Newsletter
Volume 31 | 2008 | Number 2
Pennsylvania ABA
By Dr. William Helsel
Pennsylvania ABA (PennABA) was founded in the late 1990s by Richard M. Foxx and William J. Helsel to provide an opportunity for Pennsylvania’s growing number of behavior analysts to further their knowledge in the field and to connect with other behavior analysts. Since then, PennABA has held an annual conference attracting participants from across the state and maintained a membership of over 200 people. Dr. Foxx continues to serve as the organization’s Executive Director and Dr. Helsel as President.
After successful two-day conferences in 2005 in the Philadelphia area, 2006 in the Harrisburg/Hershey area, and 2007 in Pittsburgh we returned to the Harrisburg/Hershey area for our 2008 meeting at the beautiful Hershey Lodge. The attendance between 2006 and 2007 jumped up 13% and between 2007 and 2008 34% (n = 116) or more thoroughgoing an acceleration of x3.2 (thanks Og). We had five invited speakers: William Ahearn, Ph.D., BCBA, Director of Research at the New England Center for Children and Clinical Assistant Professor in the Master’s in Applied Behavior Analysis (MABA) Program at Northeastern University, carried out a workshop on assessing and treating stereotypic behavior and offered a paper on analyzing social deficits; Saul Axelrod, Ph.D., BCBA, Professor of Education at Temple University, gave a paper looking more broadly at the relations between ABA and autism; Kimberly Schreck, Ph.D., BCBA, Associate Professor of Psychology and Coordinator of the Applied Behavior Analysis Master’s Program at Penn State Harrisburg, shared a paper examining practices of behavior analysts in their treatment of autism; Tristam Smith, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) and serves as the research director for the Multi-site Young Autism Project, directed a workshop on ABA for school-age children with autism and offered a paper on “what’s new” in early intensive behavioral intervention; Mary Jane Weiss, Ph.D., BCBA, Director of Research and Training at the Douglass Developmental Disabilities Center at Rutgers University, led a workshop on teaching social skills and also discussed comprehensive ABA programming in a paper presentation. We are indebted to each of these individuals for the generosity they showed PennABA.
The wide range of topics covered reflects the interests of PennABA’s diverse membership of behavior analysts, psychologists, special educators, students, and colleagues from neighboring states. In order to meet the needs of our membership, PennABA provides continuing education credits for behavior analysts and psychologists, and for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to Pennsylvania educators at no additional cost. Students are an integral part of our membership, and PennABA has benefited from our relationship with several universities in Pennsylvania with graduate-level programs in behavior analysis. Students are represented on PennABA’s Executive Council and have presented their research at our annual conferences.
Please visit our Web site, www.pennaba1.org, which contains information about upcoming events, conference and membership registration forms, links to organizations that may be of interest to our members, as well as job postings in behavior analysis in Pennsylvania. PennABA also continues to publish an electronic newsletter sent to our members in the late winter or early spring.