Inside Behavior Analysis
Volume 1 | 2009 | Number 1
Applications Review Committee Update
By E. K. Morris
The Applications Review Committee (ARC) is comprised of Adam Derenne (University of North Dakota), Edward K. Morris, Chair (University of Kansas), and Ruth Anne Rehfeldt (Southern Illinois University). This is the committee’s second annual report. During the committee’s first half-year of its newly reconstituted existence (January-May, 2008), we reviewed a variety of documents that described the ABAI full member requirements and their required documentation (e.g., the ABAI By-laws, membership application form). We clarified them, prepared a document describing them in full, and submitted the document last May as our annual report to the ABAI Membership Board and ABAI Executive Council. After Council reviewed and approved this document in May, ABAI’s Chief Operating Officer (CEO), Maria Malott, and senior staff member, Majda Seuss, began preparing a revised “Full Member Application Requirements and Checklist” form based on it. Last October, they replaced the old Full Member Application Requirements and Checklist with it at ABAI’s Web site and in the ABA Newsletter for ABAI’s 2009 membership renewal and drive.
However, it was eventually determined that document and process could be strengthened even further. To assist us, ABAI substantially improved the ABAI Portal through which we process the applications. ABAI also had staff members begin prescreening the applications for the documentation requirements and request further documentation where needed. If the further documentation was not provided within 30 days, the applicants were awarded affiliate member status. ABAI’s contributions here lessened the committee’s workload, which is to apply the full member requirements to the applications; not to request documentation. Still, more opportunities to improve full membership review were identified.
One possible way to strengthen ARC would be to develop a membership form that could be submitted along with the applicant’s vitas. The form would require complete documentation of the full member requirements and would be specific and detailed enough that the ARC could easily detect where the documentation is incomplete. This would obviate any need for ABAI to prescreen applications, make the committee members’ work easier, and increase our reliability. Currently, such a form is being developed for testing at our respective universities. When it reliably prompts fully documented applications, we will request that the current Full Member Application Requirements and Checklist be replaced, both on the Web site and in the ABAI Newsletter, in time for next October’s 2010 membership renewal and drive.
The ARC members are honored to serve ABAI in the application review process and to work with the ABAI CEO and her capable staff members. When our term is completed, we trust that the review process and its forms and information technology will be refined to the point that it is easily replicable by the ARC members who follow us.