The veteran sport psychologist and former Olympian is championing dignity and wellbeing as core to young artists’ pursuit of high performance.

By Jana F. Brown

Robin Scholefield ’84, Ph.D., was conducting her first colloquium session with new dancers at USC Kaufman when a breakthrough occurred.

Scholefield was already impressed by the active student participation, especially considering it was their first time together in that novel setting. Then, one first-year student shared that they had stepped away from dance for a month during their senior year of high school. That vulnerability of acknowledging that they had questioned their purpose and identity in dance created a ripple effect — one Scholefield won’t soon forget.

“I thought it was incredibly courageous,” says Scholefield, the former senior associate athletic director of culture, wellbeing and sport psychological services at USC. “This person had been on campus only a few days with this new cohort at one of the most elite dance programs in the country. Within a few minutes, three or four more students came forward and said, ‘I did, too.’ These elite athlete-performers needed time to recover, regroup, and re-establish their relationship with dance.”

Scholefield was thrilled that students quickly picked up that they were working to create a judgment-free environment, one that allowed them to feel safe enough to express doubt, conceding the challenges of the pressure-filled landscape that comes with their artform. That’s exactly what Scholefield is trying to do in the weekly sessions she conducts with small cohorts of Kaufman dancers — create a platform for discussing issues that affect their wellness in their pursuit of excellence.

Although she’s in year 28 of her USC tenure, Scholefield has been working with Kaufman for less than a year, ever since being introduced to Dean Julia Ritter. The two bonded immediately and discovered they shared similar values and ideals for the community at Kaufman.

“I’ve come to know [Dean Ritter] as an incredibly dynamic leader,” Scholefield says. “In terms of our values around high-performing environments, we really lined up well. We want to invite and inspire, have this work be of Kaufman, and make it a place where people really love working, not just because it’s USC, but because of the culture and relationships. Two of Kaufman’s values are excellence and community, and that’s what I’m all about, so it’s a good fit.”

The meeting between Scholefield and Ritter sparked conversations about healthy culture-building at the dance school and how Kaufman can take ownership of that culture. Faculty and staff have been introduced to the approach, and a working group has been established to help them craft and embrace their culture goals as a school. Meanwhile, the vibrant student sessions encourage personal vulnerability, with a focus on dignity and wellbeing in the pursuit of high-performance.

“The concepts resonated with the students immediately,” Scholefield explains, “They know what it’s like to be objectified in the elite dancing world.”

Scholefield is no stranger to settings with elevated expectations, having competed at an elite level in swimming from a young age. Well before her arrival at USC, where she was a Division I swimmer as an undergraduate, she earned a bronze medal at age 13 at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal as a member of Canada’s 400-meter medley relay team.

While the right mindset was central to her own athletic career, Scholefield didn’t initially see it as her potential career. She studied business as an undergraduate at USC and dabbled in investment banking on Wall Street for a couple of years before moving overseas for work. Her eventual interest in psychology stemmed from her early athletic experiences, particularly observing teammates who worked hard but didn’t achieve the same success, an insight she attributed largely to mindset differences and a sense of self beyond sport.

“I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if you could take that [growth] mindset, apply it to the average person, and help them make their lives better?’” Scholefield recalls asking herself.

After taking a year off to volunteer at an orphanage in East Africa, Scholefield decided to pursue psychology. She went to McGill University for a year to take prerequisite courses and returned to graduate school to study clinical psychology, with an emphasis in multicultural and community mentality. An internship at USC’s counseling center eventually led to her appointment as director of sport psychology.

It was only last year that Scholefield took a step back from the front lines after 27 years, feeling it was the right time to transition away from the 24/7 demands of handling mental health emergencies and performance crises. She remains the co-executive director of the USC Athletics Performance Science Institute, continuing her research on the student-athlete experience, with a focus on relationships, belonging, and wellbeing.

