Bucklin, Harold S.

Harold Stephen Bucklin (1886-1967), professor of political science and sociology, was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on November 4, 1886. He graduated from Brown in 1910. While he was an undergraduate, he was also principal of the Evening Grammar School in Pawtucket from 1908 to 1910. From 1910 to 1913 he taught school in Ironwood, Michigan, after which he was resident and playground director at the Henry Street Settlement in New York while he was a graduate student at the New York School of Social Work, where he received a master of arts degree in 1915. He came back to Brown as instructor in social science in 1915 and earned his Ph.D. degree in 1918. He was named assistant professor in 1918, associate professor of social science in 1926. In 1923-24 in connection with the Brown-in-China program as professor of sociology at Shanghai College, he directed a social settlement center and helped college students conduct a survey of a Chinese village. Bucklin specialized in social problems, surveys, and social legislation. He was involved with many of the social institutions in Rhode Island and served as chairman of the Americanization Commission in 1919 and member of the Children’s Law Commission in 1926 and of the Juvenile Court Commission in 1938. In 1922 he published a series of articles surveying the institutions dealing with disadvantaged children. His title was changed to associate professor of sociology in 1929, and full professor in 1949. He was chairman of Sociology within the Department of Political Science and Sociology in 1946, and from 1947 to 1948 chairman of the separate Department of Sociology. He retired in 1951. He died on September 29, 1967, while visiting his daughter in Elyria, Ohio.