Dr. Patrick McGreevy received B.S. and M.A. degrees in Psychology and Special Education, respectively, from the University of Iowa. He was a special education teacher for eight years, working with children and young adults with moderate-to-severe developmental disabilities. He received the Ph.D. degree in Education from Kansas University under the guidance of Ogden R. Lind ... Read More + sley. He has served on the faculties of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Louisiana State University, the University of Central Florida, and the Florida Institute of Technology. He is the author of Teaching and Learning in Plain English, an introduction to Precision Teaching, and the founder and first editor of the Journal of Precision Teaching and Standard Celeration Charting. He is the author of ten journal articles and a book chapter on teaching verbal behavior. He is the first author of Essential for Living, a functional skills curriculum, assessment, and professional practitioner’s handbook based on B. F. Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior for children and adults with moderate-to-severe disabilities. For the past 30 years, he has provided consultations for children and adults with developmental disabilities in school districts, residential programs, and hospitals, specializing in the simultaneous management of aggressive and self-injurious behavior and the teaching of communication and language skills to individuals with limited repertoires. He is board certified behavior analyst, has given hundreds of presentations and workshops around the world, and is the recipient of the Ogden R. Lindsley Lifetime Achievement Award of the Standard Celeration Society. He is the President and Director of Consultation and Training Services for Patrick McGreevy, Ph.D., P.A. and Associates. Download Abstract

Henry D. (Hank) Schlinger Jr. received his Ph.D. in psychology (applied behavior analysis) from Western Michigan University (WMU) under the supervision of Jack Michael. He then completed a two-year National Institutes of Health-funded post-doctoral fellowship in behavioral pharmacology also at WMU with Alan Poling. Dr. Schlinger was a full tenured professor of psychology a ... Read More + t Western New England University in Springfield, MA, before moving to Los Angeles in 1998. He is now professor of psychology and former director of the M. S. Program in Applied Behavior Analysis in the Department of Psychology at California State University, Los Angeles. Dr. Schlinger has published more than 80 scholarly articles, chapters, and commentaries in more than 30 different journals. He also has authored or co-authored three books, Psychology: A Behavioral Overview (1990), A Behavior-Analytic View of Child Development (1995) (which was translated into Japanese), and Introduction to Scientific Psychology (1998). He is past editor of The Analysis of Verbal Behavior and The Behavior Analyst and sits on the editorial boards of several other journals. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies and on the Advisory Board of The B. F. Skinner Foundation and The Venus Project (https://www.resourcebasedeconomy.org/advisory-board/). He received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Psychology at Western Michigan University in 2012, and the Jack Michael Award for Outstanding Contributions in Verbal Behavior from the Verbal Behavior Special Interest Group of the Association for Behavior Analysis International in 2015.

Mirela Cengher, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in Psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). She is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst-Doctoral Level and a licensed behavior analyst in the state of Maryland. Dr. Cengher first became interested in behavior analysis when she began working with children with developmental disabilities as an undergrad ... Read More + uate student in Romania. She then moved to the United States to pursue graduate training in behavior analysis. Dr. Cengher received her doctorate in Psychology from The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and completed her Postdoctoral Fellowship at Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Cengher has over 15 years of research and clinical experience with individuals with developmental disabilities. Her primary research interest is at the intersection of verbal behavior and stimulus control—specifically, in her research, she evaluates variables that affect the acquisition of verbal behavior and the development of emergent relations. One of the main lines of research in Dr. Cengher’s lab is the acquisition of foreign languages in children from bilingual households. Dr. Cengher serves as a (guest) Associate Editor and as an editorial board member for several scientific journals (e.g., Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, Behavior Analysis in Practice).

