In 1955, Guy Renzaglia founded the Rehabilitation Institute at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC). The goal of the Institute is to serve as an academic home for training professionals in various branches of rehabilitation. In the same year, Israel Goldiamond joined the faculty of SIUC’s Department of Psychology. Israel was instrumental in recruiting Nathan Azrin to Southern Illinois to become the founding director of the Behavior Research Laboratory at Anna State Hospital, located some 20 miles south of Carbondale. Guy and Nathan collaborated in 1965 to form the first Master’s degree program in Behavior Modification in the United States, which became one of several graduate programs within the Rehabilitation Institute.
Ed Sulzer was hired as the Behavior Modification Program’s founding coordinator. There has been a close working relationship between the academic program on campus and the former Anna State Hospital, now named the Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center, since the program’s inception. The state hospital provided the program with the initial faculty and a site for students to acquire research and clinical experience. Ed Sulzer and Nathan Azrin, along with Donald Hake and Teodoro Ayllon (also from the hospital), designed the original academic curriculum. Subsequently, Richard Foxx and other behavior analysts provided supervision to program students in their positions at the state hospital.
In 1982, the name of the program was changed to Behavior Analysis and Therapy to reflect not only our evolving disciplinary terminology, but also the comprehensive nature of the curriculum. The program is accredited by the Association for Behavior Analysis. A doctoral program in rehabilitation, including a behavioral specialty, was also added during the early 1980s.
Students in the program have been able to receive education and training in both basic and applied behavior analysis, as well as behavior therapy. Some areas of specialization over the decades have included developmental disabilities, child abuse and neglect, acquired head injury, gambling, stimulus equivalence, school intervention, behavioral medicine, sexual behavior, community behavior analysis, organizational behavior management, functional analysis of challenging behavior, and other topics.
Two major clinical training and community service programs have been externally funded for a number of years. Project 12-Ways, which serves families indicated for child abuse and neglect, has been in operation for more than 20 years. More recently, the Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders has become a comprehensive, behaviorally-based regional center for autism in southern Illinois. During the past 40 years, in addition to those individuals cited above, program faculty have included Bob Campbell, Dick Sanders, Harry Rubin, Roger Poppen, Bill Hopkins, Tony Cuvo, Brandon Greene, Paula Davis, Gina Green, Mark Dixon, Ruth Anne Rehfeldt, and April Worsdell.
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