Mason Named as Chairman of Committee Surveying Position of Behavioral Sciences

Edwin S. Mason, Dean of the Graduate School of Public Administration, will head the Ford Foundation group now investigating the place of the behavioral sciences in the University.

McGeorge Bundy, Dean of the Faculty, announced Mason's appointment yesterday.

Mason will assume the duties of chairman of the nine man committee immediately. The group has been given $50,000 by the Ford Foundation to make the survey, and will report its findings and suggestions in a year.

Aiding the committee will be a three man team who will do all the interviewing and research for the project. Headed by Francis X. Sutton, lecturer in Social Relations, the research group include Robert E. Kuenue, instructor in Economics, and Mrs. Eleanor Maccoby lecturer in Social Relations.

Interviewing of members of the different departments under consideration has already been started, Sutton said yesterday. The committee is first gathering faculty opinions as to what can be done with the present resources in the behavioral sciences here. Eventually, the three intend to interview faculty members of all ranks and may even extend their questioning to graduate students and undergraduates.

The will also compile statistics covering all work in these fields, both in the College and in the many graduate schools. "Our problem is that the Ford Foundation has not set specific bounds on the area of the behavioral sciences," said Sutton. "We aren't quite sure of all the fields which we will eventually study."

Similar studies are now also being started at four other universities.