Inside Behavior Analysis
Volume 1 | 2009 | Number 2 | On-line ISSN: 2151-4704
A Letter From the ABAI President
By Raymond G. Miltenberger
It has been an active and exciting year for the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI), the one membership organization that supports the scientific study and practice of behavior analysis. The ABAI Council and many of its Boards have been busy with new initiatives and activities designed to benefit the membership and the field of behavior analysis.
In 2008, the ABAI Council established the Practice Board to focus on ways the Association can better serve practitioners and address practitioner issues. The Practice Board, consisting of Mike Dorsey (Chair), Mike Dougher, Doug Greer, Josh Pritchard, Travis Thompson, Mike Weinberg, Tom Zane, and Jennifer Zarcone, has been particularly active in 2009.
The Practice Board now includes the following Committees: the Licensure Committee, chaired by Mike Weinberg; the Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Tom Zane; the Continuing Education Committee, chaired by Doug Greer; the Research in Practice Committee, chaired by Travis Thompson; the Insurance Coverage Committee; the Insurance Billing Committee, co-chaired by Travis Thompson and Wayne Fisher; and the Organization Consultation Committee. Also under the umbrella of the Practice Board is the Practitioner Hotline, chaired by Jon Bailey.
To inform Practice Board activities, the Council sent a survey to ABAI members in an attempt to get a better understanding of the issues that are important to practicing members. The Practice Board and the Council explored the implications of licensing for behavior analysts and developed a model licensing act for states to adopt when they consider pursuing licensure. To assist us in our deliberations about licensure for behavior analysts, ABAI hired former President and Executive Director of the APA, Raymond Fowler, as a consultant. Dr. Fowler met with the ABAI Council and Practice Board representatives and provided a training session for ABAI chapters at the annual convention.
The Council and Practice Board believe that licensure for behavior analysts is an important vehicle to protect the public and enhance the professionalism of our field. Dr. Fowler emphasized a number of important political and practical considerations that must be addressed at the state level before states pursue licensure. As behavior analysts move toward licensure at the state level, ABAI will provide leadership in a number of ways.
The Practice Board will provide training for state associations considering licensure. Furthermore, ABAI has established educational standards as part of the accreditation process that states can rely on in their licensing initiatives.
In addition to the licensure initiative, the Council and Practice Board are pursuing other initiatives such as new activities for legislation advocacy, insurance coverage for behavior analysts, insurance billing, organizational consultation, a hotline for practitioners, and others.
While establishing the Practice Board in 2008, the Council also established the Science Board to focus on scientific issues in behavior analysis and support basic behavior analysis researchers. As an international association that supports both scientists and practitioners in behavior analysis, the Council believed the establishment of the ABAI Science Board was equally as important as the establishment of the Practice Board.
The Science Board, consisting of Tim Hackenberg (Chair), Tom Critchfield, Greg Hanley, Greg Madden, Amy Odum, and Ray Pitts has been active in 2009. They have developed new committees in the areas of research support, which included a task force that wrote recommendations on the care and use of laboratory animals; dissemination of scientific knowledge, which included the development of a special track on translational research at the 2009 ABAI convention; and scientific education, that organized a training session on quantitative methods for the upcoming ABAI convention.
In December of 2008, Mike Dougher (Experimental Representative, Executive Council; Member, Practice Board), Linda Hayes (Coordinator, Practice Board; Past Coordinator, Education Board; Founder, Council of Directors of Graduate Training Programs in Behavior Analysis; Past President, Executive Council), Phil Hineline (Coordinator, Membership Board; Past President, Executive Council), Maria Malott (Chief Executive Officer, ABAI), Chuck Merbitz (Coordinator, Education Board), Jay Moore (Chair, Organizational Membership Review Committee; Past President, Executive Council), and Ed Morris (Chair, Application Review Committee; Past President, Executive Council) met for a strategic planning session to align education initiatives with practice initiatives and science considerations.
