Items Vol. 24 No. 4 (1970)

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From 1947 to 1953 a special program of Area Research Training Fellowships and Travel Grants was offered by the Council; Elbridge Sibley served both as staff and member of the administrative committee. As staff of a Committee on Undergraduate Research Training, set up in 1953, he organized an experimental program of undergraduate research stipends and first-year graduate study fellowships, which was offered through 1956. He supervised the programs of International Conference Travel Grants, offered by the Council from 1957 to 1964, and of Auxiliary Research Awards offered in 1958-59 and 1961-62. Elbridge Sibley's first major study for the Council was focused on research training problems and published as Council Bulletin 58 in 1948, The Recruitment, Selection, and Training of Social Scientists. The second, Support for Independent Scholarship and Research, was published as a Council Monograph in 1951. These studies as well as The Education of Sociologists in the United States, which Elbridge Sibley prepared while on partial leave from the Council and which was published by Russell Sage Foundation in 1963, have been widely used throughout the academic world. His analyses, both published and unpublished, have provided the bases for repeated reviews of Council fellowship and grant policies and for the redesign of programs to meet changing needs and opportunities. The programs of the successive Committees on Faculty Research Fellowships (1950-60, 1960-64) and the current Committee on Faculty Research Grants (1964- ), for all of which Elbridge Sibley served as staff, reflect his continuing effort to ensure the most effective use of the resources available to the Council for these purposes. Of notable significance for the advance of social science research were his contributions to the programs of the Committees on Mathematical Training of Social Scientists, 1952-57, and on Mathematics in Social Science Research, 1958-64. An innovation under the former was the experimental offering in 1953 of a summer institute in mathematics for social scientists, providing special training not otherwise available. The development of the summer institute as an intensive training device adaptable to a variety of emerging needs was continued by Mr. Sibley for that committee, which sponsored five such institutes, and subsequently both for the Committee on Mathematics in Social Science Research, which held six institutes on mathematical models in social science research, and for the Committee on Research Training, 1955-59, which sponsored summer training institutes for research in a diversity of fields. For the Committee on Research Training Elbridge Sibley also participated in planning and organizing the Study of Economic Factors Affecting Graduate Student DECEMBER

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Careers, which was carried out with the aid of a joint advisory committee of the ACLS, NRC, and SSRC, of which he was a member, 1957-62. As a member of the research planning staff of the Council, Elbridge Sibley served first as Executive Secretary of the Joint Committee of the NRC and SSRC on Measurement of Opinion, Attitudes and Consumer Wants, under which important methodological studies were conducted during 1945-54. He served also as staff of the Committees on Social Stratification, 1952-53; Sociocultural Contexts of Delinquency, 1959-60; and Comparative Sociological Research, 1967-69; and coordinated the efforts of a conference group on social organization of the prison, 1956-57. Since 1963 he has participated as staff of the Committee on Sociolinguistics in planning and implementing the development of this new field. During 1963-69, as a member of the Conference Board's Commission on Human Resources and Advanced Education, he was closely concerned with the planning and execution of its study of the utilization of talent in American society. That constructive performance of the diverse tasks entrusted to Elbridge Sibley in these assignments itself required a unique combination of talents is obvious. The directors of the Council expressed their appreciation by adoption of the following resolution: "Resolved that the Board of Directors of the Social Science Research Council hereby recognizes the devotion, integrity, and competence with which Elbridge Sibley has administered its programs of fellowships and research grants for more than 25 years. We are all well aware that to thousands of the recipients of such awards he represents both the spirit and the reality of the Council's efforts to advance research and training in the social sciences. Few of the Council's Fellows will forget his concern both with perfecting their initial proposals and assisting and supporting their subsequent training and research programs. We note with particular pleasure and pride his achievements in connection with the committees on mathematical training and the use of mathematics in social science research. In acknowledgement of its profound appreciation of his dedicated service to the Council and his devotion to the highest standards of performance in both research and administration, the members of the Board express to Elbridge Sibley their admiration, respect, and deep gratitude." Looking at the rosters of recipients of Council fellowships and a variety of grants over the past quarter century, one director said, "Wise teachers know that they can claim only a limited responsibility for the successes of their students, and Elbridge Sibley's modesty would prevent him from claiming or even admitting more than a minor role for himself or the Council in the productivi-

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