Program Mission & Objectives

The mission of UNCW’s PhD Program in ABA is congruent with the goals of ABAI, with UNCW’s institutional mission, and with the Department of Psychology’s mission in several ways.

First, a commitment to student engagement in the science and practice of behavior analysis, and to the integration of teaching, research, and service, is illustrated by having each student in the program work closely with one or more of the faculty to develop a research project that will serve as their master’s thesis and to develop a project, or set of projects, that will serve as their dissertation. Each project is empirical (i.e., involves data collection by the student) and involves relating directly observed behavior to potentially relevant controlling variables. The faculty member(s) help the student engage in critical thinking and thoughtful expression by a) mentoring the student through the relevant empirical literature, b) helping them design the research project, c) helping them learn data-analytic methods, and d) helping them learn to communicate the research findings to a scientific audience. Teaching and mentoring are integrated with research in that the mentor and student are engaged in this project as colleagues (i.e., the student is a “junior colleague”). Service to the field and, hence, responsible citizenship is achieved, in part, by providing students with opportunities to disseminate their work to the scientific community via conference presentations and via publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Second, in meeting the standards for ABAI accreditation, the curriculum is designed to foster critical behavior-analytic thinking, along with a fluent behavior-analytic verbal repertoire in all four domains of behavior analysis (experimental, applied, conceptual, and service delivery).

Third, in addition to the critical analytic skills learned by collecting and analyzing empirical data, valuable practical experiences are gained via a supervised practicum. In addition to helping the student learn to apply behavior-analytic principles to effective service delivery, these experiences help students learn responsible citizenship through the ethical application of these principles to socially relevant behavior. Fourth, the program is designed so that graduates of the PhD Program have the skills needed to function independently (e.g., develop their own program of research), so that they may assume teaching/research/service roles within academic institutions and/or function in leadership/supervisory roles in government, business, and human services.