Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies

The Kansas legislature provided for establishment of a Bureau of Child Research at the University of Kansas in 1921 (1922?), leaving organizational structure to the university administration. The bureau was not activated until the 1930s when budgetary problems made it short-lived. Reactivation came in June of 1954 with Dr. Ethan P. Allen, director of the Governmental Research Center, serving as bureau director until it could be reorganized as an independent division. Others included on staff at that early period were Donald Pilcher, assistant director of non-clinical research, and B. W. Tucker as a part-time research associate.

New emphasis on activities of the Bureau of Child Research came with the appointment in 1956 of Dr. Richard L. Schiefelbusch as director. He was to provide coordination of effort among the dozen K.U. divisions in Lawrence and at the Medical Center in Kansas City that were already concerned with research, training, and state service for children in Kansas. The new organizational pattern would also intensify and enlarge K.U.’s contribution to the statewide Institute for Exceptional Children.

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