Alice Shillingsburg, PhD, BCBA-D, LP is Professor and Yale Family Endowed Chair at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Dr. Shillingsburg also serves as Director of the integrated Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders (iCASD) at the Munroe-Meyer Institute for Genetics and Rehabilitation. She received her PhD in child clinical psychology at Auburn University and comple ... Read More + ted her APA Accredited doctoral Internship at the Marcus Institute in Atlanta, GA. In prior roles, she has served as Sr. Vice President of Children’s Clinical Services and Training at May Institute, Director of the Language and Learning Clinic at Marcus Autism Center, and previously held an appointment as Associate Professor at Emory University School of Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics. Dr. Shillingsburg’s research and clinical interests involve the development and implementation of comprehensive and focused interventions to promote robust, meaningful skill development for children and adolescents diagnosed with autism. Her clinical interests focus heavily on increasing access to high quality, compassionate care serving autistic individuals and their families. Dr. Shillingsburg has supervised numerous pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellows and enjoys mentoring early career researchers and clinicians. She has published over 60 empirical research articles and book chapters, is current Editor-in-Chief of Operants Magazine, and is past Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and The Analysis of Verbal Behavior. She is appointed to several editorial boards and is regularly invited to speak at national conferences.

Dr. Barbara Esch is a behavior analyst and speech pathologist with extensive experience in behavioral interventions for children and adults. Dr. Esch received her Ph.D. in Applied Behavior Analysis from Western Michigan University under the direction of Dr. Jack Michael and Dr. Jim Carr and her M.A. in Speech Pathology from Michigan State University. She has published rese ... Read More + arch on behavioral treatments for early speech acquisition and aphasia assessment in The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, and the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disabilities. She has presented workshops, training symposia, and research in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia, focusing on the use of behavioral procedures to improve speech and language skills for individuals of all ages with a wide range of diagnoses. Dr. Esch is the founder of the Speech Pathology Special Interest Group (www.behavioralspeech.com) of the Association for Behavior Analysis International. She is the author of the original Early Echoic Skills Assessment, part of the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP), published by Dr. Mark Sundberg (2008/2014) and the new Early Echoic Skills Assessment and Program Planner – Guide and Protocol.

Elbert Blakely received a Ph.D. in 1988 from Western Michigan in Psychology with a specialty in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). He has worked in the fields of developmental disabilities, mental health, behavior pharmacology, experimental analysis of behavior, organizational behavior management, and database design. Dr. Blakely has co-authored 25 articles and one book. The ... Read More + articles address research questions in the areas of the experimental analysis of behavior, applied behavior analysis, conceptual issues, and behavior pharmacology. Dr. Blakely is an Assistant Professor at Florida Institute of Technology, where he teaches courses in applied behavior analysis, radical behaviorism, and behavior pharmacology. He also provides consultation to organizations and providers who deliver ABA services to children and adults.

Dr. Lina Slim is a dually certified SLP & BCBA-D with over 30 years-experience, specializing her clinical practice on supporting families and their children with autism, neurodevelopmental and behavioral challenges, speech and language differences and apraxia, providing training, supervision, and consultations to practitioners across professional disciplines, cultures ... Read More + and countries. She is Founding Executive Director of ASAP – A Step Ahead Program, LLC, Adjunct Professor at Endicott College ABA Program, Adjunct Assistant Professor at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, ABA Online Program, and Teaching Faculty at Behavior Momentum India (BMI) ABAI ® approved VCS course. Her clinical and research interests focus on disseminating best practices in the application of the science of behavior analysis to support persons with autism and their families, establishing and maintaining effective functional verbal behaviors while promoting Interprofessional Culturally Aware, Responsive and Person-Centered Collaborative Practices (AICARe-Collaboration). Dr. Slim presents and consults nationally and internationally and has published several peer-reviewed research and book chapters. Dr. Slim is the recipient of the 2005 Children Empowerment Award and the 2014 New Jersey Speech-Language-Hearing Association (NJSHA) Distinguished Clinical Achievement Award. She is past-Chair of NJSHA Interprofessional Autism Conference, Board of Directors Member of the Association for Science in Autism Treatment (ASAT), past co-chair and current member of the NJSHA-NJABA Collaborative Practice Group, Chief Communication Officer Liaison of Behavior Analysis SIG on Supervision to the ABAI (BASIGS), Board Member of ABAC, Inc., Internal Continuing Education Committee, Executive Member of the Speech and Applied Behavior Analysis (SPABA) ABAI SIG, and BACB ® Subject Matter Expert on the Item Review Committee. Dr. Slim brings a unique personal and behavior analytic perspective on interprofessional collaboration, cultural responsiveness, and humility, by drawing from her diverse cultural, linguistic, and professional background, as well as from her extensive clinical practice working with culturally and linguistically diverse families nationally and internationally. Download Abstract