the University in 1946. The Institute's Center for Political Studies, under the direction of Professor Warren E. Miller of this department, includes fifteen members of the department's staff through joint appointments. It now provides research facilities and support for the training of a large proportion of the graduate students of the department. Employing the techniques and methodology of empirical research, rather than the normative, descriptive, and analytical approach characteristic of earlier stages in the development of political science as a field of study, the department's offerings now heavily emphasize political behavior studies. These changes were initiated mainly during the chairmanship of Professor Eldersveld during the 1960s. They reflected developments then becoming prevalent in the political science profession itself; and the adaptations and innovations that have been made in the department's main focus of interest and research have been responsible in a very fundamental way for the high ranking it currently enjoys in the nation.
Reflective of the University's continually broadening range of interests has been the department's participation in the offering of area programs of study as well as others directed toward intensive study of specific aspects of American society. Area programs with which the department is currently associated through course offerings include those connected with centers for studies on Japan, China, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Western Europe, South and Southeast Asia, Afro-America and Africa, and the Near East and Northern Africa. The department has had a close relationship with the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, maintained jointly by the University and Wayne State University. Programs of a specialized nature in which the department's staff have played prominent roles in recent years have included, among others, the Flint Metropolitan Area research program, the Detroit Area Survey, the Center for Conflict Resolution, and an interdepartmental Ph.D. program in Mass Communications.
The department's current personnel is made up of 27 Professors, 11 Associate Professors, 10 Assistant Professors, and 5 Lecturers and/or Instructors, as well as several additional visiting scholars. Since 1977 former President of the United States Gerald R. Ford, who holds the title of