Biography

Carleton Forman Scofield was born on August 8, 1900 in Trenton, New Jersey. He received his undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., in 1921, majoring in psychology and English literature. He received his doctorate in psychology at Yale University in 1928. Several years after retiring from academia, he married Laura Louttit. Scofield died on March 13, 1990.

Scofield served for 28 years as a professor of psychology at the University of Buffalo in New York. In 1942, he joined the US Office of Strategic Services, which later became the Central Intelligence Agency. He served in Washington, DC; New Delhi, India; and Kandy, Ceylon, Sri Lanka. In Ceylon, working as the operational planning officer for the Southeast Area Command, he sent agents into Japanese-occupied territory to develop new intelligence sources. He received a War Department citation for exceptional civilian service for this work.

He returned to teach at Buffalo, then joined the Human Resources Research Office in Washington, DC in 1952 to direct psychological warfare research in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Europe, and China. From 1956-1958, he served as the chief cultural affairs officer and attache to the US Embassy in Pakistan. He returned to the United States in 1958 and continued to travel, teaching in Florida, Washington, DC, and New York.

Scofield joined the University of Kansas City in 1960 as executive assistant to the president and director of graduate studies. He became vice president for academic affairs in 1961. When UKC President Richard Drake resigned, Scofield took over the position. He guided the university through its transition from private to public status when it joined the University of Missouri System in 1963. That year, Scofield became the first chancellor of the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He retired in 1965 but continued to speak on education issues as chancellor emeritus. Scofield published A History of the University of Kansas City: Prologue to a Public Urban University in 1976.

The UM System Board of Curators named a administration building on the Kansas City campus for Scofield in 1976.