Cobb said. “It’s unusual to be in a role for as long as I have, but it’s a measure of how much I’ve loved what I do.”

The dean said he isn’t one who spends much time reflecting because there’s always a new project to think about. But looking back to when he assumed the role of dean in 1977, Cobb said there was one significant obstacle he had to tackle immediately.

“The major challenge facing the college was to reconnect with the public schools of the state,” he said.

With the multiple missions of the university – teaching, research and service – it’s sometimes easy for one to overshadow the others, he explained.

In the early 1970s, the emphasis was on swinging the university toward research.

At the time, Cobb asked himself, “How can you prepare teachers for the schools that you don’t know?”

He began working to re-engage the university with elementary and secondary schools in the state to determine what teachers needed to know. Cobb also worked to maintain a proper emphasis on research and service.

“I met systematically with hundreds of teachers all over,” he said. “I would just sit and I would listen.”

Over the years, the roles of a teacher and schools have changed.

“Teachers, I think, are challenged today like at no other time in education to be different things to all individuals in their classrooms,” Cobb said.

To learn to do this, it takes a different kind of program than when colleges were churning out teachers as fast as possible to deal with the increasing number of students in schools because of America’s baby boom.

Now it’s about getting teachers hands-on experience “early and often,” Cobb said.

Building relationships with Maine’s schools early in his career at UM continues to help advance the College of Education in other ways.

By creating relationships outside the university, external funding through grants and other sources has increased dramatically and helped make up for a shortfall in resources.

Using outside funds, Cobb has helped support programs such as Upward Bound and Maine Educational Talent Search that help prepare high school students for college.

Similar funds have been put toward research initiatives, including the Institute for the Study of Students at Risk.

Grant funds also have been obtained to help Maine’s rural schools deal with teacher shortages in specific areas, such as math and special education.

Another milestone in Cobb’s career is an attention to the literacy needs of Maine’s elementary school pupils and helping train teachers to address the needs of those who fall below literacy benchmarks for their age group.

“It’s important in virtually every profession and everybody’s lives,” he said.

Cobb describes the program, which continues today, as “life-altering” for elementary school pupils.

“How could you even not want to develop a system to help those kids when they need it the most,” he said.

UM prepares the literacy specialists who go out into Maine schools and teaches teachers how to help students become better readers.

“We just keep advancing our knowledge of literacy,” Cobb said.

Sports Done Right is another program the dean notes as a highlight in his career.

According to its Web site, the program provides a working philosophical base for guiding youth sports, linking sports to the overall school mission and community values, while supporting quality coaching education.

“I’m proud that Maine can serve as a national leader on a number of fronts,” Cobb said.

These and the numerous other programs and initiatives Cobb has helped cultivate all stem from the relationships Cobb fostered in the 1970s.

“I think there’s a level of mutual trust that’s generated from that,” he said.

As for the education college’s future, Cobb said resources and funding always will be an obstacle, but he’s confident the program will continue to prosper.

The dean said he has benefited from a stable, resourceful, and enthusiastic faculty, but realizes that they too will be ready to move on and retire at some point.

Continuing to balance the university’s missions of teaching, research and service while making sure people who join the education department in the future will continue to help the university, college and state achieve their goals will be a challenge, he noted.

There will be a national search for a replacement, and if approved by the board of trustees, Anne Pooler, UM College of Education associate dean, will serve as interim dean until the search is completed.

“Things are going to be in good hands,” Cobb said. “I don’t fear for its future at all, and that’s a comforting feeling.”