Welcome, to Applied Behavior Analysis in Complex Community Environment. My name's Dr. Crosland, and I'll be the instructor for the course. And so my personal background is I graduated from the University of Kansas and have been now teaching-- with my Ph.D.-- and now I've been teaching here at USF for probably about six years. So after I graduated with my bachelor's degree, I ended up working at Kennedy Krieger Institute for a while, before going onto my master's degree. And while I was there is really where I developed a passion for behavior analysis. 

It  was the first time I was exposed to young kids who had really severe behavior problems. And it was amazing how we could work with those kids, figure out the function or the reason that they were engaging in those problem behaviors, and develop effective interventions that really changed their lives. And we were able to see families, parents, be more successful and be able to work with their kids in the home setting and also kids being more successful at school, once we worked with them on an inpatient unit, and then they went and lived back with their families. So it was amazing just to see the difference in the kids from when they came to us, as to when they left, and just to see the parents being able to be successful with their children. 

And so, I really have enjoyed teaching this course because of my prior experience is working in different complex community environments. The hope is that you will become more aware of the needs of consumers and some of the challenges that consumers face and also some of the challenges you will face as a behavior analyst working in complex community settings. 

You'll also learn how to create better behavior plans that incorporate contextual fit into those plan and how to implement them in community settings and, also, how to kind of navigate and work well with not just other behavior analysts, but with other folks out in other fields you're going to be working in such, as school psychologists, social workers, so that you are able to work as a team to better support your clients. 

And lastly, we'll also talk about some system-wide interventions, such as school-wide positive behavior support, in which you might be working under as a behavior analyst. I hope that this course better prepares you for the challenges that you will face is a behavior analyst out working in complex community environments. 

As Steve Jobs once said in a quote similar to this was that business cannot run with just one person and function as one person; they need to have a team to be successful, and that's true for behavior analysts, too. The better you are at working with others and working as a team with folks, not just within your discipline but within other disciplines, the more successful you will be. 

One thing I really I love about behavior analysis is that you can have immeasurable impact on an individual's life. So I hope that you've learned from this course. You've enjoyed the course, and will take it out and do good things in the world.