Currently, the Education Board consists of Chuck Merbitz (Chair), Michael Cameron, Pat Ghezzi, Linda Hayes, Cathy Watkins, and Libby Street. The Education Board consists of the following Committees: The Graduate Accreditation Committee, chaired by Pat Ghezzi and the Undergraduate Accreditation Committee, chaired by Michael Cameron.
The Education Board is currently working on a revision of the standards for graduate accreditation and the development of standards for undergraduate program accreditation and is pursuing national recognition of its accreditation program through the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. The ABAI Executive Council believes that education standards need to be raised and supported for the adequate preparation of scientists and practicing behavior analysts. Linda Hayes is chairing a new Council of Accredited Graduate Programs and Libby Street is working with the support of the ABAI office on a Task Force on National Recognition of ABAI’s accreditation program. Although these are both long-term, multiyear processes, the Council believes they are critical initiatives for the continued vitality of our applied and basic sciences. The Council’s goal is for more graduate programs in behavior analysis to develop the curricula needed for accreditation and to take the steps necessary to become accredited by ABAI. As more graduate programs become accredited and more students graduate from these accredited programs, state licensure initiatives are more likely to be successful due to the growing number of well-trained behavior analysts.
In addition to the efforts of the Practice Board, Science Board, and Education Board to help keep ABAI and the field of behavior analysis strong, the Full Member Application Review Committee, consisting of Ed Morris (Chair), Adam Derenne, and Ruth Anne Rehfeldt, is focused on the preservation of the quality of the organization and the field. Additionally, the Organizational Review Committee, consisting of Jay Moore (Chair), Jennifer Austin, and Dave Wilder, reviews and evaluates the staff and services of organizational membership applicants. The Full Member Application Review Committee has aligned with the Graduate Accreditation and Organizational Review Committees to ensure that the quality of organizational members meets the standards of, and is compatible with, the goals of ABAI.
The Association and the field continue to grow in a number of ways:
- ABAI now has 68 affiliated chapters, including 3 new chapters that were approved in 2009: the Lone Star Association for Behavior Analysis, the Association Française de l’ABA , and the French Association for Behavior Analysis.
- ABAI now has 32 special interest groups (SIGs), including a new SIG approved in 2009: the Behavior Analysis and Selectionist Robotics SIG.
- ABAI’s publications are growing. Behavior Analysis in Practice was initiated in 2008 and has been very successful with Dorothea Lerman as Editor for the first two years. With Greg Hanley recently named as the new Editor, we expect continued success for the journal as it publishes scholarly articles geared for ABA practitioners.
- All the back issues of The Behavior Analyst are now available at PubMed Central on the Web. This is a huge development for the field to be able to access TBA easily on line.
- TBA’s PudMed Central archive can be found at: www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=557&action=archive
- The Analysis of Verbal Behavior is in the process now of having its back issues scanned, and we think these will be fully available sometime in the fall of 2009.
- The ABAI Program Committee has added a new track for the annual convention, applied animal behavior.
- The 2009 Fellows, which were announced in the last newsletter, include Michael Cataldo, Gina Green, Richard Malott, James Mazur, Raymond Miltenberger, Cathleen Piazza, and Richard Shull.
The following graduate training programs were reaccredited by the Accreditation Committee:
- St. Cloud State University Applied Behavior Analysis program from the Department of Educational Leadership and Community Psychology.
- Western Michigan University M.S. and Ph.D. programs in Behavior Analysis from the Department of Psychology.
- University of Kansas Master of Arts in Applied Behavioral Science and Ph.D. in Behavioral Psychology.
The following programs were accredited for the first time:
- University of Cincinnati Master’s of Education program in School Psychology was accredited and its Ph.D. program was conditionally accredited for a 3-year term, at which point its dissertation history will be reassessed for full accreditation.
This is an exciting time for ABAI, with many important projects and initiatives in the works. As ABAI continues to grow, it also expands and improves the services it offers to its members. This dedication and drive to grow can be expected from the Association for years to come.