Joseph Kauffman, 84; Helped Develop the Peace Corps Program

Joseph Kauffman, 84, one of the architects of the Peace Corps in the early 1960s, died Friday of cancer, according to a representative from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He died at an assisted-living facility in Madison, where he had been a resident.

During the presidency of John F. Kennedy, Kauffman was based in the office of R. Sargent Shriver Jr., where he helped develop the Peace Corps program. Kauffman was appointed the program’s first director of training in 1961. He also helped establish recruitment centers and training programs on college and university campuses and he trained volunteers for overseas service.

He went from there to the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1965, where he was dean of student affairs and a professor of counseling. He left Madison in 1968 to become president of Rhode Island College and returned to the Wisconsin campus five years later as a professor in the department of educational administration. As an emeritus professor of educational administration at Madison, he taught an administration development seminar until 2004.

Born in 1921 in Providence, R.I., Kaufman was the son of an immigrant grocer. He served in the Army during World War II and credited the GI Bill for making his college and graduate level education possible. He earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Denver, a master’s degree Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and a doctorate at Boston University.