“We like to believe that super-talented people have unique genes,” says Scholefield, who also serves as a consultant to Kaufman and as a professor in the Department of Psychology. “Anybody really accomplished will tell you they didn’t just walk on the stage as a dancer and their talent did it all for them; they put in thousands of hours of hard work. Statistically we’re all mostly average. I think the celebration is that, within the messiness that is our humanity, we are able to do extraordinary things. High-performance is about people who believe in — and are willing to do — the work that builds their competence and, in turn, their confidence.”

At Kaufman, Scholefield’s approach starts with helping student dancers understand that their inherent worth is independent of achievement outcome and is fortified through living their values and eventually their purpose. She also emphasizes that growth happens through striving and that resilience is learned through facing obstacles within a healthy and supportive ecosystem. In dance particularly, Scholefield addresses the challenge of subjective performance evaluation, where students may not be selected for a particular job for reasons unrelated to their performance.

Growth mindset, Scholefield continues, can be elusive because it requires embracing failure as a part of the learning process, instead of a threat to your entire being. It’s a concept many people are reluctant to accept, one that’s compounded by the messages of social media. People in many industries are trying to build careers on highlight moments rather than real mastery that comes from years of commitment, sacrifice, and work that bring fulfillment that’s impossible to experience from a short-term investment.

“Failure is the pathway to success,” Scholefield explains. “Michael Jordan speaks to the many baskets he missed as part of what made him successful. Young people are afraid that if they goof up, someone will capture it with huge negative consequences. Courage to try new things is down. We want to create an environment [at Kaufman] that builds courage. It’s about helping people appreciate that mistakes are not shameful, but rather a part of mastery.”

The concept of inherent worth — independent of individual acclaim — is not intuitive to younger generations, Scholefield adds, which is understandable given societal pressures. The elusiveness is intensified by an overall cultural shift that prioritizes accomplishment over character.

“Personal worth based exclusively on performance comes at the expense of the person,” Scholefield says. “Worth contingent on outcomes beyond our control (wins and losses or selection for a cast) may create an unstable and even risky foundation for high performers.”

Creating a safe space for failure is essential for Kaufman dancers to push boundaries and develop skills without fear of judgment or failure. At the organizational level, Scholefield emphasizes the development of interpersonal skills for high-performing environments. Her belief that “all change happens between two people at a time” is foundational to the culture-building principles she’s sharing with Kaufman students, faculty, and staff. The goal, she notes, is to create a relentlessly respectful culture, while maintaining optimal standards.

“Whether it’s individual or collective growth, health, or performance, the research points to respectful, healthy, and empowering relationships as the basis,” Scholefield says. “What exactly makes a relationship respectful? It’s not about everyone being best friends, but everyone feeling safe, respected, and acknowledged. It doesn’t mean everyone gets what they want, but it means we treat each other with respect and give each other the benefit of the doubt. And that includes how we interact with the rest of the University.”

In her collaboration with Dean Ritter at Kaufman, Scholefield is introducing the idea that respect is deserved regardless of status. The priority is to make Kaufman a place where people love to be together because of the ideals of its community. Her efforts aim to align the lived experience of students, faculty, and staff with Kaufman’s stated values of excellence and community, ensuring that the pursuit of high-performance supports — rather than undermines — wellbeing and relationships.

“I’m drawn to Dr. Scholefield’s work because she’s developed her deeply humane, philosophical approach to fostering healthy, high-performance athletic cultures through decades of clinical practice and research,” Ritter says. “At USC, there are significant and often overlooked parallels between student-athletes — Division I ‘sports-athletes’ and Kaufman’s ‘artist-athletes’ (specifically BFA Dance majors) — who face similar challenges: intense physical training, mental and emotional strain, and the pressure to balance performance demands with academic responsibilities. Dr. Scholefield recognizes this, and our entire Kaufman community benefits from her commitment to prioritizing dignity and purpose-driven identities over achievement alone.”