Submitted/Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies
Richard Schiefelbusch, left, was tapped by by President John F. Kennedy in 1963 to prepare the first guidelines for the federal program of applied research. He is pictured in Washington in November 1963 with Dr. Stafford Warren, Kennedy's special assistant on mental retardation.
Schiefelbusch Institute marks 50th anniversary
By Karen Henry
The Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies will commemorate the 50th anniversary of its modern era on Sept. 29 and 30 with a series of events including a tour of research, an address by Assistant U.S. Surgeon General Jose Cordero and a panel discussion with Cordero and other key national figures in disability policy. All events are open to the public.
"We mark our modern era from 1956 when Richard Schiefelbusch was given two rooms, a part-time secretary and the charge to bring to life an entity that existed in name only," said Steven Warren, institute director since 2001.
That name was the Bureau of Child Research and it became known around the world for its groundbreaking research in human development and disability.
Schiefelbusch put together a team of young speech specialists and behavioral psychologists who began to show that children with even severe mental retardation and almost no language could learn to communicate.
Research soon became more ambitious, funding was won and training a new generation of scientists and practitioners followed.
In 1964, the bureau and the community of Juniper Gardens in urban Kansas City, Kan. began a bold experiment. It was called the Juniper Gardens Children's Project and continues today producing widely used solutions for children at risk for academic failure.
By 1972, the bureau was a three-campus affiliation of scientists and clinicians at Parsons, Lawrence and the Kansas University Medical Center.
In 1990, the Bureau became the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies when it joined with gerontology to extend its purview to the entire life span.
Today, the Life Span Institute's 12 affiliated centers have 110 active programs and projects that are collaborations across scientific and geographic boundaries producing technology, practices and products. Last year close to 40,000 Kansans benefited from the institute's direct services, training and technical assistance.
"Our mission is really about inventing the future," said Warren. "Not simply reacting to what comes along, but turning knowledge we create into solutions that will impact the quality of life for generations to come."
The 12 centers of the Life Span Institute are the Kansas Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Center, the Kansas University Center on Developmental Disabilities, the Life Span Institute at Parsons, the Juniper Gardens Children's Project, the Beach Center on Disability, the Research and Training Center on Independent Living, the Gerontology Center, the Child Language Doctoral Program, the Biobehavioral Neurosciences in Communi- cations Disorders Center, the Merrill Advanced Studies Center, the Work Group on Health Promotion and Community Development, and the Center for Physical Activity and Weight Management.
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