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, and 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: (1) a division using behavior analysis to understand human development and to ameliorate its problems; (2) a division analyzing intellectual development as empirically researchable discrimination process; and (3) 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 more and more on pharmacological influences on behavior. In the process, HDFL grew from a half-dozen to a department of 20 full-time faculty and more that 80 adjunct and courtesy faculty.
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