Professor Donald M. Baer accepted the award on behalf of the Department and presented a paper titled: “…and Only 25 Years after The Behavior of Organisms. Description of the Department of Human Development and Family Life, University of Kansas”
Abstract
The University of Kansas’ Department of Human Development and Family
Life (HDFL) was formed in 1963 by Professor Richard Schiefelbusch, Director
of the University’s Bureau of Child Research, and Dr. Frances Horowitz,
research associate in a soon-to-be-disbanded Department of Home Economics.
They formed HDFL from Home Economics’ division of Child Study. Newly
staffed, HDFL attracted students to its degree programs, as well as federal
research and training grants. The University already had a well-established
Department of Psychology, so HDFL was free to specialize. It was designed as
a three-part structure: (a) a division using behavior analysis to understand
human development and to ameliorate its problems; (b) a division analyzing
intellectual development as empirically researchable discrimination process;
and (c) a division pursuing the experimental analysis of biological bases of
development. As the next 35 years unfolded, that plan was followed, but with
the first component evolving steadily into more behavior-analytic application,
the second becoming an examination of the potential usefulness of cognitive
science in its pursuits, and the third concentrating increasingly on pharmacological
influences on behavior. In the process, HDFL grew from a half-dozen to a department
of 20 full-time faculty and more than 80 adjunct and courtesy faculty.
