Newsletter

I’ve been a BCBA since 2007, but have been working in behavior analysis since 1995.

I did my undergraduate training under Carl Cheney at Utah State University. Our lab was an intensely behavioral group. The graduate training in behavior analysis had been discontinued so Dr. Cheney treated the undergrads that gravitated towards behavior analysis like his graduate students. He pushed us very hard to adopt behavior analytic principles and terminology into our everyday lives. Additionally, we had access to an animal lab, which gave us the opportunity to become really well acquainted with the basic principles of behavior analysis.  One fun project we completed was to replicate some of Skinner’s classic projects like the Columbian Simulations (I encourage anyone unfamiliar with this work he did with Epstein to look it up). I think the greatest evidence of the outstanding training that I received came a few years ago when Carl received ABAI’s mentor of the year award. I know it meant a lot to him, and his former students certainly felt it as well deserved.

Interestingly, my advisor from graduate school, David Wacker, was a recipient of the same award, so clearly I’ve had the opportunity to be trained by some of the best mentors in the field.  I got my Ph.D. in school/pediatric psychology under Dr. Wacker. Dave taught me not only about applying behavior analytic principles to solving the problems encountered by individuals with developmental disabilities, but he also taught me how to be a clinician, a professional, and a researcher. I owe a lot to these mentors, as well as many others with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside.

Currently I serve as the director of the Behavior Treatment Clinics and the program manager of the Severe Behavior Clinics at the Marcus Autism Center. I am also an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics in the Emory University School of Medicine, and teach as an adjunct at Georgia Institute of Technology. If that sounds like a mouthful, just imagine my poor kids at school on career day!

My time is split between overseeing many of the treatment programs at the Marcus Autism Center, carrying a caseload in the Severe Behavior Programs, and pursuing a research agenda.

Any successes I have had as a clinician have come about through the hard work of teams of many people, and most of all, by the parents of the kids I work with.  Having said that, I think many of us can remember a case or two where we felt as though such a dramatic change took place that for the rest of our careers we would be able to think back and know that all of that hard work was worth it because a family is so much better off. For me, one of those cases was a pair of 6 year old twins I worked with when I was teaching at Louisiana State University. They would both run away from their mother into dangerous situations, and because there were two of them that was a huge problem for her. We developed interventions that brought their elopement under very good control.  I still stay in touch with that mother and they continue to thrive at home, school, and in the community almost 7 years later.

I love to feel like I am making a difference. Whether that be through seeing interventions having their intended effects, watching as trainings become excited about our science, or through producing research that may influence the field in some way, it’s all about making a difference.

Well, as I describe above, I got my start on the experimental side of behavior analysis, working primarily with animals and doing basic research. I found it fascinating that behavior could be studied using a natural science approach.  That idea really resonated with me. I continue to read JEAB and encourage others to make sure that they stay current with the basic science side of our discipline. It is only being familiar with the latest science in our field that we can stay current in our applied work.

I once had the good fortune to sit with John Nevin at a banquet. I think he sat down next to me by mistake, but he was too polite to get up and move. He was one of the most knowledgeable, gracious people I’ve ever met. Though his writing in behavior analysis is of course brilliant, I was most impressed by the breadth of his expertise. He was quoting classical literature and famous philosophers right along with his explanations of the deepest principles of behavior analysis. If I had the chance, I would love to have that chance again.

Sometimes as behavior analysts we become overly obsessed with minutiae. I once heard a great behavior analyst bring a psychoanalytic flair to his comment about that when we said “We put the anal in behavior analysis”.